God’s double agents

Sunday we’re in church. Monday we’re at work.
Is there any connection?

Many people reading this article will spend 80,000 hours at a job.

For some it will be drudgery; for others, a calling – a place to exercise gifts and skills.

In an average week many people spend more time with their co-workers than with their spouse. The workplace may be their primary community. To some extent they will be defined by their work (“What do you do?”).

Unfortunately, it’s a part of life that the church often neglects.

God’s week has seven days

We have been taught that God worked six days and then took one day off. God gets Sunday, and the rest are ours – five for our jobs and one for yardwork.

Some of us have also picked up a sense that people who are truly committed to the Lord go into “full-time Christian service,” while those with regular jobs are second-class citizens whose role is to “pay, pray and obey.”

If you happen to be a layperson who is serious about faith, chances are the church will enlist you to teach Sunday school, serve on a committee or lead worship. “Ministry” happens within the bounds of the congregation or denomination (the “church gathered,” as R. Paul Stevens from Regent College terms it). Little attention is invested in the “church dispersed.” Rarely is daily work recognized as ministry.

Rare, too, is the teaching that all work is service to God. As the reformer William Tyndale said, “There is no work better than another to please God; to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a cobbler, or an apostle.” Wherever we work, God is there, wanting us to “press the kingdom” into our daily tasks and relationships.

Deep down, though, we all know that God wants people in regular jobs. If we all became paid ministers there wouldn’t be room for us.

C. Peter Wagner, a leading evangelism promoter, contends that only about 10 percent of Christians actually have the gift of evangelism. What, then, are the other 90 percent to do? Are we just worker bees who toil at daily jobs so we can donate to the support of the 10 percent who have the gift of evangelism?

Clearly we are all called to bear witness to the transforming gospel. But that doesn’t mean just evangelism. As in real estate, we’re all called to show the property, even if not everyone can close the sale.

God has something in mind for the rest of us. God wants us to be emissaries in the daily workplace. God’s week has seven days, not just one.

God goes to work

The first page of the Bible shows God busy at work. Only on page two are people introduced, and then “in the image of God.” Creativity, innovation and work all express something of the character of God. God is also a sustainer who makes continued life possible (very often through the jobs of people like you and me).

In Exodus 35:30–35 we meet Bezalel and Oholiab, whom God filled “with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts, to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship.” Their tribe is further endowed with skills as “embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers, all of them master craftsmen and designers.”

Anyone who is a carpenter, house framer, bricklayer, metalworker or textile worker can see themselves in that passage of Scripture.

In the Gospels we find a lot of working folk – in fact, most of the action revolves around labouring people like fishers, tentmakers, pruners and merchants. The clergy are notably absent, except as villains.

The Apostle Paul extols the diversity of the Holy Spirit’s working class: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all people” (1 Corinthians 12:4–6).

Whether we work on an assembly line or in an office, we are called to represent God. That is our outpost of mission. Christians in the workplace are like God’s double agents. They have a foot in the church and a foot in the world. The workplace is where we represent God’s creative genius, and the Christian virtues we carry with us.

Too often secular work is seen as little more than another place to proselytize, as if there is no intrinsic value in the work itself. But that is where we do the work of God by providing the goods and services that people need. That is where we become God’s junior partners in the ongoing work of sustaining creation.

Some clergy resist this because they fear that “workplace ministry” will distract members from congregational participation. William Diehl, author of The Monday Connection, found this not to be the case in his denomination. An extensive survey showed that members who saw their daily work as Christian service tended also to be stronger financial contributors and participants in other congregational activities.

Questions to ask

Being God’s co-creators raises some interesting questions the church can help us examine:

What public good will my work accomplish today? Is my work an important part of God’s economy? Is the world a better place because of the work I do?

Does my work contribute to the kind of world God intended, where deserts become fertile fields, where parched lands become glad, where waste spaces are comforted, as the Old Testament prophets say? Does the work we do enhance life rather than harm it?

Where do we find brokenness in the workplace? How can we deal redemptively with failure, whether that be a bankruptcy or a failed employee?

The church can breathe new life into daily work – even into whole careers – by helping members reclaim the workweek for God.

Imagine a business owner seeing the company not as merely a means of profit but as a calling to provide meaningful jobs to bolster a community’s economic base. Imagine a garbage collector seeing the job as making the world a cleaner place. Imagine a hospital orderly believing that cleaning soiled linens and bedpans is a vital part of God’s healing process.

How the church can help

The church expands God’s reach when it validates, affirms and celebrates the Monday-to-Friday activities of its members.

Pastors can visit members at lunch or coffee break. That sends a signal that this part of life is important to the church leadership. Pastors, meanwhile, gain insights (and some great sermon illustrations) into the habitat where members spend the bulk of their waking hours.

How about planning a series of short “workplace testimonies” where selected members explain “How I connect Sunday and Monday.” It will be illuminating for the congregation, as well as a great opportunity for the selected speakers to ponder how their faith impacts their work.

Many churches commission people for mission work or voluntary service. Why not do the same for Fred the firefighter or Theresa the teacher or Sally the social worker?

Plan a Sunday school elective on the theme of work. (See below for resources.) People will be delighted by the chance to talk about their work in the context of the church.

Church newsletters can carry anecdotes featuring members’ jobs. A budding photographer in the church can take shots of members at work (or of where retired members used to work) and mount them on a display titled “Our dispersed church.”

Work strikes a responsive chord in worship planning (and not just for Labour Day weekend). A church in Ontario invited members to show up one Sunday in work garb. The array of uniforms was quite a sight – Hydro workers, nurses, auto mechanics, medical technicians, a chef, even a Home Hardware clerk with a loud red jacket. When everyone stood together it was a dramatic illustration of the diverse cultures which the congregation’s influence penetrated every week.

Another option is to use “tools of the trade” for a worship display, or a showcase of goods and services put forth by members during the week.

The exit is an entrance

Even the benediction can send an important signal. Greg Pierce, a Chicago publisher and Ministry of Daily Life activist, has said that it’s important to “get the dismissal rite right.”

One church does it this way: “Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are NOT dismissed; we are NOT just free to go – Christ sends us. Go forth into the world in the power of the Spirit; go to help and heal in all that you do.”

Another church has a sign posted over the main exit door that says “Service Entrance.” But it’s posted on the inside, not the outside. That way it’s the last thing worshipers see as they leave the auditorium, reminding them that as they leave worship they are heading out into the world where they will spend the next week as ministers.

Wally Kroeker is editor of Marketplace magazine and author of God’s Week has Seven Days: Monday Musings for Marketplace Christians. He attends River East MB Church, Winnipeg.