Ten years ago, I met a couple living in an East Asian country who were engaged in a profitable kingdom business, creating jobs and making disciples of Jesus. It was my first in-depth exposure to what many refer to as Business as Mission (BAM). It was still a new concept at the time, but today, this couple’s factory is operating as a successful manufacturing plant with credibility and excellence. Within the business, there are now many disciples following Jesus.

Some people still have questions about whether such activity is an important way to make disciples. However, here is one reason BAM is important and relevant: Most of the people in the world are not cognitive learners; rather, they learn by observation and by experiencing something in their reality. Authors Jeffs and Smith suggest that informal education “…works through conversation and the exploration and enlargement of experience … it is the learning that goes on in daily life….”¹

Harvard educator Fanta-Vagenshtein² affirms: “…Knowledge is learned informally by watching and imitating experts and older, experienced people, through trial and error, and through personal experience acquired over the years…things are always learned in context.”

Does this sound like Jesus and His disciples to you? Guess what? Most of the world still learns this way today.

And most of the world spends most of their time at work, or trying to find enough work to make a living. What if we joined the unreached in their jobs — or started businesses to create jobs?

The important thing is that the gospel is integrated with how we live wherever life happens, including life in the workplace. Bill, the owner of a company in Asia calls it “walking with God at work.” One of Bill’s protégés, a business owner himself, adds, “Every day on the factory floor is an opportunity for discipleship.” Many of his employees and former employees share about being discipled by this man and his colleagues through their words and actions on the job. They are now followers of Jesus.

These employees embraced Jesus when they saw someone living like Him — with integrity, love, patience, justice, and fairness; ethical behavior, joy, and excellence. The apostle Paul states it best when he said, “We were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives….” Paul and his colleagues lived upright, blameless, and encouraging lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8-12). They attracted the unreached to Jesus by how they lived.

Informal education worked for Jesus, for the disciples, and for the apostle Paul. And it works for most of the world’s population today.

Larry Sharp served 21 years with Crossworld in Brazil as teacher and principal of Amazon Valley Academy and president of Missão Cristã Evangélica do Brasil. He returned to the U.S. in 1993 to become vice president at Crossworld’s home office. After 20 years as an executive, he is now Vice President Emeritus and a business consultant for Crossworld.

1     Jeffs, T. and Smith, M. K. (1997, 2005, 2011). ‘What is informal education?’, the encyclopaedia of informal education. [http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-informal-education].
2     Yarden, Fanta-Vagenshtein, Journal of Literacy and Technology Volume 9, Number 3: December 2008.