An article by Joe Maxwell in Christianity Today looks at Christians who start businesses as ministries:
The phenomenon has many labels: “kingdom business,” “kingdom companies,” “for-profit missions,” “marketplace missions,” and “Great Commission companies,” to name a few. But observers agree the movement is already huge and growing quickly. BAM (Business As Mission) “is the big trend now, and everyone wants to say they’re doing it,” says Steve Rundle, associate professor of economics at Biola University. Rundle authored Great Commission Companies (2003) and has an upcoming book, An Overview of Business as Mission, written with fellow BAM scholar Neal Johnson.
BAM practitioners use business ventures not only to make a financial profit, but to act as an avenue for the gospel. They administer their companies like any Christian running a business: ethically, honestly, and with concern for the business’s neighbors. Yes, they exist to provide jobs and services and to make profits. But BAM companies are more than examples of Christian capitalism. The business itself is a means to spread the gospel and to plant churches. BAM companies increasingly have a global flavor, creating jobs in developing countries (unlike traditional aid or missions work) and making disciples who carry the gospel to the larger, hard-to-reach community.
Arguing against this trend is Uwe Siemon-Netto with the Lutheran perspective that our work is our mission:
When I taught at the remarkable World Journalism Institute a few years ago, I routinely asked students at the beginning of a new class: “What do you think is the calling of a Christian in secular media?” Inevitably, several young men and women would reply, “To report the news from God’s perspective.”
Right? Wrong. It would be great if we knew God’s cell number to ask him, “Lord, what are your views on immigration and social security?” Alas, we don’t have this option. Thus from a Lutheran perspective, the proper response to the question about a Christian journalist’s vocation must be: “I am called to report as fairly and as accurately as humanly possible. If I do this as a service of love to my readers and viewers, rather than with selfish interests in mind, I will render the highest possible service to God.” …
“Each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him,” writes the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7:17). In our context, this means that a reporter does not have a calling to be a preacher, even though he or she might be a devout Christian. It also means that a journalist’s vocation must not be confused with that of a prosecutor or a lobbyist, two self-aggrandizing roles many contemporary journalists slip into (which is one reason the media are so disliked).
Unfortunately, Siemon-Netto has fallen into another trap that many contemporary journalists slip into: using extremists to generalize an entire group or subculture (i.e. assuming that Pat Robertson speaks for all evangelicals).
Yes, there are probably a few self-aggrandizing Christians who abuse their influence in their job to beat people over the head with the Jesus-stick. But I’ve never met any of those people. Most people I know have trouble just remembering that they’re followers of Christ when they’re in the heat of an office conflict or when they’re on the verge of losing a big account. We don’t need to consult God less in our jobs… most Christians have never given much thought to his influence there in the first place.
Paul obliterated this sacred-secular divide in 1 Corinthians 10: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” And he definitely brought God’s influence to the marketplace: he threatened the incomes of idol-making silversmiths in Ephesus to the point where they had to call their cousins Vinnie and Luigi to go over and break his knees (Acts 19).
Paul made tents for a living, but somehow I don’t think his biggest joy in life came from a particularly beautiful stitching job. It came from the people (including coworkers and customers) he influenced to live for Jesus. That’s exactly what he wrote to the believers in Thessalonica: “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2).