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A Tex-Mex restaurant in Romania, a medical supply company in a Muslim country, and an Indian outsourcing firm are just some of the ways in which Christians are ministering through business. Besides doing away with the need to raise support through donations, Christian businesses are able to meet needs and go places that traditional missionaries can't.

The New York Times this week covered a new trend in missions: kingdom business. Christians have been publishing on the phenomenon for a few years now, and the movement seems to be growing.

"One businessman from California, Jeri Little, visited Romania in 1988 on a church trip and was moved by the desperate conditions there," The Times reports. "But Mr. Little, a financial planner who now lives in Romania, wanted to do something beyond a quick fix. 'I realized that we needed to not just send them money and create another banana republic dependent on our aid,' he said. 'We needed people to create business.'"

So Little opened up a Tex-Mex restaurant, capitalizing on the then-popular American television show Dallas. "Some of the restaurant's profit this year will be put back into expanding the business, but the rest will go to local aid and ministry projects, Mr. Little said. These [projects] have included opening a kindergarten and day-care center in one of Iasi's poorest neighborhoods."

"The real power of the movement is that it's not donor-funded, it's basically globally funded," one Christian business owner told the Times. "There's no restraint in the capacity of this system, because you avert the donor and plug into globalization."

"The future generation of missionary will be the rank-and-file businessman," Steve Rundle, coauthor of Great Commission Companies, told the Times. "The wheel, he added, has come full circle: many of the first emissaries of the Gospel were tradesmen, not priests."

A different trend is picking up steam in the U.S. It seems to be more about niche marketing than Christian entrepreneurship.

Mark Pinsky of The Orlando Sentinel picks up the story in Florida. "Scores of business owners believe in this kind of affinity marketing, in which people of faith patronize each other. Some use symbols such as crosses, fish, or doves in their ads in the commercial Yellow Pages. Others advertise in Christian publications and directories, such as Florida Christian News and The Shepherd's Guide, a directory with more than a hundred listings that is distributed free."

"Yvonne Larocca, a sales associate with The Shepherd's Guide, says the number of listings in the book is 'definitely growing,'" Pinsky writes. The growth is because "we live in a dishonest world, and Christians have to answer to God. So therefore you have a better chance of them being honest."

But not all Christian businesses behave that way. "Some people think they're going to do better if there's a fish on the door, and it's not always true," says one Christian business owner.

Other U.S. companies prefer to just do business. The News-Herald in Suffolk reports the local Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits will be serving chicken dinners to the homeless this Thanksgiving. "It's the spirit of what is right, as a part of a community and as a Christian," said Hung Ngo, senior vicepresident of operations and franchise development for Saratoga Food Group, which owns the Popeyes chain.

Some say that's a result of the privately-held company's values.

Company founder S. Truett Cathy, 84, operates on the philosophy that biblical principles applied in the workplace can help a company succeed, said Jerry Johnston, a spokesman with the Atlanta-based company.

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49