Finding Meaning in Mission

This edition of M3 Weekly is the latest installment in our series called M3 Journeys, highlighting the experiences of various missional enterprise practitioners. In previous articles, we’ve featured the stories of a variety of business leaders, including some who have traveled from the West to the developing world to build businesses, as well as many in the U.S., establishing enterprises that bless their local communities.

This week, we feature our interview with David, born and raised in the developing world within a people group until recently unreached by the gospel of Jesus. Together with his wife, Grace, David is leading an educational business on the front lines of exploring how missional enterprise can provide a holistic blessing to families and communities in needy places.

The first part of our interview is included below, describing how David and Grace1 began their missional enterprise journey and grew in their vision for missional business. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

M3 Weekly: David, tell us a little about how you first got started in missional enterprise.

David: I think it all started after I became a Christian when I was in college. I had always been seeking something very meaningful in my life. I’m thankful that my parents raised me in a way that gave me a sense of faith and courage, that I didn’t need to worry about just making a living. I could pursue what was truly meaningful.

When Grace and I married, we had both moved far away from our hometown. Both of us had this idea of serving our own people group and serving in mission, so we wanted to come back here. I had this big vision of discipling our ethnic group here in this country.

But about six years ago, we were at the end of things. In America, you’d say “bankrupt,” but in our culture, you never go bankrupt. You just get poor and rely on your parents.

We decided that I would take a position at an English-teaching company run by friends of ours. That position became like an open window to a new perspective and to new relationships. We eventually took over the center’s operation, then became the owners and began expanding it.

That helped us first by producing some income, and second by giving us joy in being with people who weren’t Christians, and had not been directly on my radar for discipling, but with whom I could have natural, genuine conversations about topics like children and education.

Slowly, we started to study the meaning of business, and I began to understand the creation mandate. That expanded both our knowledge of God and of the world. Before then, my mindset had been more narrow. But over time, I began to see a more holistic approach—that we should not only think about what happens after we die, but also about how we live now: with our family, children, money. It took me two or three years to think about how all these things fit together.

M3 Weekly: What does that business look like now, and what would you say are the goals of your business?

David: Our team has six people, and we teach English to children from over 120 families. We can’t get to know every family deeply, but we try to know each child and each family as well as possible.

The first stage is really the “deal” stage: they pay us to teach their children English, so we need to honor that. We prepare carefully and teach well, fulfilling our agreement to provide quality English instruction.

The second stage is about creating a nurturing environment and culture—bringing joy to the children and also having conversations with the parents. We want to help release them from the pressure and anxiety that comes from comparing children at school or worrying about their children’s future.

Now we feel we are growing from just teaching English to becoming comrades with the parents, raising children together. We want to team up with them, learn from each other, and grow the children together. This gives us natural windows to talk about life and witness each other’s lives.

But we keep reminding ourselves that, when we serve, we should not do things to or for people, but with them. That has really helped me think more slowly and strategically: How can I foster deeper, long-lasting impact? Not me making an impact alone, but fostering something with others that produces impact.

M3 Weekly: It sounds like you all are really like a beacon, like a lighthouse to a culture around you that does not have a foundation or a healthy life.

David: Yes, we do want to provide educational resources for families, and English learning is one part, but we want to offer more. For example, there’s a kind of educational philosophy you can’t find at school here. We want to provide that. And on an even deeper level, we want to give them hope for the future. It’s an exciting opportunity because, at its core, education is related to the parents’ philosophy of what brings true happiness. When we are deeply troubled, tasting unhappiness in our own lives, we tend to transfer that pressure onto our children’s education.

So, it may seem paradoxical, but it is logical to me that really only Jesus can solve the educational complex for our children. The cross of Jesus is the real answer to the question of what education should be, and what our children’s development should be.

In future M3 Weekly articles, we’ll continue hearing about the experience of David and Grace, including both joys and challenges they’ve faced, and the things that have helped sustain them in their journey.

Verse of the Week:

“The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.”
— Isaiah 58:11 (NIV)

Let’s pray today for David and Grace, and others like them, that the Lord will guide them, satisfy them, and strengthen them to be an overflowing blessing to the people, families, and cultures around them.