Work as Worship and Blessing
Business as a way to empower local believers, make disciples, and bless communities in Central Asia.
By Max Z. (name changed)
My wife and I, along with our two young boys are moving to Central Asia later this year where I am looking forward to working in Business for Transformation (B4T). The company that I will be joining is part of a bigger network with a vision to use agricultural businesses in Central Asia to empower national believers to live in rural areas and make disciples through business connections. The goal is to also bless the region by creating jobs, increasing food security, and developing agricultural value chains.
My journey as it relates to B4T started in a rural, post-communist, Eastern European context, where my entrepreneurial parents were missionaries. Due to a lack of jobs, a significant number of the villagers went abroad to find work. Seeing the adverse effects on families from a parent being away from home half of the year, inspired me to study economics and international development.
My vision for healthy families and communities was connected to Jesus’ call to love our neighbors. Initially, I had a “social gospel” mindset. I was unsure of what I believed about various aspects of Christian theology, but I knew I wanted to follow Jesus in caring for the poor.
Through the witness of the church, God continued to open my eyes to the beauty of Jesus, the gospel, grace, and the church, and I came to realize the need for a more holistic mindset. A framework where loving neighbors includes gospel proclamation and Christian discipleship along with social, environmental, and economic development.
I want to promote a mindset of business as growing value rather than extracting profit.
The theological framework that I grew into sees work as a key aspect of image bearing and reflecting God to the rest of creation. As in other areas of creation, sin infected work and humanity’s rule of creation. Through the sin-defeating work of Jesus, the perfect image bearer—“the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being”— God is reconciling the world to himself. As reconciled, new creation, Holy Spirit-empowered, image bearers, we (the church) have been given the ministry of reconciliation in addition to the mandate to rule creation in a Christ-like fashion.
Through my university studies, my employment, connections with others, and the church, I have been learning how to do redeemed work. One of the takeaways from my university studies was that tying community development initiatives to business and economic incentives increases the sustainability of the initiatives.
Over the past ten years, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work for a number of agri-food companies that in addition to pursuing economic profitability, also had missional goals of improving their customers’ lives, their employees’ lives, their industries, and the communities in which they operated. Through the churches that I have connected with, I have had the opportunity to join others in providing for the needs of disadvantaged people in our local communities.
Through a couple of organizations, I have had opportunities to be engaged in the process of providing loans to B4T companies in the 10/40 Window. Through the encouragement of fellow believers and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I have been learning to see and to seize opportunities to testify about what God is doing in my life.
As I move to Central Asia, I want to keep seeking ways to integrate business, development, and disciple-making in my own life and in the lives of others in the church. I want to help others see work as worship and to promote a mindset of business as growing value rather than extracting profit. The B4T model is a great way to holistically witness in a Muslim context. However, this way of thinking about work as worship is a framework for people everywhere and not simply just a tool to get into hard-to-reach places.
Max Z. (name changed) is joining the Central Asia Launch Team to engage in business for transformation.