Business as Mission - by C Neal Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

C. Neal Johnson offers the first comprehensive guide to business as mission (BAM) for practitioners. He provides conceptual foundations 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.

Book Synopsis

Business as mission (BAM) is a mission strategy whose time has come. As global economics become increasingly interconnected, Christian business people and entrepreneurs have unanticipated opportunities to build kingdom-strategic business ventures. But Christian companies and business leaders do not automatically accomplish missional purposes. BAM requires mastery of both the world of business and the world of missions, merging and contextualizing both into something significantly different than either alone.C. Neal Johnson offers the first comprehensive guide to business as mission for practitioners. He provides conceptual foundations 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. Drawing on a wide variety of BAM models, Johnson works through details of both mission and business realities, with an eye to such issues as management, sustainability and accountability. Business as mission is a movement with enormous potential. This book breaks new ground in how faith and work intersect and are lived out in crosscultural contexts, where job creation and community transformation go hand in hand. Come, participate in what may well be one of the most strategic mission paradigms of the 21st century.

Review Quotes

"A helpful and thorough resource based upon years of hard work and research, delivered in an accessible and readable way."

--Mark L. Russell, EMQ, July 2010

"Be prepared to have your view of the marketplace launched into a new orbit! This is easily the most comprehensive and valuable guide to business as mission ever written, perhaps because no one is better qualified to write it than Neal Johnson. This book will serve multitudes who are finding that business may be the primary gateway to extending God's kingdom into every corner of the earth in the decades just ahead."

--John D. Beckett, chairman, the Beckett Companies, and author of Loving Monday and Mastering Monday

"Finally, a complete book on the subject of business as mission. If God Is at Work is the 'why' of BAM, clearly, Neal's work is the 'how.' It is detailed, packed with great advice providing a step-by-step approach to doing BAM. It is punctuated with examples and tells it like it is. As the working encyclopedia for business as mission, it is a must for anyone who is considering work in this field directly or tangentially."

--Ken Eldred, author, God Is at Work

"I see this book as exactly what it should be: a helpful and thorough resource based upon years of hard work and research, yet delivered in an accessible and readable way for the highly motivated and engaged BAM practitioner.... It is for those who are going to fully embrace the promise and challenge of operating a business with the goal of contributing to the Missio Dei.

--Mark L. Russell, EMQ, July 2010

"Johnson's Business as Mission: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice delivers on its title. If you want simple bromides about business as a mission field, this book is not for you. But if you recognize the centrality of work in God's created order, and if you want to integrate Christian teachings and workplace life through the lens of mission, then this richly resourced book is a must-read."

--David W. Miller, Ph.D, director, Princeton University Faith Work Initiative, and author of God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement

"Thanks goes to Neal Johnson for taking the BAM movement to the next level through scholarship that builds on the best theories, while walking in the real world."

--Tom A. Steffen, Missiology, October 2010

About the Author

Steve Rundle is associate professor of economics and business as mission at Biola University in La Mirada, California. His teaching and research interests are focused on the intersection between international economics and faith-based business. He is also the editor of Economic Justice in a Flat World: Christian Perspectives on Globalization.

C. Neal Johnson (Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary) is founding dean of the School of Business and is professor of international business at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, Washington. He has had an extensive and unique thirty-year career as an attorney, banker, educator, business consultant and entrepreneur both domestically and internationally.