Distinctives and Challenges of Business as Mission

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

This excerpt is taken from the book “Distinctives and Challenges of Business as Mission”

by Neal Johnson & Steve Rundle

by Steve Rundle

The speaker was in some ways a caricature of globalization — an Iranian-born citizen of Canada, educated in the U.S., and now working in China alongside her American husband. In 1993, before an audience of about 19,000 college students, “Mary” shared the following story:

[M]y husband and I traveled to a remote place in China — we went as far as the airplane could take us, and then on by train. That evening as we strolled down the street we stopped at a little sidewalk restaurant to eat. Knowing that we were foreigners, the people eagerly crowded around us and began saying, "Coca Cola. We like Coca Cola." We asked them if they had ever heard of Jesus? After some murmuring they answered, "No, no one had ever heard that name." In anguish, I wondered why Coca Cola had gotten to this area, and after 2000 years, Jesus had not?

Her story illustrates the remarkable capacity of business to reach people virtually anywhere in the world, including places where the gospel still struggles to gain a foothold. It also helps explain why well-known evangelicals such as Billy Graham, Henry Blackaby and Wayne Grudem are focusing more of their attention on the heretofore neglected role of business — and those who run them — in mission. This increased attention is part of an even broader movement, perhaps the first great missionary movement of the Twenty-First Century, in which laypeople from every profession are discovering, or rather, rediscovering, their role in missio Dei. That role goes beyond financial support, service on church committees and prayer, and extends into areas that were once thought to be the exclusive purview of professional missionaries.

“Tentmaking” are all being used, often synonymously, to describe what in our view are separate strands, or camps, within a single movement. They are closely related in that all start by emphasizing the “priesthood of all believers” (1 Pe 2:9-10) and the idea that mission, properly understood, is something all Christians are called into. They all promote the intrinsic value of work, and claim that the distinction often made between sacred and secular vocations is not only unbiblical, but is counterproductive to the completion of the Great Commission.