Influence: What is Venture, and how did it get started?
Ryan Skoog: Venture started with a group of college students who responded to a missionary message by biking across the country to raise money for a missions project.

God has since propelled Venture into a movement of tens of thousands of people in churches around the world who run, bike and hike to raise millions of dollars every year for vulnerable children who are trafficked, starving, refugees and who have never heard the gospel.

Why does the church need more ministry entrepreneurs?
Business people have more to offer missions than just money. At Venture, we’re partnering with economists and CEOs to launch a farm and church-planting program among the Badi people in Nepal. The Badi are one of the most trafficked, unreached people groups on earth. The farms will provide food and jobs to keep people from selling their children into brothels for food. At the same time, we are planting a church with each farm to bring Jesus to those who have never heard.

The overwhelming majority of unreached people live in countries that won’t grant a missionary visa; you need a market skill.

It’s exciting! The Church is just scratching the surface of how business and missions can work together.

Also, we’ve partnered with businesses to develop a state-of-the-art phone app that will help other missions organizations, like Speed the Light and Convoy of Hope, use this concept of logging miles through biking and running to raise funds for missions. It’s called Venture Miles. We are passionate about using innovative technology to maximize our ability to share the gospel.

I believe we will see a new wave of missionaries with market skills and missionary hearts going into restricted-access countries and pioneering the gospel. The overwhelming majority of unreached people live in countries that won’t grant a missionary visa; you need a market skill.

Designers, entrepreneurs, web developers, operations and finance specialists can not only get visas, oftentimes they can make enough money with their skill set that they don’t need to rely on traditional fundraising. We send missionaries this way through Venture. It is effective to train and send today’s marketplace leaders to be tomorrow’s world-changing missionaries.

What advice would you give students and others wanting to start businesses with a social mission?
First, innovate the boring. Find stale business industries, and make them social, creative and mobile. Second, connect your social mission to the product itself, so your customers feel like they are the ones giving when they purchase — not your company. Third, go work for a start-up or small business. It’s like getting paid to learn entrepreneurship. Finally, and most important, fast and pray just like a pastor.

You have started four other companies besides Venture. How are these companies serving a Kingdom purpose?
We use our for-profit companies as funding engines. They fund Venture’s admin expenses, so when people give to Venture, it goes straight to programs and projects. We look at these companies simply as tools to forward missions.

This article originally appeared in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of Influence Magazine. For more print content, subscribe.