As a BAM practitioner, what would you be looking for in a BAM internship program?

M4L Internship Program Survey

The Internship program will already include:

1) Compliance with national labor laws.

2) Preformatted intern agreement and non-disclosure forms.

3) Insurance coverage checks.

4) Ongoing documentation.

5) Post intern evaluation process.

Please assist us in adding other useful features to the program.

Short Internship Program Survey

 

In the beginning the heavens looked down on me. I was on the earth, without an idea of what to do with this life. My future was void, my life was dim. The entrepreneurial spirit, however, was hovering over me.

*creatio ex nihilo

Driving around hairpin corners at 55 mph in a Jeep Cherokee can be slightly unnerving. When gasoline is priced near four and a half dollars, however, the risk of barrel-rolling to your death is outweighed by the financial loss that an application of brake would cause on your momentum. This are the cost-benefit analytics that border insanity within the business mindset.

I’m driving along the winding roads as I approach my family’s home in Omena, MI. It is late in the evening and my headlights focus on each corner as they eliminate the surprises out of view. The action out of the car windows plays out in a near monochrome palate with the yellow road paint playing speedily along the foreground. My mind darts to the woods on either side. “These woods must be teaming with critters,” I think. “Agile, mindless critters, running every which way within the woods and likely out across the road from time to time.” I realize I wouldn’t be able to avoid a suicidal chipmunk or raccoon along this route; only a brief reflection of the animal’s cornea to warn me. My mind automatically spawns the worse-case-scenario: a deer. A collision with a sizable quadruped could be fatal. I mentally prepare for the possibility, but continue at my efficient rate of speed.

I arrive at my destination and pull into the gravel drive. As I kill the headlights and get out of the car I am greeted by the deepness of the night sky. My pupils expand as I take in the scene. The stars demonstrating the fullness of creation as they populate every available space in the dark canvass.

These are the moments that make you feel small. Small in a good way. A moment that gives you sudden clarity to an old reality that is always true, yet rarely realized. “It’s not about me.” I think to myself. A comforting thought in the daily complexities and bowling-pins we juggle. “I am but an infinitesimal spec in whole of creation.” A bit player in a game bigger and greater than anything I could every hope to comprehend.

My role in this game: entrepreneur. I’ve been pressured to take French Language classes from early on in my education which allows me an unnatural enjoyment of all things French, besides the people, of course. The french life-pressure mostly stems from my family’s partial Swiss heritage and a longstanding perception that it is advantageous to be as snooty as possible while still maintaining friend groups.

Definitions of entrepreneur range from heroic to greedy, and from genius to clinically insane. Suffice it to say, that an entrepreneur is someone who starts a business; and that a business is something formed to bring a good or service to market. The entrepreneur can be found in a range of fields, touting weird ideas, and forming a multitude of different businesses. Yet whether the business is Carl’s Bait Shop or Coca-Cola Bottling Group it has something to add. The crawlers and carbonated corn sirup that these businesses bring to market have value.

Yet not all value is created equal…

10) SAA or anything beginning with strategic for that matter

Inevitably, whenever a group of flawed-humans gather they begin to form their own jargon. Jargon is used to unconsciously alienate others from the group and demonstrate one’s savvy within the group. Jargon isn’t necessarily all bad, it can increase the efficiency of communication within the group and promote a more cohesive group in the process. Due to the alienating nature of jargon, however, it is best to avoid the unnecessary sprinkling of jargon through out our communication less we plummet into the gobbley-goop abyss that has claimed so many wonks.

If any group seeks to be evangelistic, the use of jargon is to be avoided. It’s difficult to win hearts and minds, if the people you’re talking to don’t know what you’re talking about. And the use of enough jargon is a good sign that you don’t know what you’re talking about either. So here is the Top 10 list of Business as Mission jargon terms:

Strategic Area Analysis see also SBP (Strategic Business Plan) and SMBP (Strategic Master Plan)- Is planting a “Strategic” in front of everything we do really necessary? I would assume that anyone engaging in analysis, business planning or any other basic business function would be going about it in a strategic fashion. We might as well start labeling them UGMPs or Uber Great Master Plans.

9) SME

Small/ Medium-sized Enterprise- This term may be used by many in the development field, but it seems to be a waste of  terminology. Fist of all, the term doesn’t really mean anything. Your audience probably knows you aren’t the CEO of GE or Coke, so specifying that the type of business you engage in is small or mid-sized is redundant. The term is also used to differentiate from “Micro-Enterprise”, in which case a simple “Mom & Pop” will suffice.

8 ) 10-40

The region of the globe 10 degrees North and 40 degrees south of the equator- This term is fun to use, difficult to explain, and greatly inaccurate. It’s great to say you’ve got a goal of doing business in a specific area of the world. It’s another thing when the area you specify is over a Third of the Planet. Not to mention the fact that the term should be the 10-40 minus the Americas and plus Russia (about one-eighth of the world’s land surface).

7) T1 (T2, T3, R2D2…)

You’ll have to read “Tentmaking“- I’m a big fan of Patrick Lai, but if I want to start hearing about model T’s I’ll head to the Ford museum or rent a Swarzenegger flick. This seems to be an odd way to classify different types of BAM businesses and an even less useful naming scheme.

6) CAN (RAN)

Creative Access Nation or Restricted Access Nation- If I tell someone I’ll heading to the CAN, I’d prefer they didn’t confuse Albania with El Bano. Whenever “creativity” and legality co-mingle someone’s bound to end up in prison. Just ask Ken Lay (rest his soul).

5) BAP

Business as Platform, see also: BAN (business as normal) etc- This dirty three-letter-word comes up often when denigrating ”Traditional M-Workers” or “Miss Canaries”. It’s use as a means of differentiating the God-send that is BAM from other lowly forms of business or missions seems to originate with Mats Tunehag. Mats can tell a good Norwegian joke, but might serve better laying off the acronyms for a bit.

4) BK

BAMer’s Kid, see also: PK (pastor’s kid) and MK (miss-canary’s kid)- When we go about flexing our jargon-jaw’s do we really need to get the kids involved? Talking about the family-work balance is important but now we’ve gotten our audience thinking about quarter-pounders.

3) GCC

Great Commission Company- This gem seems to have gained traction with the book Great Commission Companies and resurfaces from time to time. It serves the purpose of differentiating BAM companies from businesses seeking to complete other missions, be them from MI-6, the CIA, or other evil para-military organization operating out of a hollowed out volcano.

2) B4t

Business for Transformation- another treasure from the people of OM (operation mobilisation) and perpetuated by Mr. Lai this term seeks to distance the movement from the messy term “Mission” and replace it with the heart warming Autobots featured in Megan Fox movies (note: the term Megan Fox, has only been used to increase the page rank of this post and in no way adds to the content of the article).

1) BAM (BAMer, YWAM-BAM-thank-you-mam, etc)

Business as Mission- Last, but not least, the big daddy of all acronyms and the name of the movement BAM. This term is really fun to use because it evokes a sense of action a kin to Emeril Lagasse, while at the same time allowing for the much appreciated “er” ending that gives us  identity. Suffice-it-to-say the term is more likely to conjure up the taste of Flintstone Vitamins and an angry boy in a lawn-cloth, than a movement of kingdom minded business people.

Runners up: KC (Kingdom Company), CP (Church Plant), EC (Evangelistic Commerce), etc.

You can find a comprehensive list of exciting BAM acronyms on page 19 of Business As Mission: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice.

*Note: these posts are meant to inform and entertain, if you are offended by any of the content you may need to sharpen your sense of humor.

James 4:13-17

Come those who say “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit.” (I don’t know about you, but that sounds exactly like my BAM Plan) whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Taking one verse and holding it high while neglecting the context in the whole story of God is often unwise, but this verse in particular seems to single-out the BAM Planner directly. The statement, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit,” could be the first line in any business plan. Albeit, it’d be best to choose a city for your business, it’s hard to research the market of “such and such.”

So what do we do? Are we simply to add the phrase “If the Lord wills…” to the beginning of our business plans? I don’t really know. Perhaps if I better understood the historical context or the greek root I’d gain some new heady understanding, but for now I’m kind of stuck.

I’m willing to wager, however, that the author is getting at an issue of the heart. What is our context for doing BAM? Is it to boast about how successful a businessman we are; and a Christian businessman at that? Are we creating our own “pyramid of Christ” with BAMers sitting pretty at the top?

As BAMers, we need to be conscience of our pride. A helping of humble-pie can go a long way in the life of a Christ follower. After all, whatever it is we think we know, we really don’t know much. And it is well within the realm of possibility that we will be chatting with Christ one day and find that BAM was one of the silliest ideas we ever had.That the savviest missions minded practitioner was the little old lady down the street who woke each day and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the neighborhood children and that this indeed was the best missions model.

Most of the BAM movement work seems to be getting the traditional Church and M-workers on board, but who’s leading the way in getting the traditional business world on board? Here’s some addition points to chew on…

Where does the field of Business Ethics meet BAM?

Where does the field of Sustainable Business meet BAM?

Who’s working Corporate Responsibility consultants toward triple bottom lines?

Who in BAM is reaching out to Education as Mission, Politics as Mission, and Science as Mission people?

“Business as Mission: a comprehensive guide to theory and practice” and “Missional Entrepreneur” have been added to the Business as Mission library. http://bit.ly/coqKot

Business As Mission: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice C. Neal Johnson offers the first comprehensive guide to business as mission (BAM) for practitioners. He provides conceptual foundationas for understanding BAM’s unique place in global mission and prerequisites for engaging in it. Then he offers practical resources for how to do BAM, including strategic planning and step-by-step operational implementation.

The Missional Entrepreneur: Principles and Practices for Business as Mission
Business as mission BAM, an emerging concept and developing ministry, has drawn fascination in missions and business circles. BAM embodies the practice of using business strategically accomplishing missional purposes. Though the term is ubiquitous in mission circles, there is disparity between its meaning. There has been much theoretical discussion about BAM but far less research accomplished on how it happens out in reality. The Missional Entrepreneur takes an in-depth look at business as missions in action with an eye to expose the most effective principles and practices of this movement.

One of my favorite BAMer’s Evan, is underway with a new BAM project to help build shelter in Haiti. Check out the interview on a Local TV station:

Now preparing to launch a new project. You can help by taking a couple moments to fill out a short survey. The survey results will be used to improve the project and further the kingdom.

Take the [very] short survey

When looking at a potential market we understand that it is the people that matter most; when we boil it down people the world round are motivated by similar forces. It’s all about thinking holistically and taking a multidimensional gage of the market. Seeking out opportunity by understanding the Societal, Spiritual, Familiar, and Personal forces at work.

I’d agree that too much of the BAM movement is devoted to definitions and the academics while neglecting BAM practitioners, it recently occurred to me, however, that some current definitions are missing a key segment of the movement.

In “Business as Mission: a comprehensive guide to theory and practice” the following working definition is proposed: “a for-profit commercial business venture that is Christian led, intentionally devoted to being used as an instrument of God’s mission to the world, and is operated in a cross-cultural environment, either domestic or international.”

It is the “cross-cultural” portion that intrigues me. Missions definitions often include cross-cultural movement as a key component due to Biblical case studies of missions and a focus on people groups. This being said, what of a National who accepts the Kingdom and becomes a BAMer within their own unreached culture? Several current definitions of BAM exclude this key group.

Most savvy BAM plans discuss replication and modeling BAMs that Nationals can imitate, so it would make sense if our definitions included inner-cultural BAM among the unreached.