My Dirty Little Secret: How to be a Christian in the Workplace – Part I

Go and make disciples; this is not a new teaching. We preach go and make disciples in your community, as you travel and at your job. We as the body of Christ are carrying out our great commission and as startling as it may be, we have developed some bad habits along the way.

Often times, people have great goals, but as time goes by, means and methods need to be re-orientated and re-strategized. We have all heard a sermon that as Christians in the workforce, we should reach out to people at our jobs and invite them to our church, our small group, and of course our closest Starbucks for a frappuccino, I mean coffee. This is not a bad thing and we should be inviting our co-workers to our Christian events, but this cannot be our main method for being a Christian in the workplace. What I am about to say may shock you, but our main method for being a Christian in the workplace, is to be a Christian in the workplace. Mind blown. But seriously, what does this mean?

Entrepreneurship is one of my greatest passions and many times I get asked to speak on the topic of work. Pastors expect me to speak about how to reach out to those who don’t know Jesus at your job or how to live a more moral and ethical life at their workplace, even how to function better as a business person in their field. But I need you to see that this way of thinking is not the bigger picture. My passion for “work” is a passion for building meaningful things in the earth; it is a passion first seen in Genesis 2:15, 19-20. God gave to Adam the gift of work. It is a gift because God invited Adam to be a part of something bigger than himself. God made Adam to experience the joy of work and creation. God didn’t need Adam to name the animals, I think God knew a lion would be a lion, but God was inviting Adam into what his purpose was going to be. Adam was privileged to go to work with his Dad. We believe in a God who is actively involved in the lives of his people and his creation. God is busy in the earth and one of the greatest ways we can get to know him better is to be present in our workplaces and get to work with our Father.

We have bought into the lie that there is a sacred and secular divide in our Christian life. We are taught that our “spiritual” life does not spill over into our professions because we have been brought up in a world where our spiritual-life and work-life are at odds with each other. Yes, it is important to be a Christian at work by working hard, loving others, not gossiping around the water-cooler, having a good attitude and the most important act of evangelizing to lost co-workers. However, this has resulted in people not thinking past a routine or their work just being a “job.” While I would love for every company to have a place for prayer and Bible studies and jobs where people have the freedom to share their faith openly, but if this is our work “promised land” then we are living below what God intended for us.

So how what do we do? We first become a people who connect holistically with Christ. We do not stop glorifying him at work, or put parameters around the ways we can or should glorify him. When we are putting numbers into excel spreadsheets, making sales as a sales person, or helping on the phone as a customer service representative we are doing it all to the glory of Jesus. One of the greatest examples of someone doing this is Daniel. Daniel brought excellence to his work space, and before you say we preach about Daniel all of the time, I submit to you that we do not consistently teach and exemplify how to live like him. Daniel made what his boss did better. Even though his boss was an ungodly man, Daniel made him look good! How do we change our job into ministry? By not limiting our mission to focus on reaching more people and inviting them to church, we can bring excellence and change to our workplace. There can be no separation in this. There are so many facets to bridging the gap and I look forward to unpacking them all in this series, but before we can begin, we must see the big picture and acknowledge that our Father gave us the gift of work and it goes beyond bringing more people into the church building.