Creating a Kingdom Values Based Corporate Culture: 

/ Phill

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Putting the “M” in Business as Mission

The BP oil platform failure and subsequent leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a major news focus these days. People are asking, “What could have led to such a catastrophic failure?” In the days to come this will be analyzed ad nauseam. Many factors are being discussed. One that keeps coming up is that there was a corporate culture of indifference.

Business gurus are nearly unanimous. Clear core values are essential for success. They need to be understood and internalized by everyone in the company. They do not guarantee success, but their absence guarantees mediocrity or failure. I want to look at the idea of corporate culture in light of the growing interest of Business as Mission (BAM) as a type of tentmaking work.

In Christian circles a lot of interest has been generated about BAM and the importance of having businesses run by Christians in order to bring a witness to the international marketplace. It sounds great. But what does it actually mean?

What makes a business Christian?

Is it enough that the business is run by a Christian?Can there be a corporate culture based on Kingdom values? If so, what does it look like? Should the employer use work time for “devotional meetings”. Can he obligate employees to participate?

Maybe the path one takes is to have a chaplain on staff and make that person available to staff or even to customers. Does this make the company a business as mission company.

What if the business measures its success by looking at the “Triple Bottom Line” taking into account more than just profit, but also social and spiritual impact?

These activities may be desirable, but in some ways they miss the main point. They are not what make a company a BAM company.

Companies, like people, have a “personality” or “style” in the way they act and in the way they relate to their staff and constituencies. Our core values determine how we interpret and interact with our environment. In organizations we refer to this as its corporate culture.

Every company has a culture, whether consciously developed or not. Sometimes the corporate culture is given slightly different names: culture of the organization (Eldred), core values (Johnson), core ideals (Collins), for example.

Corporate culture, like our social culture, is instilled in us by everything around us, people and environment, and we are not always consciously aware of it and how it influences everything we do. It shapes our worldview and informs all of our decisions.

When the company culture is well aligned, fewer rules are needed because the staff is motivated internally to do the right thing. The company values are internalized and guide all actions assisting staff in the interpretation of the messages they receive and in determining what the appropriate response should be.

Having a Christian corporate culture means incorporating Kingdom values not only into our goals, but also into the staff’s way of thinking and operating – into the core of the company’s “being.” The values need to be a part of who the company is and how it behaves. In other words Kingdom values need to be part of the personality of the company.

No one activity makes a company a BAM company. It starts with an understanding of the the values of the Kingdom of God and exemplifies it in the sum of its attitudes and activities. Essentially the company runs as one company simultaneously under the sovereignty of the the Kingdom as God with its requirements and the laws or legal requirements that govern its host country.

What are those values? Ken Eldred has a useful list to prime our thinking in the third chapter of his book, God Is at Work.

He gives 10 common features that characterize BAM companies.

1. The presence of a Christian or Christians with a sphere of influence.
2. A product or service in harmony with God’s creational purpose.
3. A mission or business purpose that is larger and deeper than mere financial (though including it) so that the business contributes in some way to the Kingdom of God.
4. The product or service is offered with such excellence that it suggests the presence of the Kingdom and invites opportunity to witness.
5. Customers are treated with dignity and respect and not just as a means of profit.
6. Employees and workers are equipped to achieve greater potential in their life and, if they are Christians, to work wholeheartedly with faith, home and love.
7. All aspects of the business are considered to be potentially a ministry and subject to prayer.
8. The culture (values, symbols, governing beliefs) of the organization line up with God’s word and Kingdom purposes.
9. The business runs on grace.
10. The leaders are servants, dedicated to serve the mission of the business, the best interest of the employees, the customers and the shareholders because they are first of all servants of God.

The Road to God

/ Phill

Decision making in the marketplace
Phill Sandahl

A web design class I took recently analyzed people’s decision making process. They found that people had different decision making styles.

Using the Myers-Briggs instrument they identified 4 different decision making styles – competitor, humanistic, methodical, and spontaneous. Appropriate material was created in different parts of the page to help each make a decision. My point here is not to discuss web design, but to recognize the principle that there are different decision-making styles which need different approaches to bring people to a decision.

Different people are “wired” differently. That’s the way God made us. He uses different communication styles to draw individuals to himself. Consider these examples:

• Ethiopian Eunuch – While searching Isaiah he was approached by Philip who explained, “that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus”
• Thomas the doubter – show me
• Andrew through family relationship – I have found the Messiah, you must come and meet him too
• Paul the Apostle through a power encounter – Lord, what would you have me to do?

Jim Engel a number of years ago gave us the Engel Scale which recognized that coming to Christ, and growing in Him, was a process and not just a single event. To this we need to add an understanding that depending on a person’s decision-making style the necessary steps along that path may vary. How they come to their relationship with Christ is not as important as that they do.

Sociologists and religious leaders over the years have studied the conversion process and found many different ways people have come to make a religious conversion. Often there is a combination of messages/experiences. Among the most frequently mentioned: preaching and persuasion, reading and study, deeds by other believers, healing and miracles, cultural practices, visions and power encounters. Different cultures will be more receptive to some than to others. But God is not limited by one culture’s preference.

So what does this have to do with tentmaking? We need to recognize that in the marketplace we will come across people with all kinds of decision-making styles. God wants to connect with all of them. To do so he has a toolkit with a variety of communication methods. We need to have our eyes open to what God is doing and not assume that our favorite tool (method) is best for all people and situations.

The Tentmaker’s role:

• Be faithful in your witness
• Give the Holy Spirit room to work
• Rejoice in those he brings to God 

Those are my thoughts. What are yours? I would welcome dialog on this thought. 
Write me at phill@globalopps.org

Do tentmakers really plant churches?

/ Guest Contributor

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Many think that tentmakers only play a complimentary role of assisting “real” missionaries as if tentmakers are not full-fledged mission workers. As a result, many tentmakers don’t plant churches because they don’t aim to. Paul, the apostle, and his co-workers, proved this by planting many churches as self-supporting, everyday Christians.

In fact, Paul deliberately chose “lay” strategy of working for his living to set a pattern of every Christian being a disciple-maker and of everyday Christians giving leadership and planting churches. This is why the early church spread so fast. This was no super feat of a spiritual superman.

Tentmaking in Scripture

“Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians…You yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.” – 2 Th 1:1;3:7-9

The Ultimate Goal of Missions

When “Robert” first went to the “Yanyin” region of China in 1991, he found 3 house churches and 85 Han Chinese Christians in a region of among 7 million people and 5 people groups. After surveying the region, he began mobilizing Chinese co-laborers and planting churches with them in 1994. Just three year later, the number of churches had grown to 195 in number and spread throughout the region, taking root in all five people groups. Robert describes his church planting strategy as POUCH: Participative Bible study/worship groups; Obedience to God’s word as a the measure of success; Unpaid and multiple lay or bi-vocational church leaders; Cell churches rarely exceeding 15 members before starting new groups; and Homes or store-fronts as primary meeting places for these cell churches. Robert would first model “doing church” with new believers using the POUCH approach. Then he would assist them to plant a daughter church. Third, he’d watch to see that they started a third-generation church without his involvement. Then he would leave–the crucial final step to ensure an indigenous, self-propagating movement.

The ultimate goal of missions is to plant self-multiplying, self-nurturing, self-led, self-supporting (Great Commission) churches of genuine disciples capable of evangelizing their own people and also reaching other peoples. Where an indigenous church already exists, our task is to integrate new believers into it, and to help it be the kind of church just described. Why is this the ultimate goal? Because Jesus commands us to “make disciples…[who] obey everything I have commanded.” As soon as two or more turn to Christ, they are transformed and called to love each other as Christ has loved them. (Jn. 15:12) God is building a new family. This means simple house churches, not complex, organizational churches. This is something that committed, everyday, workplace Christians can do, with a little preparation.

Everyday, workplace Christians (tentmakers) did it then; they are doing it today! The full Commission belongs to every Christian, not just to “full-time” missionaries. God does not relegate any Christian to second-class status, nor to any reduction of their God-given role! As Jesus left for heaven, he said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given unto me. Go therefore…” With the command, he promised his power. Tentmakers can! They just need training and experience to develop skill. This is a core component of Global Opportunities’ GO Equipped! Course.

Sources: Church Planting Movements by David Garrison (published by the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention). Pages 16-19. Order for free or copy from http://www.imb.org/globalresearch/CPM/what_is_a_cpm.htm.

The Ultimate Goal of Tentmaking. GO World, Volume 9, No. 2-1999.

Tentmaker training comes to Germany!

/ Ari Rocklin

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Ari Rocklin

Back in the fall of 1998, during a flight from Helsinki Finland to Göteborg Sweden, to attend the Onådda Folk Conference I felt God challenging me to develop tentmaking mobilization and training in Europe. This seemed like an impossibility and I felt overwhelmed at the scope such a task. With some hesitation, I agreed to do my part. 

Since then, I have worked tirelessly toward this goal, often with setbacks and disappointments. So many trans-Atlantic flights in the hopes of finding people…having initial consultations with various mission agencies and groups…though exciting and promising at first, simply fizzled to nothing. Every now and then, the vision seemed to take off and incremental successes were attained, but always, the going was slow and often seemed hopeless.

Looking at the map of Europe while praying became a habit. Asking God for direction and connections. Always, when looking at the map, my eyes fell on Germany simply due to it’s central geographical location in Europe. 

Then out of nowhere, an email came from someone from Germany who contacted usthrough the website, interested in learning more about tentmaking. After some dialogue this led to an invitation to consider running our tentmaking business as mission course in Germany.

After almost two years of emails and consultations, it was finally time to fly to meet the people at AWM Korntal Germany. One big step toward the goal of tentmaker training in central Europe had been reached. Not only that, but we met with like minded, like visioned people excited at having this course at their excellent facility. 
The director of AWM, said it best in his invitation to over one hundred mission agencies in Europe:

(Ari Rocklin, Traugott Hopp & Steinar Opheim at AWM Korntal Germany 2010)

Word from the President of AWM

Dear colleagues working in an intercultural setting!

Has it ever happened to you after meeting a person whom you did not know formerly – that you soon discover that you share a common vision with that person?!

That was my experience a couple weeks ago when I met with representatives from Global Opportunities and Tent. God was at work. It didn’t take us long to see that we both desired to support God’s people looking to serve the nations.

Serving with you,

Traugott Hopp
President