David Livingstone’s Vision Revisited: Christianity, Commerce and Civilization in the 21st Century

David Livingstone has been both missionary icon and missionary villain in the past. For many he was the epitome of mission pioneering and for others an imperialistic missionary paternalist with few if any fruit.
However, it was exactly this controversial figure from whom we in the 21st Century can learn when we discuss socio-economic and spiritual [...]

BAM Case Study

In Singapore in 1991, John who was a career missionary was given an interest in a consultancy business by a local Christian business man. The business man would continue as Principal Consultant and make the money, John would disburse it. Sensing that there was something more, they set up BA as a limited liability company [...]

Unleashing the Brazilian Evangelical Missionary Force through a Business as Mission model

It has become increasingly recognized in the Christian missions movement over the past three decades or so that a monumental shift—what Lamin Sanneh of Yale Divinity School refers to as a “Copernican Shift” —has taken place in the global center of gravity of Christianity.
For example, in the 1970’s, Catholic missiologist Walbert Buhlmann wrote of the [...]

Equipping the lay missions force

A couple of weeks ago my wife pointed out to me an article in the paper about a man on the East Coast who trains pig dogs. The article made the fascinating comment that the trainer began with the dogs, not the people, because the dogs learned faster.
It was not saying the dogs were more [...]

The Shop Church: The second mile

I have been experimenting with the strategy of shop-church multiplication since 2002. It is a tentmaking model, tailor-made for rural house church missionaries doing urban church planting, especially among migrants working in factory areas. In China’s Pearl River Delta alone, there are over ten million migrants working. In one factory in Shenzhen, there are over [...]

Three small kilometers

This article will be different. You are used to reading about great nation-wide trends and global ideas. I feel a little silly sharing this story with you because it covers an area of about three kilometers and deals with only one small company. It is more about what we did wrong than about what we [...]

SIM: Moving forward in business-based ministries

Using legitimate business and professional activities as platforms for ministry is not a new concept for SIM (Serving in Mission). During its long history as a church planting mission, many people such as school teachers and health care workers, have served with SIM in paid positions. In more recent years, SIM has established commercial businesses [...]

Lessons Learned

DHL came into the country where I presently live and, against all odds, fighting corruption and a government that really didn’t want it here, has in a mere eight years achieved near market dominance. DHL is now the “approved” importer for goods via air cargo. Lufthansa, which has been here since 1987 doing air cargo, [...]

Learning Lessons

An interview with Mazulkhan by Justin Long
An easy question to start: when and how did you and your wife meet?

We met in Catholic youth group when we were 15 years old. We were just buddies until 1985 when we started dating. We did all this through the old way of receiving mail—letters—and actually only spent [...]

BAM Case Study

The Clínica Bíblica Hospital and Medical Centre in San José, Costa Rica, has grown and adapted over 75 years to boldly proclaim the kingdom of God through improving the medical and spiritual well-being of a community in need. Clínica Bíblica (literally, ‘Bible-Based Clinic’) is a Christian ministry-become-enterprise. From opening its doors in July 1929, the [...]