By Bill Peel (read Bill’s debate with Progressive Christian Channel blogger John Shore here.)
When we forget the importance of the workplace to God’s plans, the cause of Christ suffers. This is both biblically and historically true. Thankfully, Christians worldwide are beginning to understand the tactical significance of the workplace to God’s Kingdom plans.
In Workplace Grace we propose four radical ideas that change the way people think about work and evangelism.
One: For most Christians, the workplace is their most strategic place for Kingdom influence. You don’t need to quit your job and move to a Third World country in order to make a significant contribution to the Kingdom of God and help fulfill the Great Commission. God calls most of His people to workplace vocations that meet a variety of human needs — emotional, physical, and spiritual — and He wants to use them there for His Kingdom purposes.
Two: Evangelism is a process, not an event. It’s a journey that takes place over a course of time as a person makes a multitude of small, incremental decisions leading to faith in Jesus.
Three: Our job in evangelism is to discover where God is already at work in people’s lives and join Him there. Being a person of spiritual influence can begin with something as easy as having a cup of coffee with a colleague, or listening compassionately when a customer shares why she’s had a hard week, or doing something above the call of duty for a boss or employee who’s under the pile. We need not be the office pariahs, poised to attack unsuspecting souls at the water cooler with Gospel tracts. Instead, small actions and simple acts of service in the course of everyday life have a bigger impact than the “spiritual interruptions” that we often attempt out of guilt.
Four: Becoming a person of spiritual influence is every Christian’s calling–not just the responsibility of a gifted few. The early church did not depend on professional evangelists. First century evangelists were the thousands of men and women who followed Jesus without fanfare or notoriety and shared the gospel with their colleagues, customers and clients in their workplace. And because they did, the early church grew from a few hundred to well over one-half million in less than 70 years. If Christians in the workplace today will seize the spiritual opportunities they have, who knows what extraordinary things God will do with the ordinary workplace moments they give to Him!
Reprinted from Center for Faith and Work, LeTourneau University. Image: CFW.
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