When I grew up it was a must to eat all the food on your plate. A rationale behind this was stewardship, but also respect and gratitude for having food on the table – every day.
In affluent societies this tends to be forgotten and not practiced any more, or only to a lesser extent. But in areas where TSME works it is still often a virtue and practice.
Business as Mission is about being a good steward of what has been entrusted to us, as we do business for God and people. Therefore, “TSME is committed in all its investments to integrity, good stewardship and social responsibility.”
One of the companies we serve has about 150 employees and operates in Central Asia. The war in Ukraine has affected people and economies around the world, but this particular country is hit hard due to its proximity to and relations with Russia. Thus, the prayer “give us today our daily bread”, is more than just part of a church liturgy spoken on Sundays.
Rather, a TSME mentor recently shared the following:
“Lately in this capital city, shopping centres have opened up, bringing a western norm into contact with an Eurasian sensibility. These centres include food courts of which some of you are familiar. The company we serve has the contract to clean the shopping centre, which includes cleaning up the food court and the wasted food left on plates.
Some of the cleaning women just cannot throw away this food; they break down in tears when they see it wasted. … This waste, so new to this culture, is even more offensive when you consider the challenge it is to make a living here, now exacerbated by poor wheat harvests in Eurasia last year, and the inability to plant wheat in the midst of a war in Eurasia’s breadbasket, Ukraine.”
Our mentor relates this to Jesus’ admonition to let nothing be wasted:
“When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.” (John 6:12-13)
Business as Mission is constantly asking what it means to steward God’s resources as we do business so it may have a positive impact on various stakeholders through the four bottom lines. There is no cookie cutter approach to this; no “one size fits all”. As TSME founder, Peter Shaukat, puts it: “The theory and practice of BAM is a dynamic, strenuous, ongoing pursuit of our divine calling to steward His resources, all the while being sensitive to a diversity of cultural and business contexts, with a variety of manifestations, each of which brings glory to Him”.
– Mats Tunehag