This is always a hard one to answer. We can’t say you should join, but we can give you reasons to consider it. You should consider joining MDE if you:

MDE provides a variety of services to you and connects you to vetted resources that enable you to be missional in the unreached community to which God has called you. These services vary depending on whether you are serving the unreached community as a disciple-making employee, BAMer, or community developer, but generally include:

DME

• Individual Membership: $50/month
• Couples’ Membership: $75/month

BAM

• Venture Membership: $300/month

Any country you do! Our mission is to serve our members in whatever country God places them. Our only requirement is that the community be one in which there is no vital, self-sustaining witness for Christ. We currently have members in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

For some folks—none. We use these two terms to distinguish between a member who is working for someone else as an employee and a member who is running a business as an entrepreneur. Both develop relationships with people in their unreached communities (co-workers, employees, vendors, bosses, customers, neighbours, etc.) and are committed to sharing the love and message of Christ. However, while some needs of disciple-making employees and BAMers are similar, some are not. So we provide each group with similar, but different, services designed to help them meet their unique needs.

We use the term “disciple-making employee” (or “DME”) to describe a person who obtains a job in an unreached community, a job that he or she enjoys and is trained to do, for two purposes: first, to earn money to support themselves financially and second, to engage in an intentional disciple-making or church planting effort in that community. This is in essence what the apostle Paul did—making tents to support himself as he traveled from city to city to proclaim the gospel.

We do not recruit people to complete a process that we run in order to place them on a team we’ve built in a particular place we’ve picked in order to engage in a specific project we oversee.

We are a service organization that partners with and supports believers God has called to engage the unreached through the marketplaces or workplaces of their communities. You tell us the place to which God is calling you and we connect you with fellow believers (either nationals or expats) who are engaged in disciple-making and who will draw you into their church planting community.

We connect you with training materials and programs that others have developed or run. (There are many good ones out there, therefore we don’t need to build our own.) The training can happen in a time or place that you choose, in person or online. If you have already been trained or have experience in an area, we don’t require you to be trained again in that area.

In fact, the only thing we require of our members is that they commit to growing in Christ and to sharing the gospel in an unreached community with those who need to hear it. Otherwise, we are here to serve you—not the other way around.

“BAM” is an acronym for Business and Mission. Some use the term Business for Transformation (“B4T”) and Business as Mission. Others use the term Kingdom Businesses. All these names and acronyms are labels used by different groups for endeavours striving to bring financial and spiritual value to unreached communities. At MDE, we don’t care what label you use. We partner with believers who have launched, or desire to launch, profitable, reproducible businesses and who are committed to making disciples in unreached communities.

We believe there are many. However, our primary distinctive is that we partner with you as you build, launch, and scale your BAM venture. We connect you with advisors and coaches, but we go beyond that by connecting you with believers who help you resolve specific issues and achieve your goals. We find answers to your legal questions. We have an accountant answer your QuickBooks questions. We have a combination of MDE staff and volunteers develop a legal structure for your business or work out an arrangement to use or plug into ours. We build a team around you that meets with you regularly to move your venture forward. Many BAMers understand what they need to do but don’t have the resources to actually do it. Our corporate mission is to step into that gap.

In addition, we have developed a step-by-step process that we utilize to help you organize your business, hone your product or service, sharpen your business plan, and articulate your vision and mission. We understand that a partnership creates responsibilities for each partner. MDE commits to providing our services in a timely, professional, effective manner.

We are not a mission agency; we are a service organization made up of business people seeking to be missional. We understand both the vital role entrepreneurs play in the evolving marketplace missions movement and their unique needs. We have built our organization to meet those needs and to foster a community that values and supports missional business people.

Every pastor desires to see his congregation engaging more deeply in their faith. MDE offers an avenue for those believers with marketplace giftings and experiences to move the Gospel forward by volunteering with those talents alongside MDE members who are building missional businesses in unreached communities. Best of all, they can do this from the comfort of their home or business!

Church partnership with MDE is primarily about making the opportunities to get involved known to your members. MDE depends on our network of volunteers to serve as advisors and mentors. You can add MDE to your list of ministries, highlight opportunities on a regular basis, or even invite an MDE staff member to speak at your church.