Mike is recognized as a leader in the digital business information movement. We'll have some share a bit of some background on this, but he actually coined the phrase business adhesion or band, as you may have heard it called. And over the years, Mike has served as a church planter and pastor. He's an entrepreneur who has launched several businesses, the founder of an international business incubator, a prolific author, and an in-demand speaker. And he is currently senior executive at EmployeeBridge, which is the largest delight industrial staffing company in the US and founder of ThirdPath, an online business as mission education platform. And he's also the author of the book Business as Mission, The Power of Business and the Kingdom of God. Mike, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Darren. I really appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_01So how did this term business as mission uh emerge? And um and and how how did you how did you get involved with this movement that was already kind of happening and you just kind of uh kind of put a label on it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I I would tell you I fell into it by accident, to be honest. But uh I was invited back in the early 90s to the newly independent Republic of Kyrgyzstan to uh look at business opportunities there and and to um see if there was some way we could impact church growth through business. Uh, we ended up starting the business incubator known as the Joldas Project. And in order to facilitate myself originally, but it turned into a group of us, being able to have the mobility and the freedom to go back and forth to Kyrgyzstan and do the business's mission training, we started a company. We called it the Joldas Group. And when we wrote our mission statement, we we said we we exist to support church planting among the unreached people groups of the 1040 window through the seamless integration of business's mission. And there was no there was no attempt to label, create a brand, or anything of that nature. It was just, you know, it was there to to remind us what our purpose was. It was there to uh keep people focused on the you know the the reality there's no sacred, secular dichotomy business as mission simply meant, you know, a merger, a recognition of the of that there is no distinction. So we're just gonna use business as as a methodology to impact the the Kyrgyz originally. So that's where it came from. And it literally, you know, I'm not even sure how it spread. There was no attempt to market it or anything, but that's that's where the the label came from, if you will.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And as you said, this is not a new, really not a new concept. And and you mentioned somewhere I read that uh this is a concept lost in church history for centuries. Um, what do you what do you mean by that? What are some of the the points in church history that come to mind where uh business is mission or people were doing business to advance the gospel?
SPEAKER_02No, that's okay, that's a great question. So three different people or groups come to mind immediately. The Moravians were really the first at it, um, primarily in in Switzerland, Germany. Um, and they they literally went overseas. They were some of the earliest missionaries, um, even before the so-called golden age began. And they would send entire teams who would go and work, set up businesses in one instance comes to mind in places like the Caribbean, uh to work they would to be able to be among the slaves. In fact, one group went so far as to sell themselves into slavery to work with the slaves in the um in the in the sugarcane fields. So that's I mean, they do they got it, they went and did it. Probably the most famous example is William Carey. And if you if you study his life, you'll find that he's we all think of him as a missionary. And he was, but he was also he was a zoologist, he was a botanist, he was I mean, he had this long list of not just interests, but businesses, things, you know, endeavors that were outside the traditional scope. He was probably the earliest uh that we know about to really do it. And then a great example is uh is the Basel International Trading Company, which was started, I want to say, back in the like the early 1700s. And they were formed specifically in Basel, Switzerland, to send business people out to start businesses or to extend businesses around the world as a mission enterprise. And it remained uh committed to that up until just, I want to say the last decade, Darren, uh when they were finally sold off to a purely for-profit business entity and lost the mission emphasis.
SPEAKER_01So you shared some great examples from church history. Now, what are some of as as church history is being written even today, what are some of your favorite examples of business's mission in the present?
SPEAKER_02So here's so here's a few, and and there there are more and more of them coming online literally every week. And and one of the things about practitioners of business's mission around the world, they don't it's hard to find them sometimes because they don't put business's mission on their business card. A lot of them operating in closed countries in Muslim areas where they're just doing business in a biblical way, but living out their witness every day. So there's lots more than than we think there are. I mean, we just don't know, and it's just very hard to find them. But some of the most salient ones that for me, I think, are important um is a guy, for example, that he went to Calcutta uh originally to be a missionary. He went the traditional way, been a pastor from New Zealand, went to India to be a missionary. He and his wife and and children got an apartment in a part of town they didn't realize, turned out to be the red light district. And at first, he he was like, honey, we're gonna have to move. You know, we're we literally are in like Sin City. And then they, as they prayed about it, they realized, no, this is exactly where we've got to put them, and they started ministering to the prostitutes. And quickly realized, in addition, obviously, to the gospel, the problem with this whole sex trafficking issue, which is huge in business's mission, it's it's a lot of us are geared to solving that, it's economic. It's not it's not really sex trafficking, it's it's flesh trafficking for money. And so he started a business right there in the middle of that area in Calcutta of making jute bags. And it's it's a company called FreeSet, still exists today. Originally it was to it was to employ the women who were trying to get out of prostitution. And now, I mean, they they sell these jute bags to conference companies all around the world. It's a great example to me of somebody who who just took business and used it in an incredibly good way. So that's one. Um I've got a team I work with as kind of an unofficial advisor or mentor, if you will, that they are as a recruiting company, for-profit recruiting company, uh, headhunter, and they they have opened up an office in the Middle East specifically to fill direct hire orders, you know, in the that region of the world. And as much as possible, but you know, they're doing this to uh bring believers in to work in these count in these companies owned and operated predominantly by Muslims, and just again, to live out their witness in a real way. So that's a couple of immediate examples. There are around the world, I will tell you my favorite example, it's it's not a big one, but it's a guy in Indonesia who uh opened up a motorcycle repair shop. We happened to be the ones who helped him do that. And his so-called kingdom impact statement was to simply do the best repairs he possibly could on motorcycles, which if you've been to Indonesia, it's they're in there everywhere. And uh, and just that people would know he was a Christian. That was it. He was very few Christians in his in his um village. And so he did. And he he worked at it, and he had a great witness, he wasn't real vocal about it, he just lived out his faith and did excellent work. And about a year and a half later, in the local mosque, the Imam got up and in a form of an announcement said, By the way, there's only one uh motorcycle repair shop I can recommend in our entire town, and it is run by this guy, quote, the Christian. And so it again, he was just integrating himself through business into and living out the gospel and the relationships that business gives us.
SPEAKER_01Hey, before we get back to this episode, I need to let you know about a new course we've developed here at the Theology of Business Institute called the Biblical Standards for Businesses course. Are you tired of hearing well-meaning statements about how God cares about your work in business, but not actually having much practical guidance on how to apply the Bible in business matters? Are you tired of having to rely primarily on non-Christian business gurus for useful guidance on how to run your business? Do you want to know what the Bible says about the fundamental aspects of business like innovation, competition, marketing, sales, customer care? What does the Bible say about quality control, management, human resources, accounting, business call, risk management? Given that we're called to set price standards, standards in business, which is really just another way of saying we're called to make disciples. We believe every Christian business executive, entrepreneur, and coach should be able to explain and apply what the Bible says about each of the four fundamentals of business. So join us in the Theology of Business Institute, biblical standards for businesses course, to discover and apply what the Bible says about business staff, so we can set industry standards and steward our companies in ways that reveal God's glory to the world around us. So head over to theology of business.com and click the tab that says course to learn more and enroll for the current semester. That's theology of business.com. So we've kind of gone through some of the church history and some of the modern things. You mentioned that you you helped this gentleman start up this repair shop. What when you say you helped them, what is that, what does that look like? Because I think you're doing some some microfinancing, things like that. Uh what are some of those ways that you're helping these business owners?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, so back when we first started working in Kyrgyzstan, we would pay, we just send teams of American business people, Christian business people over to consult with startups, can to consult with sort of the attempt to privatize some of the issues that the Soviet Union had created and by bringing in business. And so that led to the formation of a an incubator, a process whereby we would send in teams of American believers to they would teach on business, they would they would help the folks start, you know, do really good business planning, they would provide the mentoring necessary to think through the startup process, and then finally at the end would be uh a micro loan from anywhere from I think the smallest we ever gave was $500, and the largest was about $25,000. And that's what we did there in Indonesia. We had teams working with the local believers uh to bring them good business concepts, good business practices, all based on scripture or or drawn from scripture, and walk alongside them in a about a six-month process from zero to start. Uh, today that process, we don't run it all, but that process is used in about 40 different countries around the world and has led to the launch of roughly roughly 3,000 businesses in those countries and uh a direct tally of about a thousand churches planted as a result of that.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Wow. And are these just outright donations, or is are you taking equity in some of the companies, or how does that work?
SPEAKER_02So there so they're four interest loans. It's not it's not a grant-based or donation-based thing. It's a four-interest loan. As they pay it back, they it stays in country. The one commitment we made is that we would not expatriate any of the original investment, but we would leave it to build uh an ongoing investment fund in each country we work with. In one country, for example, we actually started uh we were majority owners in a bank that managed those funds. And so that it was it's meant to be a self-replenishing investment fund.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we have listeners all over the world who start are starting businesses, growing businesses, and they're looking for capital. What is the uh the application process?
SPEAKER_02So now that sort of a good segue to what we're doing today, that that process is still going on. I'm the chairman of the board, but I'm I'm not directly involved in it on a day-to-day basis. We've now started a new venture that is an alliance of three different components. We've got our new company called Third Path, which is you mentioned in the introduction, is an online education uh process that they there's a core curriculum to go through, and then they we're handing them off to a group called IBEC Ventures. And the IBEC Ventures guys will help finalize the business plan, do some assessment and vetting of the candidates, and it can be from anywhere. And then the third component is a new company called Legacy Venture Network, which is a kingdom capital fund. It's an actual investment company that has various portfolio funds built around investing in uh kingdom purposes, particularly in kingdom start startups, and hopefully in some of the unreached places in the world or the tough to get to places in the world. So the the way to figure to kind of learn more about it would be to go to thirdpathinitiative.com and and that's the that would be sort of the entry point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Excellent. And about three years ago, I came across uh an article you wrote about three years ago where you were speaking to BAM practitioners and and thinkers, and and uh just pointing out that uh for a variety of reasons, BAM businesses mission is not yet living up to what we had hoped for. And you listed uh a handful of reasons. And I'm curious if some of these, and it sounds like you have really been doing a lot to address each of these. Uh one, for example, uh uh too much emphasis on marketplace ministry at home. Um what do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's uh that's almost that's probably a statement I would like to retract. Um, because I think I I think it came across a little more aggressively than I meant it to. But what I meant when I said it was I think I first of all I believe business anywhere, it if it's lived out under the lordship of Christ is is exactly what everybody in business should be doing. So marketplace ministry tends to to be you know the more domestic side of things, and fam tends to be the more international side of things, just in in language. What I meant by that at the time was I I was concerned, I still am concerned, that it's almost like being inoculated against the whole the the big thing. So if you're if you're you if you're just satisfied with being a Christian in business at home, be sure that's your calling. It's sort of my point. You know, don't don't not go to the army just because you went to the recruitment center. And you know, think about it, at least think about the global implications of what a true kingdom business can be. And so I just don't want to see people sidetracked and stopping short of global impact if that's what God is actually leading them to do. So that's that's that was the point of that statement. And I still believe that way. I still obviously believe it's like look at the whole enchilada, look at the world. Wesley said, the world is my parish. Look at it.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, and you know, because we have uh, like, for example, virtual assistants in my publishing company, I'm working with people all over the world that do various uh various jobs for me on a contract basis. And they're I mean, literally all over the world. And and here in Houston, Texas. And so there is an international opportunity. I mean, if you were to even just go hire a virtual assistant, you're immediately in an international context where you're not only able to make an impact here at home, but on uh on people and families in places where you know that money goes a whole lot further than it does here. Um have you seen some best practices in terms of what BAM looks like when working uh kind of with virtual assistants?
SPEAKER_02No, not specifically to that uh label of virtual assistants, but the idea of um remote workers, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Engineers, contract, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so yeah, so I get a couple of examples. I I know a uh an engineering firm in Atlanta that um, you know, they they use a remote office uh in Turkey of Turkish engineers, Turkish uh educated engineers. Excellent. From a business perspective, it gives them the chance to offer literally 24-hour work, which is important to their client base. It also gives them a chance to now get to build relationships with these uh engineers, demonstrating the gospel to them. That's it's more of a long-term expansion thing, but it's the same idea. So to me, it's it's the best practice in it is other than to do it, it's relationship. Recognize the power of the relationship that you now have, whether you ever see the person face to face or not. My son-in-law uh operates a marketing and strategy company called We Do. And I would say four or five of the folks that do design work for them and other things of that nature are are overseas. One I'm thinking of in particular, kind of his right-hand person is in Pakistan. They've never met, but they have a relationship. And in the context of that relationship, he is seeing and and sometimes he's hearing the gospel. And it's and it's the irony of it is it's it's not only is it easy, but it's it's much less what's the way to say it, much less um insulting to the to the local, to the international partner here, because it's it's because the conversation is had in business. It's not, you know, it's not having it in a church or you're not having it in a religious worker relationship. It's just two guys that work together talking about life. Of course you would talk about Christ. And it's that's the way it's taken. So it opens up amazing opportunities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And another thing you pointed out in that article was that there were too few managers because you know, there are there are entrepreneurs that will heed the call, go overseas, and so on. But you said for every 10 entrepreneurs in the BAM movement, there are only two to three experienced managers or employees with the Hartford God in business who are willing to go overseas and help scale startups that are there. Is that still what you're finding?
SPEAKER_02Uh it is. It's it is an absolute uh gap in in our approach to scaling this. And you think about it, on an individual business basis, you know, an entrepreneur with a few workers around them can only do so much. And at some point you reach a place where you can't be, you can't have your name in every box on the org chart. You have to have people to come in and manage different functions, whether it's production or sales and marketing or IT or whatever. You've got to have tech, I call them technical resources now. You've got to have technical resources. And in order to continue to grow, create jobs, and those jobs create relationship and social impact and all the rest of it. You can't do that without managers. And there's and I don't I don't know the psychology behind it in the sense that uh I know entrepreneurs are by nature the people who go, they're the pioneers, they they break through the barriers. I don't understand the psychology behind, well, why wouldn't a manager go and work in that endeavor? Some do. And we just need to find, I think really, Darren, we have to just find a way to get the opportunity out there better. You know, there's there's not a central repository of jobs available. There's not a one place to go where you can meet people and and and literally recruit almost like a BAM job fair, if you will.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, when is that? Is that coming online soon? Or is anyone tackling that?
SPEAKER_02You know, uh several people have attempted it. Uh this recruiting company I was talking about earlier, that's their that's kind of their um mode of operation. They're they're trying to fill that gap. Uh and it's it's they're called Taras, T-U-R-A-S, and they're based in Riley, North Carolina. But great guys, they're trying to do that. I think there's some other things like that beginning to happen. Um there's a conference coming up. I know we'll talk about this later, but there's a conference coming up in Silicon Valley in October. It's the largest gathering of businesses mission practitioners in North America by far. And that's one of the things that they they push is that you don't have to be the entrepreneur. You need to come if you're a manager, come if you're a student. Uh, I know one of the books I wrote was originally titled 2IC, when I was speaking in Australia on the first book, Businesses Mission, they the their attitude was, you know, this is all great. We love it, we love what you're saying, but most of us are not entrepreneurs. Most of us, 85% of us. Are managers or employees. So I and they and what they call is an Australian term, 2IC for second command. And so I thought, well, all right, I'm I will I'm going to write on that. But I didn't want to write on it until I've been there and done that. So I I literally left my consulting company, my partner still running it in 2008 and went internal, internal with my largest client, which I'm currently in the C level with, um, employee bridge. And so I did it uh for a lot of reasons, but one reason I did it was to be able to say, can you really have King and Impact when you're not the boss? And I'm happy to say the answer is uh overwhelming yes, and and it's happening, and that's that's when we came out with the book, which is now just titled Um Business's Mission when you're not not the boss. So um it but it that's the idea. So I think there's a some certain sense of just like you know, in the old days, a missionary had to live, you know, it was sail away and never come back. And so now it's the entrepreneur, you know, he goes and does it, but nobody else does. And and that left the vast majority of the church out of the game. Howard Henders used to say um missions and ministry is a lot like football. It's 22 men on the field in desperate need of rest and a hundred thousand people in the stadium in desperate need of exercise. Yeah. And and so I I look at this and say, you know, how do we so I think it's a sort of opening the concept up that you too can take your daily skill, your your programming skills, your design skills, whatever. You too can go and work in one of these companies and make a huge difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And our our our listeners have heard me say this a time or two before, but I think it's symptomatic of just our cultural obsession with leadership and to the detriment of management. It's like don't be a leader or don't be a manager, be a leader. Don't be a manager, be an entrepreneur, be someone that really actually makes a difference uh in the lives of people. And failing to see that virtually all of the main characters in Jesus' parables were managers of some sort. And and I I think the the the band movement has kind of fallen prey to some of that thinking as well. But I I love that you're kind of uh raising the standard for the need for uh for managers and employees and and that you don't have to be the the head of the company, the head of the the leader out in front, taking the hill for everybody. I mean uh because the way that God I think wants to see us is is is as as managers, as stewards. But you you start to segue into the the conference. Tell us as we wrap it up here, tell us about this conference, more about the conference coming up in the Silicon Valley and uh why our folks ought to attend.
SPEAKER_02So it's called the BAM conference, and I think you'll be giving out some information on it before the podcast ends. But um, it's called the BAM Conference, and it is a gathering of practitioners, uh, of investors, uh, some academics, not a lot, some uh some missionaries, but not a lot. It's primarily business people who are either doing business as mission or looking to get into it or looking to learn more or to invest, and now learning to get mobilized as a manager or regular sort of everyday employee. And and it's fantastic. We've been doing it now for a number of years. Last one, I think we had 500 people in the Philadelphia area. This this year we're shooting for even more. And it's just a place to come learn from people who are doing it. It's not theoretical, it's not taught from a from a curriculum, it's not uh there's no courses taught. It's a it's a gathering of people doing it, sharing about what they're doing, why they're doing it, how they're doing it, getting into you know some very broad things of stories of people who've gone and done startups in places like Nepal with phenomenal success. Uh we've got a guy, David Batstone, who's a serial entrepreneur uh in Silicon Valley area and and actually teaches at the University of San Francisco, but he's also he's he's just doing he's out there. So he's got people like that, fantastic stories and examples. We even get into things like governance and accountability. Something is is sort of nuts and bolts of of reminding folks, you know, that there's there's the high-level thinking, but there's also just basic, here's how you run a good business. To me, the the presentations are are they're good, they're really good, but they're the least of it. It's really it's the conversations you have afterward, during breaks, over meals, and things of that nature, where you really get to meet people that are doing this, and even the ones who are doing it are learning from the others who are doing it about how to do it better. So it's a it's a I will I'll put it this way. I go to I I I speak at one conference a year, and this is the one I speak at. And it's because of the way it's run and the caliber of people that you get to meet when you're there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And what is the website people need to visit?
SPEAKER_02Um, it is going to be you go to businessesmission.com. Uh that's probably the best resource site that I know of anywhere in the world. It's it's run out of um Thailand, ironically, by a couple of uh British folks, but uh that that's the the that's who's sponsoring it, and that's where the registration would be. It's the first weekend in October, it's gonna run Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Uh it is a full schedule, but I would tell anybody that's listening to this, if you can get there, get there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Excellent. Businessesmission uh.com and uh or you could just Google Business Mission Conference and uh and you'll get to the right place. And if you're on our email list, definitely go and and sign up at theology of business.com. You will be getting an email with the link to this interview as well as the uh the link to the conference. So I want to encourage everybody to attend. Um Mike, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and for the impact that you're continuing to make and and uh and and exhorting God's people to view their business as the mission that that God sees it as, to go and make disciples. And and what better place to do that than where we spend the majority of our waking hours right here in our in our business. Uh so we thank you for the work you're doing, and uh may God continue to bless um all of your ventures and as well as this conference.
SPEAKER_02Well, I thank you, Darren, and thanks for the chance to be on the line with you and uh hopefully it'll help make a difference.
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