What a powerful demonstration of God's love for us, that He would leave heaven and come to us, clothed in the flesh of humanity as God's Son, Jesus Christ.  It is miraculous.  It is humbling.  It is truth.

And, it also is for us a great model of reaching people.  God reached us through incarnation and coming to us.  As we think about all types of mission outreach, this wonderful model provokes us to think of key factors and opportunities.

Most significant are lessons related to culture.  God came into man's culture in human form.  We know that mission work is powerfully enabled by emerging from within a culture.  It is limited and often nil if the effort is to somehow drive it in from outside of a culture.

We can embrace this learning in BAM strategies, both planning and work.  First, understanding the culture and preparing for the work from within the culture is essential.  Business strategies solely from outside of a culture may not be applicable or effective.  We must adapt them.  As businesses have been forced to learn how to successfully globalize, we in the process have become much improved at understanding and responding to different and diverse cultures.  This experience can now apply as we advance the gospel with businesses.

Simultaneously we can plan to contextualize both our business and how the gospel message can be best communicated in any given culture.

Warning – as we work to do this we must never compromise Scripture.  We are contextualizing how the message can best be brought to life in a culture.  We are not changing the message.

Much depends on this capacity to "contextualize."  Both the business and the gospel message depend on it in order to be accepted by the community we are working in.  Without acceptance, the business will fail.  Without acceptance, the message will not be heard.  It will be viewed as foreign, and it will be rejected.  Opportunity will be lost.

Many thanks,

Larry 

For many, the business becomes the source of much learning that can spill over into other aspects of life.

Learning can be another blessing in itself, again expanding people's image of themselves.  Learning about our Savior is the most precious of lessons to be learned.

The opportunity to learn and grow is a natural attractor to human beings.  It can allow us to reach people.  That is the purpose of BAM projects – it is all about reaching people in the name of Christ. 

How many people are there?  Well, current figures show the world population at 6.7 billion.  That  has grown from 5.3 billion in 1990. 

It is a much more urban population, too, showing that migration to cities has been extensive.  On my first visit to China some five years ago, I spent time in the city of Tienjin.  It was then a city of nine million.  I was staggered to view the skyline of this and other cities in China, seeing what seemed to be endless lines of construction cranes.  When I inquired, it was reported to me that the city was adding infrastructure to assimilate one million new citizens each year.  What an amazing number.

A lot of the people that need to be reached are city dwellers, and all are impacted significantly by businesses and the resulting economy.  This continues to encourage our thinking about business as a vehicle to reach people.

Many thanks,

Larry