business

What Can Tentmakers Learn from a Shoe Salesman?

/ Phill

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The Zappos online shoe company has been a growth phenomenon and the object of many business school case studies. Everyone wants to know what makes them tick and how they have managed to stand out and be so outrageously successful where so many others have failed.

Founder and CEO Tony Hsieh credits the company core values for their success. They capture the heart and soul of the company and define the way associates relate to each other, to their clients, and to the world.

Zappos calls their values – Family Core Values. Everyone in the company knows the values and is accountable to practice them in every aspect of their work. Even the customers know the values because they are included on every web page and shared in other communications to them. Expectations are set.

There is nothing spiritual about what they do. They sell shoes, make money (lots of it), and develop a loyal customer following along the way.

It is instructive to look at their values. Is there anything here that can also apply to your ministry or business?

Zappos commitment: as we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:

  • Deliver WOW through service
  • Embrace and drive change
  • Create fun and a little weirdness
  • Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
  • Pursue growth and learning
  • Build open and honest relationships with communication
  • Build a positive team and family spirit
  • Do more with less
  • Be passionate and determined
  • Be humble

Many of these are surprisingly biblical and could be applied to a tentmaker on the field.

These may not be the values you want for your business/ministry, but it is important for a tentmaker to take some time and figure out what his values are. A tentmaker needs to have a set of core principles which characterize his work and life.

You may not want to be so ambitious. Start with 2 – 4 biblical guiding principles or values that you want to characterize your ministry. Find ways to integrate them into your everyday activities. It should not be something that is added on to what you are doing but something that is blended into what you are already doing. Demonstrate Christ’s love naturally through the way you interact with others.

In the case of Zappos we are looking at a company, so one might think the principle only applies to tentmakers doing business as mission. Actually, it can also help an employee tentmaker be more focused on the purpose for being a tentmaker and help in evaluating his own effectiveness.

By focusing on a few core values the tentmaker will have stronger relationships and show a consistent message. 

Is Donor Support Good or Bad for Business as Mission Companies?

/ Phill

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Business as Mission has been a strong and growing segment within the modern tentmaking movement. The model attracts a lot of attention because it holds out the possibility of being self sustaining because it can generate its own income. It is sometimes the only model that is legal in countries that exclude foreign religious workers from entrance.

One issue that often comes up is the source of funding for the workers. On the one extreme there are those who are completely donor supported and run a business for the other advantages of doing business as mission. On the other end of the spectrum are workers who are solely supported from the fruits of their business. And in between there are a variety of hybrid models.

A new study produced by Dr Steve Rundle – author of Great Commission Companies – expands our understanding and provides fuel for further reflection. In his recently published article in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research Rundle examines the question, “Does Donor Support Help of Hinder Business as Mission Practitioners?”

There is no end of opinions about which model is best. Strong cases are made by the proponents on both sides. What has been lacking is strong empirical research to illuminate the discussion and aid in making the best strategic decisions. Most of the evidence is anecdotal with only a few studies to guide the discussion. Those familiar with the debate will know the arguments for both sides. I will not try to cover them here. My purpose here is to highlight the main findings of this new study and encourage the reader to explore the entire article for himself.

Some of the findings provided stronger evidence for conclusions suggested by earlier studies, while other finding were surprising.

“The evidence presented in this article suggests that, for a BAM business to have a meaningful impact in a community, it should be structured and incentivized much like a “regular” business, which includes (1) an independent board of directors and (2) salaries that are based, at least in part, on the company’s performance.”

The study focused on testing two economic hypotheses. The first was based on the assumption that BAMers who depend on their business for all their income will devote more time and energy to the business and will therefore generate more revenue. It is expressed:

“Hypothesis 1: Business-supported BAM practitioners will have a greater (more beneficial) economic impact on the local community than their donor-supported peers.”

The second hypothesis is based on the assumption that donor-supported BAMers will have less pressure to grow the business and thus will have more time to devote to producing spiritual fruit. It states:

“Hypothesis 2: Donor-supported BAM practitioners will be more effective in producing spiritual fruit than their business-supported peers.”

A questionnaire was given to about 200 self identified Business as Mission practitioners and their responses were analyzed on a number of dimensions.

“This study found that, compared with fully donor-supported BAM practitioners, those who are fully supported by their Business report significantly better results in the economic and social arenas, and are no less effective in producing spiritual results.” [emphasis is from Rundle]

As expected the first part of the finding supports hypothesis #1. Those more focused on developing the business grew their businesses more and produced more income. This not only helped the BAM person directly, but enabled them to have more impact on bringing social benefit to their community.

The second half of the finding was counter-intuitive and did not support hypothesis #2. No evidence was shown that those spending less time developing the business were more effective in producing spiritual fruit.

In the full article the author presents cautionary qualifications to how far the findings can be applied and issues that need further study. He concludes:

“One thing we can say with certainty is that the questions raised by the integration of business and missions will keep mission scholars busy for a long time!”

A praying woman’s vision for Africa

/ Ari Rocklin

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The All Africa TI Tentmakers Congress brought together people from many African nations. Some traveled for days, by air, road, bus and sometimes walking great distances. 

We heard encouraging if not surprising reports of how tentmakers trained in Africa have gone to neighbouring countries and beyond, bringing the Gospel with them while looking for work or starting small businesses.

What is a small business?

How about a shoe shine stand or a crate full of Coke, mobile phone service or vegetable stand. God’s merchants in the marketplace.

What is different about this kind of mission?

No foreign money, no expectation of remuneration or assistance from the so called “West”. Could this be the start of a new wave of missions not dependent on the western church?

I see the church of Africa taking a leadership role for world evangelism, and proclaiming a simple but not watered down version of the Gospel. It is my personal hope to see African style worship coming to the west, and perhaps calling it “Africa Song”.

Why would this work?

A story was told of a shoe shine man, in front of a very large church building, shining the shoes of business people. As he started building his clientele and building relationships while serving them, the conversation always led to Jesus. One businessman asked, what is different about your religion compared to the large church behind me? The shoe shine man responded, I have come here from another country to work for a living and share the message of Jesus while working. You see Apostle Paul integrated his work and faith by making tents, I am only following in his footsteps but as a shoeshine man.

In a matter of months the shoe shine man had started a bible study in a nearby park with people who had never considered attending the large church.

Back to the congress.

At the rear of the main meeting room hung some paintings. The story behind one of them was told to me through an interpreter. An elderly woman had been praying for the congress for a long time and during those prayers she had seen a vision. It was so powerful that she thought it should become a panting. Not being an artist herself, she went to a local painter who then proceeded to paint her vision from her words and instructions.

The vision is of a woman symbolized as Africa, who is in distress, without hope for the future. On the right hand are two African tentmaker wheat merchants heading her way with the hope of the Gospel. She saw hundreds of these tentmakers from Africa going across Africa spreading the good news of Jesus as a result of this congress and the work of the All Africa Tentmaking Movement.

It is the conviction of this editor that Africa will train and send more tentmakers who will disciple more new believers and plant more house churches than any other continent in the next decade!

BAM in a Box

/ Phill

Business as mission is growing in popularity as an approach for outreach around the world. Many practitioners are looking for ways to produce more businesses that will also take God’s love and the gospel to the needy. Lately, they have been looking to franchises as a way to develop business faster, easier, and with a greater chance of success.

The idea of being able to take a known concept that is working and multiply it is attractive and shows some promise. The Business as Mission Think Tank Franchising Committee has been studying models for rapid replication and recently issued their report. They analyzed the state of the knowledge, proposed guidelines, and recommended resources on the “how-to” for would be BAM practitioners.

This article highlights key findings.

Many people getting into Business as Mission are missionaries, often with little business experience/skills, who recognize the opportunity in business as a way for reaching their communities. For them a franchise is like a boxed product that comes with a proven successful model, training, resources and systems to help secure success. The built-in processes provide safeguards to help the less experienced avoid foolish mistakes and failure.

These advantages are desirable not only for the would-be BAMpreneur but for missions agencies and others in the business community looking to multiply BAM opportunities. While the franchise can help business people avoid problems, it is not a cure-all for success. Business aptitude and skills are required, to varying degrees, for all who would enter the world of BAM. Agencies sometimes overlook this fact as was observed in the report, “While agencies will go to great lengths to make sure that people are prepared missionally, they discount the skill set required to do business.”

Building a successful franchise is more difficult than it appears. Few proven BAM franchising models exist. BAM franchising has a lot of work to do to build the necessary expertise.

The report lists a number of best practices, which lead to success, and worst practices which lead to failure. These are worth studying but there is not time in this article to enumerate them. Follow the link at the end to the full report for more information.

A few findings stand out in the report:

1. “Some of the businesses in the profiles had leadership teams where some of the people focused on the business and some on the ‘ministry.’ This divided approach to management and leadership eventually causes tension and can negatively impact the business morale, health, and financial success.”

2. Those looking to get into franchise business need to seriously equip themselves with the necessary skills and expertise.

3. Every BAM business needs to develop a list of success criteria and measure themselves against it as they build the business plan and begin to execute it.

4. Running a BAM operation is complex and requires preparation and strong commitment. One must have the conviction that God is calling you to such an endeavor.

5. There seems to be no shortage of people who want to be experts, advisors, and consultants. What is most needed are people willing to go and be “feet on the ground.” “We need people who are fully equipped and willing to go and invest time and money to start such businesses.”

It seems that the committee was looking to create franchises out of existing BAM companies. One area not explored in the report which may have value is to start with existing “secular” franchises. There are literally thousands of them with varying levels of expense, regulation, and complexity. Many have already developed assessment tools to identify the best fit between the entrepreneur and their business model. Could any of these franchises and tools be adapted by BAM practitioners?

Franchising has many advantages, but also challenges. The BAM Franchise group has created a number of tools and guidelines to help get started.