Business as Mission

Episode 708

Leveraging business for mission presents numerous challenges, yet there are strong arguments to be made for its benefits. Host Clint Clifton talks with Adam Muhtaseb and Greg Gibson about the value and tensions inherent in mixing the two.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

  • How a church leveraged a co-working space and coffee shop to buy a facility
  • How business can help plant churches in expensive cities
  • The challenges of mixing business and church
  • Whether business as mission muddies the water of “pure pastoral work”
  • Missiological advantages of business as mission

Helpful Resources:

Please subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating and review on iTunes.

Sharable Quotes (#NewChurches):

It’s naive to think that if you enter the business world with your church it will not take away your time. We had a lot of lost people coming to our building and we were making money, but I spent so much of my time on the businesses, it was driving me insane. @Adam_Muhtaseb

I wanted to be able to plant churches and not always have the the weight of the the financial need behind me. I was thinking about how we can plant churches in major cities that are super expensive and quickly think about sustainability and then reproducibility. — Greg Gibson

You have to clearly define your “why.” But I also want to sit in the seat of the prudent man and think in terms of stewardship: How can I turn what I have into more? — Greg Gibson

The reason we even do business as a church is because money is mission ammunition, and we want more bullets to shoot to adoption funds, church plants and staff. @Adam_Muhtaseb

It is a necessary follow-on from the focus on urban church planting. It’s inevitable that those who embed themselves in the most expensive cities in the world and try to do so on a bivocational, volunteer or a small church-planting salary would have to get creative in order to stay. @ClintJClifton

From Paul’s tent-making days to the modern covocational thing, church planting’s always had a foot in the marketplace and the marketplace has had a foot in the church. This is not a brand-new conversation. @ClintJClifton

I’m interested in training business guys in my churches to think about using their businesses as mission. The missiological impact of it begins to unfold exponentially. — Greg Gibson


Published October 11, 2022

P.S. Get our best content in your inbox

We send one email per week chock full of articles from a variety of Church Planting voices.