Faith at Work

One of the men in our men's ministry began his talk this morning by introducing himself as an ordained lawyer. That was the point that he and I were trying to drive home to all of our men this morning... to think of themselves as ordained ________ (fill in the blank with whatever it is that they do.). In other words, your work IS your ministry.

To think of your job as your ministry is foreign to many of us. Many of us grew up thinking that only the pastor did ministry. Thankfully, there has been a surge of books and studies that have tried to steer folk away from that sort of thinking.

What we want to get people thinking about is "vocation" or calling. This is a horrible paraphrase, but Martin Luther once said something like, "A cobbler who makes shoes to the glory of God during the week is every bit the minister as a pastor preaching a sermon on Sunday morning." The Bible does not draw a distinction between the sacred and the secular. All work should be for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Paul wrote in Colossians 3:23-24,

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, [24] since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

While God may give you the opportunity to communicate the gospel, hold a Bible study, or wear a John 3:16 button in your workplace, it's more likely that your faith may be exercised by simply doing your job well. Beyond that, it may include "being Christ" to hurting, lost, angry, bitter, fearful, restless, or despairing people. How can Christ use you to minister to those sorts of people in your workplace? What might that look like?

In order to help you with those questions, here are a few links to enable you to discover what your faith at work might look like in your spheres of influence...

Faith In The Workplace (website)
The High Calling (website)
Christian Business Men Committee (ministry website)
How to Build a Ministry through Your Work by Pat Morley at Man in the Mirror
Work and the Man in the Mirror (audio and video messages) by Pat Morley
A Biblical Worldview of Work by Ken Boa
The Theology of Work (print and mp3 audio available) by Robert Rayburn
Working out a Theology of Work by Justin Taylor (also see the related resources at the bottom of the article)
Theology of Work (website) - temporarily unavailable
Business for the Glory of God (book) by Wayne Grudem
God at Work (book) by Gene Edward Veith
Blog posts on Vocation by Gene Edward Veith
Blessings,
Dale