Our Vision
BCBP’s vision consists of two equally important parts: Bringing Christ into the marketplace; and, winning the marketplace for Christ.
Bringing Christ into the Marketplace
Christ cannot be brought into the marketplace by putting him in a briefcase, carrying Him to our office, and taking him along to our various business appointments. The only way Christ can be brought into the marketplace is through business people, who have made Christ their Lord, have enthroned Him in their hearts, who are witnesses to the Lord to such a degree that they have become “alter Christus” (another Christ).
Thus the first part of our vision focuses on the work of evangelization of persons through whom Jesus Christ can enter the world of business and the professions. From this it follows that the BCBP is committed to evangelizing business people and professionals. We evangelize through the businessmen’s breakfasts, the Brotherhood Christian Life Program, and succeeding basic formation programs. We also evangelize through our witnessing in the marketplace. People are convinced and evangelized not by mere words but more powerfully by the actions we make consistently with integrity.
We need to remember what Pope Paul VI taught in Evangelii Nuntiandi. Evangelization is not complete when we get a person to recommit his life to Jesus Christ and pray with him for Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Evangelization reaches its completion when that person is integrated into a Christian community, has been formed in the basics of Christian life and equipped to share in the mission of the Church through His community, which in our case is the BCBP. Thus, only when people make their full commitment to the BCBP does their process of evangelization reach completion.
Winning the Marketplace for Christ
The second part of our vision focuses on the environment, the culture, the value system of the business and professions community. What we are dealing with is a culture, a total design for manufacturing and selling, trading, providing services, etc. This culture is expressed through the philosophy of capitalism, free enterprise, profit above all else, production at the lowest possible cost mostly at the expense of the ordinary employees. With respect to customers it is expressed in “caveat emptor” let the buyer beware.
The Lord wants us to so impact the culture of the business world and that of the professions that the very value system will change to one of genuine and sustainable development for all, sharing the benefits of business with all the stakeholders including the little people. Making sure we do not make money by under-paying our staff or by hiring people and firing them before the six-month temporary employment is up then to hire new ones in order to keep labor costs low.
To accomplish this, part of our vision needs men and women with decision-making authority in their places of work. It needs men and women of character, who combine trustworthiness, courage and concern for all stakeholders, but who are willing to be unpopular, to put their own advancement at risk in order to uphold the values of justice, righteousness, and strive for excellence in products and services in the marketplace. The target group of the BCBP are those men and women involved in business and the professions who occupy positions of responsibility of such a type that they can bring about changes in the culture of their own company and field of expertise.