Setting up a business differs from just going to a country and getting a job.  Growing a business is more demanding and requires greater background, but it also offers far greater scope for planting and nurturing fellowships:

·       Primarily, a company of believers is already a mini fellowship which is a potent example and can be a key building block in a local church.

·       Secondly, when directors evaluate decisions by looking at the kingdom opportunities along with the financial ones, the company will extend and strengthen the kingdom as well as the business.  There is genuine scope for devoting segments of prime time and money to spiritual goals.

·       In the long term, successful companies will permit experienced kingdom businesspeople to apply profits to set in place new kingdom companies and companies for people who come to the Lord.

The following points may be helpful when considering starting up kingdom companies.

Personnel qualifications. 

Since the work is carried out as a company or fellowship of individuals, no one person has to have all the gifts.  Here are essential skills that the people in the company have between them:

§         technical mastery of the company’s trade,

§         professional business experience,

§         knowledge of company law

§         spiritual maturity,

§         cultural and linguistic understanding of the clients.

It makes sense to have a wide variety of people in the company as long as each one thoroughly understands the vision of the company and no one pretends that their weak point is a strong point!  It is ok to have a missions person as long as he is willing to listen and to defer to the businessman in matters of business.  And the businessman has to listen to the mission person when it comes to spiritual and cultural matters.  Decisions by consensus presuppose that every member of the team is willing to learn and to understand every other person’s point of view, and at times defer, even without full understanding, to the opinion of the person who actually knows best.

Meet Felt Needs

Identify the needs of the clients the new company will touch.  Plan to operate in an area of need since this will better ensure success and will permit the company to be better understood by those looking on.  Have a unique product and be a unique person so people know where to go when they need your products, skills or spiritual qualities.

Look Ahead

It takes a company about five years to come to maturity.  So aim to understand what the needs of the potential clients will be in five years time.  This is done by understanding the trends and changes likely to take place.  It is helpful to recognize which countries your focus group aspire to.  For example Cyprus focuses on the UK; Tunisia emulates France.  By understanding the trends in the role model nation and how far behind the aspiring country is, development can be estimated for five years down the road.  For instance it is easy to see the development of shops being displaced by supermarkets.

Understand the Company’s Area of Specialization

Aim to understand the sectors which your company will touch.  If your company will relate to education, understanding the trends is vital.  For instance China needs English teachers now, but by about 2000 it will have trained its own teachers and need very little input from the outside.  If you are involved with the energy sector, knowing the history of energy use patterns, the up to date situation and the trends in government policies are vital to success in this field. 

Trade

In the case of trade, understanding the surplus and demands of the countries which will trade is essential.  Trade fairs are good places to go to meet business men.  Find out what is in demand in people’s minds.  Then develop relationships with business people in order to make deals. 

Be willing to walk away from crooked deals.  Remember that the believer is never to receive a bribe, but there is no comment about giving or paying money out.  However, Christians in this part of the world are willing to give money to help a person actually do what he is supposed to do, but they refuse to give money if it relates to doing something which in itself is dishonest.  Sometimes due to the legal systems there may be a difference between ‘technically illegal’ and dishonest.  In France for instance what is counted as legal is related to the current enforcement of laws rather than to the existence of laws on the books.

Be Professional

The company must be professional.  This has as much to do with dressing properly and knowing how to write contracts with other companies as it does with being consistent when a deal starts to move. 

The mission background people have to understand how the businessman thinks about money.  It is a question of

·       investing rather than giving away,

·       achieving goals through spending rather than go low budget,

·       careful accounting with goals in mind. 

The businessman needs to recognize the spiritual dimension of the goals and integrate that thinking into his sharp business practice.  It is not a question of parallel activities, but writing goals which encompass both financial and spiritual milestones.  For instance the spiritual angle might indicate that lower financial returns will be accepted by working in a geographical or social zone of special spiritual need. 

Some Implications of the Above

1.       Spread the vision of this approach to field people so that they can see how it might work in their areas.  Get feedback to know where they stand and what they see as practical business possibilities.

2.       Propagate the vision to supporting churches in both home and field areas.  Get feedback to draw up a list of potential business people who would like to learn this approach to apply their skills.  Draw up a list with skills and interests.

3.       Have a conference which joins interested field people with business people from supporting churches under the direction of a small team of people who have experience working with kingdom companies. 

4.       Pray for a jelling of at least several companies comprising both businessmen and field mission people.

5.       A potential company may well recognize that they will need to recruit additional people with specialist skills in order to be viable.  The experienced team helps them draw up their vision statement and guides them when they meet obstacles. 

6.       It is important that the people themselves put up capital in evenly divided portions.  If some field people lack capital, then let the businessmen lend then what they need in order to have their fair portion of the shares.  Let a portion of the capital be paid up in order to draw up a business plan and then to run a pilot project.

7.       The business plan is the basis for securing venture capital, and the pilot project will uncover obstacles to be overcome and demonstrate the viability of the plan.  There should be no problem in obtaining relatively high interest, unsecured loan capital once the above is done as long as profitability is proven.

8.       Once the company is in operation and earning its way, further low interest, secured loans can be more easily obtained for development.  Once the company begins earning, set aside a small percentage as returns to the shareholders thus enabling those who took loans for their capital shares to pay them back and for the other investors to taste some fruit of their efforts.  The lion’s share of the profits has to go to paying back the development loans. 

9.       When all loans are paid off, then the company will develop profits for the share holders and those individuals will be free themselves to invest both money and knowledge in new kingdom enterprises.

10.    All companies should be set up carefully so that they can die gracefully.  If it happens during the start up, it means that the loss will have to be divided up in a way that everyone understands.  If it becomes a going concern and takes on loans, let everyone understand what will happen if the company falters.  Aim to let the company die without burning people. 

11.    By that time there should be a number of companies at work which should be able to absorb personnel set free as above.