Bill Yeager was hearing a voice inside his head — and not just anybody’s.
“One night I was lying in bed and God spoke to me that I would do business in Africa,” the 28-year-old Montrose computer programmer said. “At first it seemed like an awfully silly idea.”
Yet it kept coming back.
“Charities have been doing amazing things in Africa for a very long time, but the conditions are getting worse,” Yeager said.
“I believe if we can connect normal, everyday Africans to the global economy, it will finally change their lives,” he said.
That was three years ago. Since then, the former Internet specialist has joined the growing, but still uncounted, ranks of the BAM movement — business as a mission.
Yeager — with $40,000 of his own money and $70,000 from investors — has entered into a venture with 1,200 Kenyan farmers to organically grow onions.
He will import the onions to the U.S., where they will go to restaurant chains including Red Robin and Outback.
The Yeager Kenya Group Inc. business model shows Kenyan farmers’ annual income could jump from $500 to $10,000.
Such enterprises, also called Kingdom Companies, are part of a larger wave of social entrepreneurship, with roots 15 to 20 years old.
The distinction between social entrepreneurship, which also advocates capitalism in place of charity, and these business ministries is that BAMs aspire to bring attention and glory to God.
More than money
The combination of commerce and faith is an exciting development, said Steve Rundle, an economics professor at Biola University, a private Christian school in La Mirada, Calif.
“The thing that is new — is that God, through the Holy Spirit, is spontaneously and simultaneously prompting a lot of business people to see their businesses as something more than a way to make money,” Rundle said.
“There is not one charismatic leader out there leading the charge. It’s a lot of people everywhere,” said Rundle, author of the book “Great Commission Companies.”
It isn’t necessarily done through preaching or by association with a church. Business missions simply try to represent Christian-espoused principles of honest dealings, fair labor practices and social justice.
“I’m struck when I read the Bible that I don’t find in it anywhere instruction to convert people or to proselytize,” Rundle said. “Rather you see people spreading God’s justice by helping the poor and the oppressed. ”
Christianity Today reports that, in recent years, at least 800 nonprofit organizations have advocated for combining commerce and faith in stateside ministries and overseas missions.
Dad served in Africa
Yeager’s father, Bryan, the pastor of Grace Community Church in Montrose, served at an African mission with his family when Bill was 7 to 10 years old.
“It sure made an impression in the young me,” Bill Yeager said. “I fell in love with the place and the people.”
His father is chairman of the board of Yeager Kenya Group, and his church is what is known as “a sending church,” a source of donations and oversight.
When Bryan Yeager contrasts this endeavor with his earlier mission in 1987-90, which was primarily devoted to preaching the Gospel rather than meeting earthly needs, he finds the new model a welcome change.
“I think the world has heard from the mouth of Christians about everything we’re against long enough,” Bryan Yeager said. “Now we can be the arms and legs of Christ.”
Fields become war zone
Several weeks ago, on the cusp of the first onion harvest, Kenya erupted into pre-election violence that turned the Yeager partners’ farmlands north of Lake Victoria into a war zone.
“It is absolute pandemonium. There is shooting and killing,” Bill Yeager said. “People I personally know have been tortured, raped and killed. This is Africa. Nothing goes the way you plan it.”
The fields have been trampled. Farmers’ homes have been burned. Some have lost their lands.
“It’s daunted me, but we are not going to give up,” Bill Yeager said. “I’m not going to give up on my friends, employees and farmers.”
“I’ve lost $55,000 so far,” Yeager said. “It’s not about making money.”
However, Rundle said, eventually it is about making a profit.
“It has to be a successful business to do anyone any good,” Rundle said.
Yeager knows this. It keeps him awake at night. He chokes up retelling how his 3-year-old son, Jonah, gave him the $2 from his piggy bank.
“We will get this project going,” Yeager said. “I’ve had a picture in my mind. I see an Africa with paved roads, infrastructure, health care, schooling and careers for its people.”
“That image,” he said, “keeps me going.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
By the numbers
$110,000
The amount of money Bill Yeager invested in Yeager Kenya Group Inc.
1,200
Number of Kenyan farmers growing organic onions
$10,000
Kenyan farmers’ annual income in Yeager’s business model
800
Christianity Today’s number for nonprofit organizations that have advocated for combining commerce and faith
