11/3/25 - 2119: The Global Kingdom Impact of Business

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place, where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: So is God pro business? Did God create business? Is running a business a kingdom idea? Can business be used to be a blessing to others all over the world? Yes. Yes. And yes. Business is a vehicle for flourishing around the world and fulfills the cultural mandate from Genesis 3.

Being in business is being on a mission from God. A mission for being a blessing to yourself, your family, your employees, your vendors, your customers, and your community. Being in business is being on mission. Speaking of being on mission, Steve Adams joins us today to talk about his organization, International Business as Mission, and about a summit that starts this Wednesday with over 37 incredible speakers and contributors. Steve Adams, welcome to iWork4Him.

Steve Adams: Thank you Jim and Martha. It's an honor to be here.

Jim: Hey, before we start talking about the IBAM Conference and IBAM, your organization, how did you come to be a follower of Jesus?

Steve Adams: We lived in Lansing, Michigan. My dad was an auto worker at General Motors, and no one in our family was a believer. I was at a big high school. I was like the top athlete in this big high school - basketball and football. I'll never forget it. My dad said we're moving to this small town and it's at end of eighth grade. I have to leave all my friends from kindergarten. We gotta move to this small farm town called Dansville, Michigan.

And we moved there. And that summer - our next door neighbor was a bivocational pastor. He was a master plumber and a pastor, and his kids, three boys, and we had three boys, and our ages lined up perfectly - and they invited me to vacation Bible school that summer in 1978. I was 14 years old. And at the end of the week, Dennis Quarters, his name, he just, he laid out the gospel and I was convicted that I was a sinner and needed to repent and follow Christ.

And I did. And that was on a friday and on Sunday, me and three of my friends all got baptized in church there that weekend, and I was the first Christian in my family. So I'm G1 as we say in our family. And then my mom and dad a few years later, who, my uncle died prematurely at a very young age, they became believers as well, and then one of my brothers did as well.

Martha: Wow. That's awesome. That is such a great legacy that God started writing in your family. So I'm sure there's a lot that can be filled in between to go from a young athlete getting to know Jesus and then becoming very passionate about business. How did business become your passion?

Steve Adams: That's a great question. I went on and played football in college on a scholarship and really wasn't discipled in high school, so I floundered. First couple years of college, same way. And then I met my wife, and my girlfriend then, and she was a cheerleader - the football player cheerleader thing. And she just had a godly, no compromise faith in the midst of all of this secularism around her. And I was drawn to that. And so the last two years of my undergrad degree I got a 4.0, got serious about what I was doing, cleaned up my life and then when I got outta school, we got married and I got in a really great church where I was discipled finally.

And I chose business as an undergrad degree. And when I was ready to graduate, I had four job offers in various fields, and I went into corporate banking because I had an inkling then I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I thought that I could learn the most about it, as a corporate banker. So I did that, got my MBA in finance at night while I was being a credit analyst, which is brutal, yeah, the late eighties were brutal for me. And and that's how it happened.

And then - I'm gonna try to shorten the story - over that, over the 14 years I was a corporate lender and loan manager. I was a regional bank president in my thirties. I just saw how many entrepreneurs were destroying their families. Like you, you talked about it, Jim, when we had you on the summit, about your business destroying your marriage. And I saw that, and God just put a burden on my heart for that and more and more thinking that.

And then I remember I had a big closing, the biggest deal I'd ever done in my life. On the way home, it was like - and I'm pretty conservative, orthodox theology kind of guy - it was like God reached through the windshield and said, I want you to quit and leave this. And over time I just sensed him calling me out of banking to be an entrepreneur, for ministry to entrepreneurs.

I didn't know what it looked like. So that's how that happened. And we left our, I left the bank. We moved two little kids to another state. We got into a franchise pet business. Eight years into that, I'm on a mission trip to Thailand and God just breaks me, and my pastor said, I think God's calling you to missions. And that's where it all started.

Jim: So you now run an organization called IBAM.org. What does IBAM stand for?

Steve Adams: International Business as Mission and the fundamental core concept is we believe that business is ministry and that God can work through a Christ follower, apprentice, Jesus follower, in a business setting and have a gospel impact in their community.

And how it originally started was I would interact with missionaries. I won't say how and why and all that, but saying here, we have such a need. We have these believers. We start these house churches and they have no economic sustainability at all. And so they said, could you help us? And so I went to Southern Russia. And before I went, I met a guy named Michael Bayer, his organization in Atlanta. They did business as mission, learned their process. I went, and I went, God, I know this is what you called me to do as I left Krasnodar, Russia, by Sochi, in 2007.

And that organization ended up giving me their curriculum 'cause they were gonna do other things. And it was out of that first trip where I realized what IBAM could become. And so basically what we are today is an accelerator ministry to church planning movements. So we help accelerate these church planning movements.

Jim: So why do you think business is a mission from God?

Steve Adams: Wow. Really pointed question. I love it. Business puts you in a position to impact a lot of people. You have people who supply you. You have people who work for you, and you have people who buy from you. And that's what we see in like the developing nation context that we've worked.

We've worked in Western China. We've worked in Indonesia, we've worked in Southeast Asia, we've worked in Latin America, we've worked all over the world. Those are three common things that you see everywhere. You get in the US. It's a little more developed. You might have investors and banks and things like that, but one of my mentors from Australia in ministry said, really, who is your neighbor?

When you're in business. You have a lot of neighbors. A lot of people. And it's an opportunity for you to show up and be Jesus in multiple settings. And I, we've talked before about business discipling you, you have an opportunity every day to not represent Jesus well with all the pressures of business. So I believe being in a business gives you a massive opportunity to influence people into the kingdom.

Martha: Such a good word. When we talk about mission, it is really a critical word and one that each of us really needs to better understand in our own lives. Jim and I serve on the board of directors for the US Christian Chamber of Commerce because they help its members see how their work is their mission, and how to best live that out every day.

The US Christian Chamber has ongoing virtual events to help reinforce our mission and in 2026 is hosting an in-person event in Orlando. For details, go to swc2026.com, code iWork4Him to save 10% and we will see you there. Jim and I are gonna be the MCs.

Jim: Yeah. Steve, you gotta get registered. There's gonna be a Black Friday deal coming up. All right, so this week you launch your first summit, your first IBAM summit, with all the details online at ibam.org/summit. Whatcha trying to accomplish?

Steve Adams: Great question. There's two things.

One, clearly we're trying to expand our influence among believers globally to consider business as mission as a viable mission strategy. And part of that, one of the big challenges we have is we raise money for helping launch new businesses in places like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and Indonesia and China and wherever, Zambia, Africa, wherever we are.

So it's a way to engage people at a very small commitment level and build a broader donor base. So that's one reason we do that. But the second reason, and equally and maybe even more important, is we wanna be a blessing to others to help them understand that there is no false dichotomy between what you do on Sunday in church and what you do on Monday at work.

I've heard you say it should be TGIM. Thank God it's Monday because that's where we spend the vast majority of our time and it's something like over 40 years, 88,000 hours. There's no way God made a mistake and that's just in the trash dumpster in terms of time investment.

Jim: And that's only if you believe that retirement is biblical, Steve. We have that conversation

Martha: (laughing) .I

Jim: That 88,000 hours is only until you're 65 and that's when the world is just opened up in front of you to do so many incredible things.

Steve Adams: Oh, no. I agree. I got four more years and then I got a whole more...

Martha: that's right. Another chapter. Okay, so as we talk about the summit, you have over 37 speakers that are going to be a part of that from all over the world. What are some of the high level things that they're gonna be speaking about?

Steve Adams: It's different people talking about similar things but their ages and their cultures are different. I had a lady named Buki from London, who's Nigerian, talk about the business she started in London and just the challenges of overcoming all the difficulties in establishing a business and walking her faith out in the midst of that.

I had a guy named Kerry Summers who started the Museum of the Bible, raised the money, worked with the Greens, talk about the wisdom of the book of Nehemiah in business. But a lot of people, I'm asking 'em a core question is, how does business disciple them? Why do they believe that business is mission? And how do they integrate their faith? The older folks, looking back, how did they manage their family and their children and how are they becoming legacy building grandparents?

And then for the young folks, they're looking for encouragement and models from others, like how did they do it? That's really the goal. We want people to come away and say, wow, I wanna watch all 37 of these and I wanna have the time to do it. And that's where the fundraising comes in, 'cause you buy it for $27 and you get all this wisdom.

Jim: And we're talking with Steve Adams today about a summit that starts this week. It launches at ibam.org/summit. I believe you're releasing stuff on the fourth, fifth, and sixth, right?

Martha: Yep. And we have a special link, Jim, that we'll put in the show notes that will help people get there.

Jim: Yes. And we're releasing the show early this week 'cause we wanted everybody that listens to our podcast to get onto the summit, some of the speakers, 37 speakers, are phenomenal. A lot of people we've interviewed right here, but it's been years since we've heard from 'em. I can't wait to hear from 'em again. You're talking, this is an international summit. How many countries do you think will get to be involved?

Steve Adams: I don't know. I don't have the statistics on yet.

Jim: What are you hoping for? What are you hoping for?

Steve Adams: I'm hoping at least a couple dozen because our partners around the world have been interviewed. I'm actually, after we do this, I'm interviewing our partner in Indonesia, tomorrow, half around the world. And these guys are sharing these with their networks. So maybe I'm not thinking big enough, maybe it's 60, 70 countries.

Jim: Now you're talking. That's right. Yeah.

Steve Adams: Yeah. Yeah. And we hope, in one week we went from 400 to like 2,800 registered for it. We're hoping for at least 10,000 registration.

Jim: That's fantastic. ibam.org/summit.

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Martha: All righty. So Steve, when you get up in the morning and you start working on teaching business owners and leaders about the business being a mission assignment from God, what is your inspiration? Do you have some stories that you can share with us?

Steve Adams: Yeah. You mean, some of the people we've worked with over the years or? Yeah. Yeah. One of them is Aziza. And that's all I'm gonna say. I can't say what country she's in, because she's in a part of the world where the old version of KGB is pursuing her and everybody in their network. Pretty difficult. So our partner in that part of the world is planting churches all across this region and major capitals and sending college graduates out into the mission field.

And they're starting businesses with IBAM to do that. And this young lady has gone from one city in one country to five countries, six cities, with an online business that helps professionals who forget to get gifts for their wives. That's what she provides. And so it's chocolates and flowers and things like that, and it's been so exciting to watch her over the last three years just blossom from a young, not confident woman, not sure how business works in ministry, to, she has people in five or six countries now and she has so many God stories where she was able to share her faith, lead people to Christ.

So Aziza is one, and I got one other one. His name is Soiron. He lives in Indonesia and he started a helmet and shoe cleaning business across the street from a university. And in Indonesia, they have a lot of these scooters and he said his big focus is, I'm gonna do excellent work. I'm gonna treat people well. I'm gonna build relationships with them. And when he said his whole strategy is, they get to know him, they trust him, and they start to tell him their problems.

And all he does is he, it's a very subtle thing, he turns the phrase and says, would you like me to tell you how God's helped me solve my problems? And he's got an incredibly productive ministry through that business. And I remember going and having him share that story, and me and two other guys who were in our sixties just sat back and said, we flew halfway around the world to have a 25-year-old teach us more about evangelism than we've learned our whole life. So every day I wake up, that stuff motivates me. Those stories.

Jim: What's cool about that, not only are they getting to share the gospel, but they're providing quality service. They're blessing their employees that they've got, they're blessing their families, they're blessing their community. They're blessing the vendors that they buy stuff from, their customers that they do stuff for, and they're making money that they spend in their community. So that's the kingdom. Absolutely. That's the kingdom in action.

And that's really what the IBAM summit is all about. IBAM.org/summit. That's what it's all about. For those listening, Steve, and they may be listening after the summit is over, will there be access to those incredible speaking sessions after the summit's over?

Steve Adams: Yes. Yes. So there's gonna be a period of time where it's open and I think it's it's only $27, which is the cost of a good quality book. You're basically going to get 37 books. That's how I would argue, because you're gonna get 37, 20 to 40 minute interviews, people giving you their best wisdom.

Jim: Wow. Anything else that anybody needs to know about the upcoming summit this week?

Steve Adams: No, I would say it's free. Register. And if you listen to one video, it might change your life.

Martha: And we'll put that special link in the show notes for everybody to help you to find this summit. We're really excited to be able to participate in it and again, just a another way that God is showing us to lift up what he's doing and to hear the messages that have been prepared for each and every one of us, and we will never be the same. Thank you Steve.

Jim: Steve Adams with IBAM.org. Thanks for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for sharing the summit. Thanks for letting us be a part of the summit. We encourage all of you to check out the summit online ibam.org/summit. You got a couple of days to get registered if you're listening to this when we release it the week of November the fourth.

Thank you, Steve. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.