Marketplace Ministry and the Church

After completing my engineering degree, I responded to God’s call to become a pastor. The first eight years went by quickly, and by the grace of God I experienced a time of fruitful ministry. However, as time went by, I started to wonder what impact my sermons were having on the way my congregants thought about and approached their daily work.

They clearly drew strength and encouragement from our various gatherings, but were they developing a uniquely Christian view of the world and their place in it? Did they have any sense of divine calling and empowerment in the one thing that occupies most of their waking hours—their work? Did they understand that glorifying God is not limited to personal piety and faithful church attendance, but extends to their business philosophy and strategy, HR policy, the quality of their goods and services, environmental stewardship, and so on?

Upon reflection, I had to concede that I was committing what Tom Nelson calls “pastoral malpractice.” After pastoring for many years, Nelson confessed to his church:

I had spent the minority of my time equipping them for what they were called to do for the majority of their week. I didn’t mean to engage in pastoral malpractice; my pastoral paradigm had been theologically deficient. As a result, I had been perpetuating a Sunday-to-Monday gap in my preaching, discipleship, and pastoral care.¹

There is a diversity of opinions about the importance of the integration of faith and work to the church’s mission. Some see it as an off-shoot of the so-called “social gospel” which emphasizes good works over gospel proclamation. Others welcome it as a useful bolt-on ministry to keep professionals interested in church life. A growing number, however, are embracing it for what it truly is: the gospel applied to life, also known as “ordinary” Christian discipleship. It is rooted in the Cultural Mandate and is central to both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

The Cultural Mandate

The Cultural Mandate is the ongoing charge to humanity to, in the power and blessing of God, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth as we responsibly subdue and cultivate it (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15).²

Some argue that this mandate does not apply to us in the same way that it did to Adam and Eve because of the Fall, and that the work of the Christian is now strictly to evangelize and make disciples. While it’s true that the Fall had far-reaching consequences that can’t be ignored, we need to be aware of the limitations of these consequences. For example, while Adam’s sin corrupted the image of God in man, it did not revoke or annul this image. While sin compromised humanity’s ability to fulfill the Cultural Mandate in the way God intended—and corrupted our motive from glorifying him to self-glorification (Genesis 11)—God’s calling upon all human beings to develop the earth’s potential remains unchanged.

Furthermore, as John Frame points out in The Doctrine of the Word of God, human beings were the perfect image-bearers of God when the command was given, such that filling and subduing the earth amounted to filling the earth with God’s glory—meaning this mandate was not just cultural, but spiritual. Work is an act of worship. The Fall separated these two aspects of work, leaving human civilization to continue unabated (the cultural aspect), without reference to God’s purpose in creation or concern for his glory (the spiritual aspect).

Throughout the New Testament, however, Christ’s redemption restores the unity between the cultural and spiritual aspects of the mandate in his followers’ lives. This is why Paul instructed the church in Colossae to work wholeheartedly—ultimately, all work is unto the Lord, a spiritual endeavor, an act of worship (Colossians 3:23).

The Great Commandment

Let us consider the implications of the Great Commandment in light of the fact that we spend most of our time at work.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
—Luke 10:27

At the very least, loving our neighbor at work means demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit to those around us—being patient with colleagues, showing kindness to subordinates, being joyful through challenges, and so on. However, an honest reading of the command (“with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind”) demands much more—which leads us to ask how believers can love their neighbors through the substance of their work and not just their behavior at work.

Martin Luther’s exposition of Psalm 147 assures a city that, “God strengthens the bars of your gates” (Psalm 147:13). Luther concludes that “good government, good city ordinances, and wise rulers” are all part of God’s plan to protect a city.³ In other words, every time a police officer puts on his uniform, he is in a very real sense doing the Lord’s work of protecting the city. I’ve seen firsthand how this revelation gives Christians a genuine sense of “work as worship” and helps them answer the question of loving their neighbor through their work.

The Great Commission

One of the biggest concerns in any big city is crime. In my part of the world, those who can afford it live behind high walls and invest a lot in other security measures. This makes it nearly impossible to obey Jesus’ instruction to make disciples of all nations. In the context of big cities, the people we are meant to be reaching just aren’t accessible!

That is, of course, until Monday morning, when they leave their fortresses and gather in offices (or virtual meetings), warehouses, hospitals, construction sites, performance theatres, and courtrooms—and stay there for eight to twelve hours a day, five to six days a week!

The most effective thing church leaders can do to bring in the lost is to help our people understand they are God’s missionaries and the workplace is their mission field. The “secret” to world evangelization is not the coming of the lost to church (you may have noticed they generally aren’t interested!), it is the going of the saved to the places where God has strategically stationed us.

To God’s faithful shepherds of the flock, I leave you with this challenge from Leslie Newbigin’s book, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth. Referring to Christians in the marketplace as undercover agents, he says:

Undercover agents need a great deal of skill. We do not spend enough of our energies in training undercover agents. A psychiatrist who was a devout Christian was recently asked whether her Christianity informed her work in the consulting room. She replied: “But that would be unprofessional conduct.” What kind of preparation is needed to enable a psychiatrist to discern the ways in which her profession could be subverted from its allegiance to other principles and become an area where the saving work of Christ is acknowledged? What would be the specific kind of training for a teacher in the public schools, for an executive in a big corporation, for a lawyer or a civil servant? Do we not need to invest much more of the Church’s resources in creating the possibility for such training? It cannot be done by clergy, though they have a part. It calls for the vigorous development of lay programs in which those in specific areas of secular work can explore together the possibilities of subversion. I know that much has been said along these lines, and yet there is little to show for it. In small enterprises of this kind in which I have been involved I have found that there was great enthusiasm once the purpose was understood. For undercover agents, it is a great thing to know that you are not alone.

Notes

1. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-day-i-confessed-pastoral-malpractice/

2. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-creation-mandate/

3. Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavor