Accelerate Church Planting Movements around the World through Business
In Central Asia’s former Soviet bloc nations, up to 30% of the male working population has to leave their homelands for months at a time – just to find work.
That’s just one example of why it’s so hard to build churches that grow and thrive in many unreached areas. How do you build a church when some of your strongest and most faithful members have to disappear for months at a time just to survive?
What can be done that would allow more believers to live securely near their churches and support them with consistent tithing?
How can you allow them to focus on making disciples instead of making a living?
What can you do to spark church planting movements in place of job-searching movements?
The answer? Business entrepreneurship.
By training up local entrepreneurs – who are also believers – to launch and grow well-planned and successful businesses, you solve one of the greatest hindrances to spreading the gospel. This is what iBAM does – International Business as Mission.
Faith-Inspired, Business-Backed Church Planting
Most people don’t want to leave their hometowns just to find work. Owning and running their own businesses gives them hope and encourages them – and others – that they don’t have to move. With stable income from the business and the jobs it creates, families can plant roots. The reality is, many people from these struggling nations want to start businesses. They just don’t know how.
Here are some entrepreneurs who are making disciples using business in tandem with ministry:
- Fiodor started a construction business and runs a Bible study with his employees
- Dmitri started a house remodeling business and used his success to start a ministry to drug addicts
- Pastor Ayube started a food truck business bringing supplies to remote areas without stores, which creates opportunities to share the gospel
- Lola, a translator, started an English as Second Language business to connect with and serve her community
Each of these and many other entrepreneurs trained and funded by iBAM now have the income, the stability, the faith, and the local respect that gives them near-immediate access to people who traditional missionaries would have to spend months or years to reach, if ever.
The iBAM Story – Where We’ve Been and What’s Ahead
Our founder was a banker turned businessman when God called him to something more than a safe and comfortable career. At that point, he began looking for a way to merge his business expertise and passion with faith and a commitment to making disciples of all nations. iBAM is the result, and its first mission trip went to Serbia in 2009.
iBAM has since launched dozens of businesses over the years in many different countries. 91% of them are still operating, which speaks to the quality of our trainers.
iBAM uses an Alliance Partner Model, where we partner with other missionary organizations that already have the experience and connections to reach specific parts of the world.
Our partners develop the church planting strategies. And we train the business entrepreneurs. We’ve launched businesses in about ten countries, with many more on the horizon.
Read Our Story and the Biblical Basis for Business as Mission
How Many Churches Can You Help Plant?
The more alliance partners we can work with, the more nations will be reached, and the more churches will be started.
It’s that simple.
All our resources are geared toward:
- Finding alliance partners
- Selecting nations and regions where the partner has an opening for our ‘business as mission’ strategy
- Developing the plan based on local connections
- Training up new local entrepreneurs to use their businesses to help spread the gospel
With consistent support from the Launch Team, we’ll be able to devote all our efforts to scale up our impact, connect with more alliance partners, reach more nations, and eventually spark church planting movements in dozens of nations all over the world.
That’s our vision.
Are you excited about what God is doing and want to be part of it?
Then click below to join the 30/60/100 Squad and prayerfully consider how much you want to give each month.
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Kosovo
The team at iBAM is excited to begin projects in the country of Kosovo in 2016. This war-torn region is rebuilding after over a decade of war in the 1980’s and 90’s. The nation of Kosovo is a young country with an average population age of 25. Economic opportunity is one of the biggest needs in this fledgling nation.
*Photo of Prishtina, Kosovo by Bleron Çaka
Central Asia
What should we do? I have been searching for work for months, but have found nothing. This job in Moscow will pay twice as much as the best job I can find here. Yes, but what of our ministry here? Yes, but what of our children’s future…?
The above exemplifies the many hard choices the faithful servants of Christ face in Central Asia.