Businesses To Transform Communities

From the beginning
Good business is rooted in God. Consider God’s character, activities and the objects of God’s actions. God is the Creator. God creates for himself and for others (Genesis 1.1). We are created in God’s image so the stamp of God’s character is in us. When God created he evaluated his work each day and concluded, “It is good.”

Two aspects of it proved ‘good’: the things that God created (the sea, land, fishes, birds, trees, fruit, etc) and the process of creation. The outcome and the process itself are good. So it’s good to be creative and to create. Note that God created for Adam & Eve and for himself, creation was to be enjoyed together, in community.

But nowadays, a number of people believe that only ‘spiritual’ things are good. However, God created an acacia tree, for example, and saw it as ‘good’ even though it may not be deemed a particularly ‘spiritual’ end product. We can – and are to – create good things (products and services) in the ‘secular’ realm. God created us in his image so we might create good things for ourselves and for others.

A problem arises in Genesis 3, the fall, when sin affected man’s creativity, resulting in corruption having the potential to muddy the creative process. Due to our capacity to sin we can produce things that we put to bad purposes as well as good. We can also choose to be selfish and create things that we want to possess exclusively.

However, in Genesis 3, God declares that he will redeem the fallen creation (Genesis 3.15). Jesus restores our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and the creative process. To be a business person is often to be a creative entrepreneur, to help to sustain a family, support local enterprise and contribute to the creation of a better society. Business men and women can thus be part of the restoration process in Christ.

Unemployment is a consequence of the fall, but it is not a sin to be unemployed. But it denies a person to be what God has intended for all of us to be: creative, able to add value to products and services, able to support ourselves and others. Giving people employment for the individual and common good is righteous action ― helping people to grow in the image of God.

God prepared for a restoration of creation, including work and creativity, through Jesus Christ. We are called to play a role in God’s restoration process by helping to restore the inherent dignity and value of work. We are to be ambassadors of God’s kingdom in the market place, to be salt and light in and through business. As salt and light we are to bless peoples from every community, through God-honoring business enterprises.

Work is something that is simultaneously deeply divine and deeply human. Work, is not to be understood as a curse or consequence of the fall. Rather it was a blessing and commandment given to Adam and Eve before the fall. God took pleasure in the physical aspect of His creation. We too can delight in creating useful and excellent products and services.

Jesus constantly met physical needs
We are to follow the model of Jesus as in his life and mission, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20.21). It is a mission in which evangelism and social responsibility go hand in hand. God is concerned about us as human beings within our social and environmental contexts. Jesus’ ministry is clearly one of both preaching and demonstrating God’s Kingdom (Isaiah 58.6-7; Luke 7.22).

Most people who came to Jesus did so with emotional, physical and social needs, and Jesus constantly and consistently met such needs. Nicodemus, an intellectual who had “spiritual” questions, was the exception, not the rule. Importantly, Jesus never said to those who came to him with various needs, problems and questions: “You have the wrong need! Don’t worry, after all it could be worse! Really, you should not bother about the blindness, hunger and injustice. Just pray!”

Jesus even stated that healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for those with grief, etc, were a part of God’s Kingdom being manifested. He even taught us to pray: May your Kingdom come. Businesses can be an answer to Christ’s prayer. In and through businesses, physical, social, emotional, economical and spiritual needs may be addressed and met.

If Jesus were to walk around Asia today he would meet hundreds of millions of people who could plead: “I don’t have a job, I can’t provide for myself and my family. Jesus, please help!” What do you think Jesus would do and say? Would he say: “you have the wrong kind of need?” What is Good News to the unemployed? We mustn’t try to be “more spiritual” than Jesus; he spent the bulk of his ministry meeting needs in the “secular” realm. He never apologized for spending so much time and effort dealing with ordinary human needs.

If we are to preach the whole Gospel in a way that is ‘Good News’ to the world, we must meet needs holistically and influence communities.

The Church has become a major influence in the world, thanks in part to people who lived their faith in the market-place. Lydia was a businesswoman who lived out her faith by sharing the Good News (Acts 16.15). It is highly likely that Christian business people in the early church travelled to new places to ply their trades and introduced the Gospel to other people.

The church and its mission work still suffer from the self-imposed dichotomy between spiritual and secular, and the distinction made between clerical and lay ministries.

God has called some people to start and run companies. Sometimes, Christians have denigrated them or held the view that their work is irredeemably secular or only vouchsafed them approval if they gave their money to spiritual works through the church or a mission agency. But in the same way that God calls and equips people to be bible translators or evangelists, he also calls and equips people to do business in order to serve him and other people. And the world needs these people ― in areas “where the name of Jesus is rarely heard” there is a desperate need of entrepreneurs.

Christians in business need to be affirmed and challenged: God has given them unique gifts, vocations and experiences to meet great needs and opportunities. Business as mission is a calling to be prized.

The early Church & the Marketplace
Jesus was not an other-worldly guru with no experience of manual labor or business. Jesus worked with his hands – as a carpenter – and he grew up in a family with a small business. He was thus very familiar with daily chores and ordinary people’s struggles. And the business world was well-known to him. So it is natural that he draws from his own experience as well as relating to other peoples everyday life in his teaching. Business is down to earth, dealing with real life issues, seeking to address people’s needs and God can use it to manifest His wisdom and demonstrate His God’s Kingdom has come.

Jesus was very familiar with marketplace realities, with:
• Construction – Matthew 7:24-27
• Wine making – Luke 5:37-38
• Farming – Mark 4:2-20
• Treasure Hunting – Matthew 13:44
• Ranching – Matthew 18:12-14
• Management and labor – Matthew 20:1-16
• Family owned businesses – Matthew 21:28-31
• Hostile takeovers – Luke 20:9-19
• Return on investments – Matthew 25:14-30
• Futures markets – Luke 12:16-21
• Crop yield – Mark 13:27-32
• Management criteria – Luke 12:35-48
• Need for observation and research – Luke 14:24-35
• Misuse of money and bankruptcy – Luke 15:11-16
• Advantage of leverage – Luke 16:1-13
• Venture capital in high-risk situations – Luke 19:11-17

The focus today, in the church worldwide, is often on the church (its building and programs) and “professional Christian workers”, i.e. pastors, missionaries and people in Christian organisations. But Jesus operated mainly in the marketplace. The early church emerged in the marketplace; the writers of the Gospels were professionals from the marketplace – not religious leaders. The Gospel often spread along the trade routes via Christians doing business.

See how the early church operated in developed from the marketplace:
• The Disciples were drawn from the marketplace
• The Gospels written by men from the market place – not religious leaders
• The Church was birthed outside the Temple
• Early Christians were often market place people
• There was no ‘full-time ministry’
• Marketplace people made excellent leaders
• The centre of the church at Antioch was a hub of trade route not a spiritual centre
• Church as was a counter-culture, not a sub-culture

The Biblical mandate is clear: The whole Gospel for the whole people; impact the nations through preaching and demonstrating God’s Kingdom; believing, praying and working towards spiritual, social and economical transformation of people and communities – to God’s glory.

Jesus said: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Go with a holistic Kingdom of God mission. This is a large part of the world that Christ sends us to: People who have not heard about Jesus, and who are suffering physically and economically because of rampant and increasing unemployment. Traditional mission responses will not suffice. We need to do missions in a renewed way; recognizing the gifts and callings of entrepreneurs and business people; affirming and deploying them to do Business as Missions.

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