Business as mission

My husband and I are not traditional missionaries.

In our decades of work in Canada and around the world, we have never properly fit in any box. We have perpetually struggled to bridge the gap between what is ‘ministry’ and what is ‘vocation.’

We started young. We spent our university years learning how to evangelize and disciple students. We became active members in our local church, supporting outreach, and we even helped plant a new campus ministry. We have always cared about ministry.

However, we’re not officially in pastoral ministry. We had helped church plant, but we were not church planters. We were always reaching out in our community, but we weren’t evangelists. We had skills that are useful in less resourced areas of the world, but we weren’t missionaries. Or were we?

We have been equipped with amazing vocational skills that have value. I’m a nurse and have been for over 15 years, and I am currently training to be a Nurse Practitioner. My husband is a software engineer and has a Masters of Business degree. We don’t view work as aspiritual and secular, and we don’t view only church work as spiritual.

After brief forays into short term missions while in high school and college, and a six-month trip to West Africa early in our marriage, we had always hoped to do missions work. But we didn’t fit the missionary mold. Established missions organizations wanted to send us as church planters or pastors. Others wanted to send us to do vocational work. But we wanted to do both. We have finally found ourselves in a place where we can do business as missions, and we believe this approach has extraordinary potential to help transform communities.

We originally moved to Malawi in 2018 to support a Malawian-run hospital with our vocational skills. It seemed to make sense. It turned out that the hospital didn’t really need foreign workers. It didn’t really need missionaries either, as it had a local Malawian pastor as a chaplain. Instead, we found a larger need in the business community.

What is business as mission?

When you see ‘business as mission,’ what do you think of? For many, it brings to mind models in the past such as starting businesses as a ‘front’ to reach unreached peoples in cultures and societies where Christianity is not welcome.

But business, as a platform for ministry, is so much more than that. After years of researching, hundreds of calls and discussions, my husband, Jason, came to the conclusion that business is an important and vital way for missions work to move forward into the future.

Here are a few ways that business ministries can transform a culture.

Providing meaningful and holistic work

The historic missions approach of starting schools and hospitals was valuable and important. Initiatives such as these continue as strong pillars of traditional missionary work, even though many countries now have their own health and education systems and have the ability to train health and education workers.

However, over and over again in Malawi, we were met with not just health or educational needs, but the need for people to have meaningful work. It made us realize that instead of giving money, there is opportunity for Christians to give work.

Young people in Malawi strive to get an education. Many have had their families sacrifice much to get them through secondary school or maybe even college, only to be jobless after graduation. There aren’t enough government jobs, and there aren’t enough non-profit jobs, so where are these young people going to work? Many missionaries start off with providing Bible school training, education, or healthcare support but more these days are stumbling into starting vocational training schools. Why? Providing meaningful employment for people to provide for their families is a huge and unmet need. Aside from tailoring schools, carpentry, or farming endeavours, there is significant room for growing the economy through small businesses. But most missionaries aren’t equipped to help create or sustain businesses.

Of course, what we don’t mean is that western missionaries ought to export ‘western’ business models. But as Christian missionaries, we can help support Biblical businesses. Businesses that don’t just care about the bottom dollar, but ones that care about the environment, the social impact, and the spiritual impact of the work. What if we equipped people to think about all of those things before they started a business? What if we supported local Christians in their businesses with skills and know-how to thrive? What if we discipled Christian business owners to integrate their spiritual lives into their work lives, and connected them together? That’s what we have been trying to do these past number of years by starting a Christian business network to help support Christian entrepreneurship in Malawi. But so much more needs to be done. More missionaries can come alongside business leaders and empower them to see their workplaces as places of outreach.

All followers of Christ need to know how our faith impacts our daily lives – operating with integrity, avoiding bribes, or paying taxes honestly. But this can also be important missional work. Coming alongside local companies that are run by Christians and equipping owners to see the role they have in discipling their employees is pivotal work in places like Malawi. Missionaries can have a role in helping these businesses thrive – to provide more employment for those in need around them.

Providing funds

One thing many people in the Western world may not realize is that missionaries are being sent increasingly from non-Western countries. While living in Malawi, we have met missionaries from Ethiopia, India, Korea, the Congo, and various parts of Asia. However, the unequal distribution of resources in the body of Christ means that many of these missionaries, though called, equipped, and sent to serve in Malawi, struggle to have the means. It is difficult for their churches to send these missionaries when they themselves come from lower income countries.

There are many reasons raising support can be a challenge for them. Many of these missionaries struggle to make ends meet and don’t have the robust salaries or stipends to fly back to their home countries to build their support teams. In our conversations, we have learned that many are also expected and required to support aging parents in their home contexts, but they have barely enough resources to provide for their own daily needs. They turn to establishing side businesses to raise funds for their ministry work. For example, an incredible Indian couple we met in Malawi has a beautiful ministry to the Indian diaspora living in Malawi. They are witnessing to an almost completely unreached group of Hindus in this country, but my husband learned they needed support to build a business to make profit for the sake of their outreach. They are trained as church planters and pastors, but haven’t been taught or had the opportunity to learn the skills needed to run a businesses. Western missionaries with business skills could come alongside workers like these, running businesses whose profits are for the benefit of ministry efforts. This is different than putting up a ‘front’ of a business. How do we support these missionaries in running quality business that provide meaningful work, and make profit to help in their ministry efforts?
Gaining Entrance into Communities

In an ever-globalizing world, it is still not easy to cross borders. In many parts of the world, you can no longer arrive as a missionary and gain entrance to a nation. Nor can you just be a missionary and gain entrance into a community that is closed off. You need legitimacy. Vocational missionaries are poised to be an answer to that need. As skilled vocational workers, believers can choose to move to different countries and bring the love of Christ into their work spheres. But this strategy does not need to be just for closed countries alone. In Malawi, a largely ‘Christian’ nation, or even in Canada, there are pockets of people where the gospel is seldom – if ever – seen or heard. Often, to rub shoulders with people you need to have entrance into their world, and mostly everyone works. What could it mean if we sent Christian workers into their vocational areas in other parts of the world, with a heart for ministry? What if we started to see our own work as places of ministry? What if we saw the communities for which we have access through our jobs as the mission field God is sending us to?

A way forward

We don’t have all the answers. In fact, after five years of missions work, we have more questions than ever. We have failed often. But we do think that new and creative ideas that explore the connection between missions and vocation – especially through the sphere of business – need to be on every Christ-follower’s radar.

What does business as missions look like?

An interesting business model that my husband helped support in Malawi called Tide Rise was started by a Canadian entrepreneur. Technical outsourcing jobs have historically been to places like India. However, this entrepreneur saw an opportunity to bring outsourcing jobs to Malawians who lacked post-secondary education but had the English and technical skills required for data entry. He started an outsourcing company in Malawi. It went from 20 to 80 employees in a short period of time, and, because the owners are Christians, they allowed my husband as a missionary to be involved in helping the company think of ways to disciple and encourage the young people working there.

Another missionary started several businesses, the largest of which is an agricultural processing company called Something Special. He had been involved in discipling young people for years, and wanted to encourage some of them to be involved in ministry work to other young people as well. To do that, however, they needed a source of income to support themselves. As someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, he began starting businesses that delivered products Malawians needed, and also provided a place for these young people to work. Malawi is a highly agricultural country, but most produce is sold raw, with very little processing done. Since there is only one rainy season, this often means a huge surplus of produce in one part of the year, and no availability in other parts of the year. Something Special helps solve this by buying large quantities of produce, such as locally grown tomatoes and pineapples, and then dicing and packaging them for sale in shops around the country. The business is run by Christian managers who lead devotions with the staff every morning, and incorporate Biblical principles throughout the operation.