What makes us different?
Above all, we are practitioners, not teachers or trainers. Much of what we practise today is the result of our own “in the field” experience and often by learning from our own mistakes. These 6 characteristics distinguish us and make us somewhat different.
Great Commandment + Great Commission
Jesus Christ has given two important tasks for his people. The first one is the Great Commandment – loving God with all our heart and mind and loving our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). The second one is the Great Commission — preaching the Gospel and making disciples all around the world (Matthew 28:18-20). We are committed to both – using for profit business as our vehicle
These two great commandments from Jesus combine our social and missional responsibilities which is the essence of the whole gospel. We are therefore committed to using business that manifests distinct economic, social, environmental and spiritual impact as our means.
B4T Developers
From early days we recognised that we must have skilled business people on the ground to identify, select and work with entrepreneurs who would become very successful in their business and who are committed to producing ‘Kingdom Impact’.
National SMEs/Entrepreneurs
We focus on
- Businesses owned by nationals since the building of the Church rests on their shoulders
- Small and Medium enterprises since these have the greatest impact in most nations and are few and far between in some developing countries.
Kingdom Stakeholders
We focus business plans and our work, not only on profitability, but on fully orbed Kingdom Impact. Many stakeholders step up to make this possible – Investors, trainers, B4T Developers, leaders and administrators, board members and of course the entrepreneurs themselves.
The Lausanne Declaration states, “World evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world”. We see the need and opportunity to work collaboratively with organisation partners as well as individual stakeholders to build a network across the 10/40 window. In those places where we are present we have been successful in bringing together investors, trainers, subject matter experts, board members and others to contribute their time, talent and treasure to help build God’s kingdom.
B4T model: Ecosystem, P2P lending
The B4T model is captured in the Ecosystem. Investors lend directly P2P (Peer to Peer) to each business.
The B4T model is captured in the B4T Ecosystem which represents the components within a supportive community that connects Biblical entrepreneurs to critical resources. Investors lend directly peer-to-peer (P2P) to each business. This avoids creating a bottleneck that is typical of centralised funding.
Self-sustaining local entities
From the beginning in each country we work toward establishing a self sustaining local B4T entity with a board and a growing investment pool.
From the beginning B4T is set up as a decentralised structure with autonomous regions and fields that are bound together by our shared vision, mission and core values. At a local level, each legal entity operates under an independent board which provides corporate governance and accountability to our various stakeholders. The goal is to establish financially self-sustaining B4T entities each with a growing investment pool.