coffee, trinkets & tentmaking

Kingdom Business or Business as Missions can vary greatly from one organization to another. The people I meet who are somewhat familiar with the concept of BAM tend to think about a missionary family working along side African women, cranking out handmade trinkets and selling them at church.

photo from South African Tourism on flickr

I love that this "trinkets" example has become somewhat commonplace, because it means that at least the concept of sustainable and holistic missions is an aim for many.

Coffee is another popular BAM product. I'm guessing that's because Christians love coffee and Starbucks is so secular, but I'm not really sure...

The third model that I hear about pretty often is the concept of "Tentmaking". The reference is to the apostle Paul's work as a tent maker that helped support his ministry. Many missionaries adopt this model of working as an addition to or in lieu of raising support.

While these are 3 good and exciting movements, there are many other examples and potential models of  Business as Missions that I hope to highlight and discuss here on Jesus Business.

I love coffee, often buy global trinkets and I have a lot of respect for those tentmakers... but, I want to avoid defining Kingdom Business by those three alone.