Michael Barbalas
Mike has worked in East Asia in bi-vocational roles over the past thirty years and has had a chance to see the successes and failures of many missional businesses. Recently retired, he continues to encourage those who feel called to live and work out their faith in the marketplace.
Mission Round Table 20:3 (Sept-Dec 2025): 4-11
To read articles in this edition, visit this post on Mission Round Table 20:3.
Living and working in a Chinese world, one frequently encounters the word and concept of 矛盾 (máodùn)—contradiction. This is an appropriate word to use in discussing missional business. Within OMF, missional business has been talked about and practiced for over twenty years. Why take an issue of Mission Round Table and review the prospects and impact of missional business? The simple answer is that while missional business is seen as an important current and future mode of ministry, the contradictions around missional businesses continue to exist, continue to consume focus, time, and energy, and continue to create tensions and confusion.
If you look across Asia and even many other parts of the world, you can see:
- A growing interest in sustainable and integral mission models
- The rise of polycentric mission models
- A decline of traditional mission pathways (due to visa restrictions, donor fatigue, geopolitical pressures, creative access situations, etc.)
- A global rise of entrepreneurship and social enterprise
- A global rise of marketplace and Christian business ministries
All of these trends encourage and support the use of missional business concepts in mission strategies.
OMF’s experience with missional businesses includes having established a BAM (Business as Mission) task force in 2009. Globally, the BAM Global movement under Lausanne started in 2011 after BAM conferences had been held for twenty years. Parallel with the growth of this movement has come a maturity in knowledge, experience, and best practices. Many of the core BAM informational resources are available in multiple languages. A number of excellent books and guides about BAM and missional business can be easily accessed.
Missional business is far from a unique or new concept. The amount of information available is exhaustive and covers almost every possible topic and angle. There are well-developed organizations and networks supporting this global movement. These often go by different names such as Business as Mission (BAM), Faith Driven Entrepreneurs, etc. OMF has chosen to use “missional business” to clearly indicate that ventures within OMF should strongly align with OMF’s missional vision, mission, and values.
Between OMF’s own experiences and the availability of global BAM resources, the challenges faced in missional business are not a result of a lack of information and experience across multiple countries and mission agencies. We have access to a wealth of information, experience, and examples that should guide us in moving forward.
There is general agreement within OMF and the broader mission community that “missional business” refers to entities that have both a sustainable business operation and a valuable missional impact. By definition, a sustainable business is one that is profitable, covering all of its costs, and generating profits for future use. By definition, a “missional business” should have a missional impact. When both objectives can be realized, the potential impacts and benefits of a missional business are enormous. These are often spoken of as the quadruple bottom line (economic impact, social impact, environmental impact, spiritual impact) where a missional business is delivering measurable results across all four dimensions.
However, the path to these successful missional businesses is littered with risks, pitfalls, and obstacles. The primary contradiction encountered with missional businesses is between the potential benefits of a successful enterprise and the potential pitfalls of getting to this ideal state.
To help explore the pitfalls, this paper examines the contradictions on the home or sending context, the field or work/ministry context, and the overall support of missional business practitioners.
Sending: Opportunities and challenges
Mobilization is one of the most challenging aspects of missions. Mission agencies incur huge costs and time investments in the mobilization and preparation of new workers. When we look at the missional business part of this ministry, we find several contradictions.
In many parts of the world and among many local churches, the acceptance of missional business as a valid form of ministry is not widely accepted. The common beliefs in the sacred/secular divide and that profitmaking is evil are non-starters that impact anyone attempting a missional business. The recent Lausanne Congress in Korea emphasized the role of every Christian in their place of work and included a workplace track. This supports the idea that these theological concerns are still common.[1] Often churches will only organize prayer for workers who they also support financially. A self-supporting worker may struggle to find churches that will support them in prayer since they do not fit the model for the majority of mission workers.
Another major challenge in mobilization is that one looks for someone who has the right skills, gifts, and abilities, a missional calling, along with a team-oriented personality. In an average church, you will find that less than 10 percent of the people in attendance have the personality and wiring to become successful entrepreneurs. However, almost everyone has the ability to work in a role commensurate with their skills and experience. This suggests that it would be more productive to recruit people for marketplace opportunities overseas (still a form of bi-vocational ministry) than for missional business opportunities.
It is not enough for someone to have an entrepreneurial aptitude. Also needed is for them to have a missional calling and direction in their life. The majority of those who have business aptitudes will focus their skills and abilities close to home.
Those who have the personality traits needed to be successful entrepreneurs often have personality traits that make it hard to fit into a team structure. For example, those who are strongly driven to achieve their vision and are not deterred by problems and naysayers are often tone deaf to the input of others. Most field ministry situations require working as part of a team that includes involvement in the team’s vision and mission along with the team’s cultural norms. Looking for the combination of these three aspects (entrepreneurial aptitude, missional calling, and team orientation) becomes a search for a needle in the haystack.
One of the certainties of missional business is that the risk of failure is very high. This is not unique to Christian-run businesses. Research on business provides abundant evidence that the majority of new businesses will fail within five years. The risk of failure only increases when one adds cross-cultural settings, different local languages, and differing political/business systems into the equation. That the risk of failure is so high is often difficult to accept in mission circles. Those who want to be involved in missional business and those who will support them in various ways need to be aware of this major challenge and risk. The high risk of failure is a given for missional business efforts.
It is worth noting that a business venture failure does not necessarily equate to a personal or ministry failure. There are examples of missional businesses that failed after a few years but left behind individuals with many more contacts in the community, greater familiarity with local culture and customs, a higher level of language fluency, and ideas for potential missional business ventures that could be attempted in the future. In these cases, the business venture failed to achieve sustainability, but the individuals involved came out better equipped for future ministry and business opportunities. Again, secular business research indicates that many successful entrepreneurs have had multiple business failures before achieving success. In some circles, early business failures are seen as necessary stepping stones to business success.
On the opportunity side, research on the future of missions done by Barna has shown that many young people are open to bi-vocational and non-traditional missions ministries. Among non-traditional pathways, 59 percent of young adults aged 18–34 who Barna classified as potential missionaries cited business as a good way.[2] Another high category was entrepreneurship. This openness to business as a potential ministry pathway is positive for mobilizing people for missional businesses.
One advantage of having decades of history (both internal and external) is that there is a set of best practices for missional businesses that address size, type, and geographic location. Many organizations, conferences, resources, training courses, etc. are available in most sending areas to help prepare potential missional-business practitioners. As the BAM ecosystem of organizations and individuals has developed over the past forty years, there are now gathering places (both virtual and in person) where individuals interested in missional business can find information, support, and potential agencies to work with. Mobilization of this segment of Christian workers probably happens most effectively in these gathering places.
Tension often exists between those whose work is to identify and mobilize people who feel God is directing them into missions and those in field leadership who are trying to lead teams to reach and disciple people in East Asia. This tension can be particularly acute in the case of missional business where the potential business practitioner may have a well-defined idea of what business/ministry concept they want to implement, but this may not fit well into a field strategy with its own mission and vision for its ministry. Trying to work out these differences can be a frustrating and time-consuming process. This can lead to tension between the sending side and the field side leaders, while also frustrating the potential missional business practitioner.
The contradictions do not stop on the sending side but carry over to the field or work/ministry context.
Receiving: Opportunities and challenges
From a field perspective, the attractions of missional business are often the opportunity to provide a visa for an expat worker, provide natural access into specific unreached communities, or to provide employment for national workers. Missional business is often seen as a means to an end (providing a visa for a worker). The problems arise when the agencies try to identify the missional impact a particular missional business might have. As a result, the missional side of a missional business is often the only one seriously considered and developed. A problem that results from this approach is that the business rarely becomes sustainable since the business aspects fall into second or third place in terms of time, energy, and focus. The ideal situation is to have an individual who sees their own calling and ministry as straddling business and ministry, where their life, work, and ministry are integrated and are different aspects of the same unified calling and work/ministry.
One of the best practices for successful missional businesses is to have a well-developed and integrated missional plan coupled with a business plan. However, having a well-developed plan does not guarantee success. It will reduce the risk of failure but not eliminate it. Not every business can be turned into a missional opportunity, and not every mission thrust can be turned into a business opportunity. Understanding the overlaps and synergies between the desired ministry and the potential business is critical to finding a workable path forward. Time spent in planning and developing an integrated plan forces one to develop a realistic review of whether a specific combination of business and ministry has the potential to succeed. In the planning process, it is common for many possible paths to be rejected as not workable or not likely to succeed.
A variety of frameworks are available to help develop coordinated business/ministry plans. One of the newest ones that has come out in the past two years clearly integrates the vision/mission/values of the ministry side with the business value proposition of the business side. This Redemptive Business CanvasTM is a valuable tool for developing both aspects of the plan in an iterative process that includes all important aspects of a plan.[3] This helps an individual or team to systematically and effectively work their initial ideas into a coordinated and consistent plan.
Another key contradiction is time. A worthwhile exercise is to analyze and see what happens to the 168 hours of a normal week. After accounting for the hours consumed by sleeping, eating, bathing, exercising, praying, work/ministry activities, etc. you will find that in any given week there are very few truly discretionary hours available in one’s schedule. Evaluating one’s work week helps them be realistic about what they can accomplish and what sacrifices may need to be made. It becomes instantly clear that there is an inherent conflict between work time and ministry time.
One advantage of a planning tool is that it can help someone work through potential synergies between the business and the ministry. There are some activities where it is hard to find a redemptive ministry aspect. For me, an example of this would be balancing the accounting books. This is not an excuse to sneak back into a sacred/secular divide view of the world, and I subscribe to the belief that all I do should be to the glory of God. However, I find it hard to imagine how balancing my business books is contributing to evangelism and discipleship in any direct way. On the other hand, time spent in one-on-one Bible study with a friend is unlikely to add much value to my business. These are extremes and may be necessary or even frequently occurring extremes. What an integrated plan should seek to identify and magnify are the opportunities for synergies and overlaps. Are there aspects of my business that can support and enhance my ministry? For example, are my customers, employees, or suppliers also members of my target people? Does my business occur in the areas of the city where my ministry also occurs? All of these potential overlaps help resolve the time contradiction and enhance the potential effectiveness of a missional business.
Spending time to plan allows for many problems to be avoided at a design stage. It is much easier and less costly to change a plan than to change operations of an ongoing business. Once you have leases, employees, printed materials, etc., the cost of changes becomes quite high. Involving various consultants, coaches, and resource people with prior experience in missional business can provide valuable input and perspective at the design stage. Many potential problems can be surfaced early and changes made to accommodate what is learned in the discussions and planning.
The best planning tool is of no value if it is not used as a map and guide for running the day-to-day operations of a business. No one should expect that their best laid plans will stay intact beyond the first few days or weeks of implementation. This is normal and should be expected. That changes will inevitably alter even the best laid plans is not a reason to avoid planning. The purpose of having a plan is not to lock yourself into a straitjacket approach but to provide a guide for reconciling your best thoughts and plans with the realities you encounter.
Having a well-developed plan allows conversations and reflections along the following lines.
- I thought that ….. would happen as a result of our environment and work.
- I am seeing something else— ….. —is happening (which may be positive or negative).
- As a result, to achieve my business and ministry goals, I need to adjust …..
This is like driving a car. Most drivers will look at a map or their cellphone GPS system and identify a route to their destination. However, as they drive down the road, they also make many small and large adjustments based on what they encounter and learn about the actual conditions and situations along their planned route. A business/ministry plan gives the practitioner and their accountability partners a framework and picture to understand what they see and, based upon that, make good decisions and adjustments that will give their missional business the greatest chance of success.
Another common contradiction is not providing accountability for both business and ministry results. Often this is a result of skill sets and experience of field and team leaders. Most field situations will have experienced leadership that can make good decisions about ministry-related work. These same leaders, however, may struggle to understand the business plan aspects, a reality that will hinder their ability to give advice and guidance on the business side of the entity’s development. Such situations often mean that while decisions are relatively easily made about the ministry impact, the business side is left out of much of the planning and ongoing development. Surprises can arise, such as when funds are suddenly required to keep the business alive, when many of these surprises should have been obvious months in advance. To be successful, a missional business needs to be successful in both its missional and its business objectives. Both sides require ongoing attention, focus, and decision-making.
Without accountability we often find zombie entities where the missional business is not achieving its objectives on the business side, ministry side, or both sides. Who has the authority to decide if such a venture should be terminated? To one extreme is a venture that becomes a highly profitable and growing business that exhibits negligible ministry impact. Who will make the call that while this is a successful business, it does not fit into the field ministry as a missional business? Is there a way to rapidly and greatly increase the ministry impact? Or is it time to sell or divest the business? The other extreme is a venture that never takes off as a sustainable business but has good ministry impact in the local context. Who will make the call that while this entity is a valuable project, it is not a viable missional business? If results on both business and ministry impacts are lacking, the best choice is to decide that the venture is not working and stop continuing to pour in resources of time and money. These are not theoretical decisions, as they affect individuals, teams, supporting churches, and financial partners. Avoiding these hard decisions may delay some short-term pain and discomfort but will likely make the longer-term adjustments even harder and more painful.
The ebbs and flows of a business are often different from those of a local ministry team due to the inevitable conflicts of expectations. For example, a local ministry team meeting may be scheduled at the busiest time of the week or month for a business. When this kind of conflict arises, how will choices be made and who will make them? Longer-term cycles of field ministry and home assignment often conflict with business development and continuity. I have seen cases where missional businesses were told that they must adhere to the normal cycle for home assignment. There are few businesses that can be put on hold for several months without severely jeopardizing potential business success. This is one example where the needs and rhythms of a business strongly conflict with the rhythms of a traditional mission field.
Another challenge for both mission agencies and business practitioners is that no two missional businesses are alike. Even in an organization the size of OMF, across the various centers in Asia, there are no two similar missional business ventures. This lack of commonality is an additional hurdle to success. One way that many traditional companies expand while minimizing risk is to adopt a cookie cutter approach where each entity is similar in the majority of its design and operations. The best-known examples of this would be McDonalds or Starbucks. You can go into one of these stores anywhere in Asia and expect to see pretty much the same menu, furnishings, products, etc. Only the language will differ from country to country and sometimes the menu will be tweaked to suit local preferences. There have been efforts to replicate this in the BAM world with ideas such as “BAM in a box”, but these have generally not been successful or gained traction. As a result, each missional business is on its own, following its unique learning curve. With this level of uniqueness, it is difficult to benefit from the experience of others. This forces each missional business to find its own way and make many unique decisions and adjustments.
Many missional businesses are not located in the most business-friendly environments. Field strategies often focus on socio-economic segments and geographic locations that are not the ones with the highest business potential. For example, a counseling center that focuses on a segment of society with low economic means will struggle to find enough paying customers to make its operation viable. Similarly, an unreached ethnic group may live in a part of a country that is known for its low economic output and potential. While these marginalized people may be a high priority for ministry, they may not provide fertile ground for growing a business. Examples can be given of missional businesses that have been successful in non-ideal situations and have even transformed parts of the local economy and living standards. They remain, however, the exception to the rule. These situations add another layer of complexity and difficulty to an already challenging ministry model.
One of the major benefits of a successful missional business is the natural connections and inroads to the local communities it provides. Missional business owners can both show and tell what they believe in the course of their everyday life and work. Successful businesses will often provide contacts and inroads that other ministry team members can benefit from. A business may have resources that the owner can deploy to help support the work of a local team. A successful business can be a long-term opportunity for engagement with the local community. It can often be passed from one owner to another. In many cases, this may be a local believer.
As mentioned above, one of the best practices for successful missional businesses is to have and use an integrated business and ministry plan. The planning phase is the best time to surface, consider, and plan for the contradictions that will exist for any missional business. The planning phase moves naturally into implementation with a rational and integrated set of expectations. While success is not guaranteed by planning, good planning offers the best opportunities for a new venture to succeed. The plan also offers the metrics and expectations to measure whether the missional business is delivering the expected and needed results along both axes of ministry effectiveness and business profitability.
Supporting practitioners: Opportunities and challenges
The final aspect is looking at the opportunities and challenges for the missional business practitioner. Anyone attempting to set up and run a missional business is going into a high stress, high risk, high time demand situation.
With the combined experience of individuals and organizations over the last few decades, a business as mission ecosystem has emerged that includes:
- Entrepreneurs — Potential, budding, and experienced
- Missional businesses — Companies that integrate faith and missions into their operations
- Mentors and coaches — Experienced businesspeople and missionaries offering guidance and accountability
- Investors and financial institutions — Those providing “patient capital,” loans, or grants aligned with BAM principles
- Churches and faith communities — Supporting business people in their call to serve God through business
- Educational and training institutions — Universities, seminaries, and business incubators equipping BAM practitioners
- Networks and partnerships — Regional and global groups (like BAM Global, Lausanne Movement, or local BAM hubs) connecting practitioners and sharing best practices
- Government and policy environment — Legal and economic frameworks that affect business operations, ideally enabling faith-aligned enterprises
- Customers and markets — People and communities that benefit from the goods, services, and employment created by BAM companies
For the potential missional business practitioner, this ecosystem provides many opportunities and resources to learn from other practitioners and supportive partners. Anyone interested in missional business should be plugged into the various components of this ecosystem. No one agency has the scope and scale to provide the detailed and subject matter expertise needed for every potential missional business practitioner.
There needs to be a realistic self-assessment of skills, interests, and abilities. This need was mentioned by one of the speakers at one OMF gathering.
And it is important to note that when we talk about business failures, it’s often the wrong people trying to do the right thing. And we need to think in the same way as we think about Bible translation. If we want to have a Bible translation, of course we go for good linguists. If we want to have a medical clinic, we go for licensed doctors and nurses. The same thing applies when we talk about BAM. We need to go for people who have the passion and the skill set and we can’t lower the bar just because it’s business. We need to be equally strong on whether you are called, qualified, and passionate about doing translation, medical work, or business?[4]
Being called, qualified, and passionate about doing missional business is essential.
In many of the cases I have seen, a worker has decided to look at missional business after having exhausted other potential visa channels for working in their target country. The transition from a full-time ministry worker to a bi-vocational entrepreneur/missionary is not an easy transition. Depending on a person’s background and history, learning a business may be a long, steep, uphill climb. It is challenging to learn accounting, HR recruitment, contracts, purchasing, graphics design, social media marketing, and all the other aspects of running a business at the same time. There is a tremendous amount of material to process and implement. One of the reasons many missional businesses fail is that there is too much to learn and not enough time (and finances) to keep the entity going.
In addition to standard business school classes, there are now a number of Christian educational institutions offering courses on business as mission. These provide valuable opportunities to better understand both the business and missional aspects of a potential venture. These courses and programs can greatly shorten the learning curve for anyone moving into this type of ministry.
A good alternative for anyone making such a large mid-career change would be to seek out opportunities to intern or work with someone else. This greatly lowers the risk of failure and allows a potential missional business practitioner to learn at a manageable rate. While discussions have been held within OMF about setting up a training and internship center, these have not come to fruition. Within the BAM ecosystem, there are opportunities for internships and other opportunities to learn about doing missional business.
An area where contradictions quickly emerge is decision making. Who makes what decisions? In a normal business startup, an entrepreneur and their financing partners, if any, are involved in making significant decisions about business direction, growth, strategy, etc. Within any given mission agency, the decision making tends to be much more convoluted and complicated. This additional overhead and complexity often contribute to missional business failure.
Many prospective practitioners will identify financing for their venture as the most difficult area to manage. My observation is that there have been plenty of sources to provide finances for good projects that will make an impact from both the business and ministry perspectives. In cases I have encountered, financing difficulties were really ministry or business planning issues. The plan (or its explanation) did not convince potential mission-minded investors and financers that it was doable or would have a significant impact. This is another reason for investing sufficient time in developing a business-missional impact plan and being able to clearly explain the vision for the venture.
Many individuals want to transition from their home country directly to a missional business context in their target country. Even if someone comes with well-developed business skills and experience, language and culture learning and cross-cultural ministry adaptation are not a simple add-on that anyone can quickly pick up. Some of the most successful missional business ventures have been started by individuals who developed ministry support in their home country that allowed them to spend time in their target country learning language, culture, the local social situations, and the local economic conditions. Most people will find that this requires a multi-year effort. These are not activities that most missional business investors would want to support or invest in. If language and culture fluency are seen as pre-requisite for a successful missional business, savvy investors know that not everyone who attempts to develop these fluency skills will succeed. Investors are much more interested when individuals come to them having put in the time to develop these cross-cultural understandings and skills and with a business concept that fits the local culture, ministry context, and economic situation.
Conclusion: Resolving the contradictions of missional business
The paper has highlighted the contradictions involved in missional business. While there are many potential benefits, there are also many potential pitfalls and obstacles along the way. Most of the contradictions mentioned cannot be willed or planned away. How should an individual or organization factor missional business into their strategy and plans?
During the Fellowship’s Reimagine initiative and a 2021 survey, a surprising one-third of leaders who were interviewed felt that missional business should be front and center in OMF’s strategy. Over half of the interviewed leaders saw a need to have missional business as a valid ministry option.
Given the challenges and contradictions associated with missional businesses, I have a hard time seeing how missional business can be a major part of an overall field or organizational strategy. I think that having missional businesses as a valid ministry option is probably the best way to approach missional business, as long as this is accompanied with an understanding that there are a number of contradictions that must first be faced.
Our normal approach to resolving contradictions is to focus on trying to remove or eliminate one side. This is particularly difficult to do for missional businesses as the contradictions come from trying to unite different goals—effective missional outreach and business success. Another approach to resolving contradictions accepts the contradictions that exist and seeks to transform both sides into some kind of higher synthesis. This accepts both sides as a reality and then tries to find a way forward that incorporates both sides of the contradiction. This can be hard to do in a mission agency context where this synthesis can be seen as constantly bending the rules and conventions or giving special treatment to those in missional business.
I have tried to support those interested in establishing and running missional businesses. However, I think I have spent more time trying to discourage people from taking this pathway than helping people along this pathway. I start with discouraging input because I want potential business practitioners to be realistic about the challenges ahead. I usually ask these individuals to go talk with their church pastor and then go to talk with a friend in management or ownership in some business. In both cases, I ask them to question their friends about their average week. Do they have sufficient time to do their job/ministry in excellent ways in every aspect? Do they come to their place of work/service knowing that all the people, projects, finances, etc. are working well? Anyone who starts this line of questioning with either their local pastor or business friend will typically be laughed at because it is crazy to even ask such questions or imagine that work and life can be balanced and consistently operate smoothly. Most working people are continually under a lot of stress and few feel they can ever get on top of their situation.
The reality is that someone who is committed to, well trained for, and focusing on their work full time will often feel that they can never do their job in a way that they or others think it should be done. If mono-vocational workers have these experiences and feelings, why do we feel that a bi-vocational worker would have an easier time when attempting to do two demanding, consuming roles in the same amount of available time? Analyzing your 168 hours in each week—sleeping, eating, praying, working, etc.—shows that you have very little discretionary time each week. This time pressure only increases in bi-vocational roles.
For those who feel they want to continue their pursuit of missional business, I also raise the question of the risk of failure of new businesses. I push individuals to do the necessary homework, investigation, and planning that give them the best chance of developing a plan that may work when they start to implement it. Once an individual gets to this point, I will begin to start encouraging them.
Across the globe, there have been many examples of successful missional businesses. These provide ample evidence that missional businesses can be an impactful approach to cross-cultural ministry. But these successes should not be extrapolated to suggest that missional businesses will work in every country and every situation.
It takes a unique combination of personal drive and conviction, a workable business concept, and dogged implementation to produce one of these success stories. I do not see missional business as a main strategy for a mission agency due to the risks of failure, the high demands in two domains—ministry and business—and the uniqueness of every situation. However, I think being willing to consider and accept this type of bi-vocational ministry may offer some unique opportunities for unique individuals to make a significant contribution to the ministry impact of local teams. In these situations, handling the numerous contradictions inherent in missional business can result in a long-term, incarnational, and holistic ministry that makes all the challenges and investment worthwhile.
[1] See Kina Robertshaw, “The Fourth Lausanne Congress—Equipping Believers in the Workplace,” Lausanne Movement, 13 Mar 2025, https://lausanne.org/about/blog/stories/lausanne-4-workplace-track-equipping-the-saints-for-workplace-mission (accessed 11 November 2025)
[2] See https://shop.barna.com/products/the-future-of-missions and Future of Missions: 10 Questions About Global Ministry the Church Must Answer with the Next Generation by the Barna Group, produced in partnership with the International Mission Board (Ventura, CA: Barna Group, 2020), 46.
[3] For more information, contact Hannah Lau by email at Hannah.Lau@Arukah.Works.
[4] Quote from Mats Tunehag (BAM Global) at Global Fellowship Consultation, 15 April 2021, interview with Susan Kaur.
