Work as Worship & Mission

From the first days of knowing Christ, I could not get enough of the Bible and talking to others about Jesus. Church leaders told me, “God must be calling you to be a pastor since you have such a passion for Jesus.” Well, I was reading the book of Acts at the time, describing the whole body called to minister like this. I remember thinking, “We should all have this passion. I’ll be a Christian accountant and show people this normal Christian life for Christian business people.” Shortly after, I went off to school to learn to understand the Bible better so I could share as a businessman. For the next forty years, my occupations wove in and out of the church world as pastor and missionary and also the business world as manager and accountant. I was equally comfortable in both.

At a mission’s conference a few years before I retired, I heard a pastor say, “20% of the people do 80% of the work in the church…and that’s about right. The other 80% should be actively responding to God’s call to the work-world.” This surprised me, and drove me into Scripture to see what it says about our work world. Most all Bible events happened in normal life or in the marketplace, not in the religious setting. What portion of our waking hours during our work week are we at work? If we live all-in for Jesus, it must also include our work-world.

In Genesis 1 & 2 prior to the Fall, God designed each to work, caring for and cultivating what is around us (Gen. 1:28; 2:8, 15). As a good gardener, we find our special way to cultivate our God-given “garden plot” of people so life flourishes. Every moment in the work-place can be pregnant with possibilities. So work with tip-toe expectancy, patiently ploughing and cultivating, weeding and seeding our “garden plot.”

Ephesians 6:5-8 uses the lowest working class in their society (slaves) to illustrate our attitude toward work. Over and above finding meaning in work, we bring meaning to work because we bring the light of Jesus (I like Matthew 4:16, the light of Jesus dawns through our lives). Serve our bosses wholeheartedly with competence and enthusiasm, giving them a full day’s work for a day’s paycheck. And we also worship the Lord our God at work as we walk out authentic Christianity, serving others as we would Christ. This revolutionary 1^st century perspective sets us apart to make a difference in the circle of the world we touch.

What could happen if we trained ourselves to infiltrate our work-world as competent workers who bring the light of Jesus with us? When we see our work as worship, we respond as a priest, a bridge-builder from God to others. We bring God’s presence with us in a “naturally supernatural” way, without judgment and with generosity in service.

This is Reflection #27 in my book, Foundation Stones. I also have a web-site with tools, books and "more than Bible studies" that have helped me to live out of this spiritual DNA, www.JimFredericks.com