Jeff Adams

No, that’s not taken from a Batman comic strip. It’s an acronym that you spotted in your notes on The Mission. I didn’t have time to touch on it this morning, so I thought I would give you a brief explanation of BAM.

This morning’s topic was The New Missionary in the Mission. We learned that the new missionary really the old missionary, the biblical one. We often have a lot of add on’s in the way of tradition, methodology and techniques that, over time, rise to the level of sacred doctrine. Pretty soon we are doing things because that’s just the way we’ve always done them.

Every so often it’s a good exercise to the examine what we are doing and be sure it’s still close to what the Bible teaches. Our current model of missionary is between 200 and 300 years old. It has been an fine model, but even your old Honda might need to be replaced after that many miles!

We examined four characteristics of the new/biblical missionary this morning, the last of which was that they live our their faith through their natural spheres of influence, whether that be economics, family, the arts, medicine, justice, governance, education or agriculture. In other words, instead of dividing their lives up into spiritual and secular, they see life as a single integrated system.

Instead of loading the kids into the minivan and spending a couple of years going from church to church raising support, the new missionary sees this as only one of any number  of viable possibilities. Paul received support from his sending church of Antioch of Syria, from partner churches like that of the Philippians, from wealthy individual like Philemon or from the exercise of  his own vocation of making tents.

A few decades back, tent-making became a trendy way to think of entry into creative access areas to minister among least-reached peoples. The idea was to find some business, educational or medical opportunity, for example, that could justify their presence to be able to plant churches.

Those who engaged in tent-making were soon reporting that it was extremely difficult to work a secular job and plant a church among a people of a different language and culture at the same time.  Working a “secular” job and trying to engage in a “spiritual” activity as tough as planting a church is a very hard act to juggle!

Enter BAM – Business as Missions. Rather than viewing business as a “cover” to be in restricted access areas, those engaged in BAM prefer to see their vocation as the sphere through which they normally and naturally live their faith and take advantage of the opportunities God gives them to interact with others and share their faith as appropriate. In many cases it is not long before they are engaged in making disciples.

BAM also offers potential as a means to make contact with identified people groups, provide employment opportunities for new believers as well as community development. There are many other aspects to BAM that merit serious consideration.

The pressure of trying to plant a church while working is lessened as the new missionary understands another point I was sharing this morning. If we make disciples, Jesus builds his church, not us. If  missionaries focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will build his church even though it make not bear much external resemblance to the church in the missionary’s sending culture.

Entire books are written about BAM, and this is nothing more than a scratch on the surface of an encouraging movement in the world of missions that is helping us gain what I consider a more biblical perspective on the task of going about the mission in challenging areas.

Next week, the church as the missionary!