A Challenge for Churches, Friends, and Women in the Workplace

Working Women Can Be a Light in the Workplace

And this is not in jest: women in the workplace who do know Jesus can be a great source of support to those who may not. These initiatives, in truth, provide opportunities to reach others who feel a deep need for friendship but who may not be regular churchgoers.

All this is not to say that a church shouldn’t also have a broader ministry to everyone in the workplace, not just women. That’s valuable, too. But in practice, those “marketplace ministries” often become a sort of men’s ministry. And don’t get me wrong: we need men’s ministries! (It will have to be a whole other blog, but there is an epidemic of men who also are starved for friendship, and who have few close friends other than their wife.)  But working women rarely get the unique personal support they are longing for in a co-ed “marketplace ministry” environment.

So what do we do with this? Well, if you are a friend of a woman in a demanding job, invite her and her family over for dinner and ensure that there’s someone who can help play with the kids while you’re lingering over coffee. If you are a church, consider something that would equip and encourage this group. And if you are the woman in the demanding job, seek out some of the great online resources and in-person communities out there (a few ideas below), so you can be refreshed and renewed to head back out on that business trip next week, knowing that you have the fellowship and support you need at home.*

A few key resources: 4Word (a large ministry providing community and content for Christian women in the workplace, including online and via local chapters around the U.S., mentoring, podcasts, and more), Thrive Today (resources to empower Christian women in the workplace to grow in faith and influence, including Thrive Today Magazine), and Christian Working Women (online encouragement, equipping and empowering for Christian women in the workplace, including online Bible studies).

*We don’t know exactly what percent of working-age women work full time, as it depends on how “working-age” and “full-time” is defined, and no one data set includes all necessary data from the same year. These back-of-the-envelope ratios are calculated from various  2016–2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics data sets for women age 20-69.

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