Author: Phill

Travel Light

/ Phill

http://globalopps.org/tmbriefs/bags.png

Leave Your Baggage Behind

“IT’S a LIE. The sign in front of our new church building is a lie,” the pastor declared to his congregation. “It reads First Baptist Church. It should say, The Place Where the First Baptist Church Meets.” He had a good point. Ones understanding of what the church is influences how he participates in his church and community.

When working in another culture it is even more important to understand the difference between the essence of the church and cultural expressions of the church. We may not recognize how God is moving because we are looking for something familiar and comfortable. Worse, we may be tempted to make the church in another culture conform to our liking. In the process we make it alien to the people of that culture.

Keep It Simple

Brian Hogan, an unreached peoples church planter, identifies two major obstacles to successful church planting. COMPLEXITY – what we are doing is too complex. Church planters need to strip away the cultural elements to the bare New Testament essentials. HOLY SPIRIT – because of a deep distrust of the Holy Spirit to do his work in the life of believers, foreigner churchmen set up barriers blocking new believers from leadership. When complexity is removed, and we trust the Holy Spirit, God will shape the church to best serve in that culture.

In the Global Opportunities GO Equipped Tentmaking course we dedicate several sessions to the essence of the church. For instance, George Patterson identifies seven key elements that define every church. Other elements may be good, but they are not required. Even the essentials may be expressed differently from culture to culture.

If you had to identify the essence of the church, what practices would be on your list?

In Conclusion

While pondering this subject I recalled two teachings from my childhood. I guess I had the answer all along.

What I Learned in Sunday School
“Here’s the church, here’s the steeple;  
Open the door and see all the people; 
You can have a church without a steeple,
But you can’t have a church without the people.”

Jesus said, “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”

Phill Sandahl

God’s Whole Life Policy

/ Phill

Phill Sandahl

What Is Secular Work?

In the previous article Chris worked in an everyday vocation not connected to the church. Often this is referred to in today’s parlance as a “secular” job because it was not connected to church and did not require any professional religious preparation or qualification.

In spite of that, Chris called the coffee shop where he worked his sacred place. 
How can that be?

Secular-Sacred Divide

In the West we have the practice of classifying all of our activities into two camps – the sacred and the secular. The sacred we reserve for things spiritual and religious, and the rest we relegate to secular or worldly. This false dualism leads to the erroneous idea that things that are “secular” are of little concern to God and of lesser importance. Christianity is narrowed down to a focus on personal salvation and little else.

The broader consequences of this are that the church is separated from its surrounding culture. Sunday worship services and participation in church program activities are elevated to a higher importance. Those who work in these activities are elevated as well in the mind of church-attendees. As a result, little effort is spent by the church teaching its members how to integrate their faith into the activities outside the church. Rather, the focus is on bringing people into the church to be saved. When the church limits her vision with this mindset, she becomes unable to impact the culture as God desires. Scott Allen succinctly argues this issue 
in Beyond the Sacred-Secular Divide.

God’s Calling

God has called his church to take the Kingdom of Heaven (and its values) to the entire culture, teaching them all he has commanded and making disciples. When the church has an undivided view of reality and realizes God’s intention to have Lordship over all of his creation, the physical as well as the spiritual realm, she is freed to complete his redemptive plan.

There are some who only see “secular” work as a means to an end. Either a necessary means to gather financial resources to carry out the work of the church, or for the more visionary, as a means to reach out and evangelize the lost. Both of these objectives are desirable, but fall short of God’s complete plan.

God wants to redeem all of creation. His church needs to engage the culture and restore the values that were lost in the fall. Most of this takes place in the workplace where the majority of the lost are, AND where most of the church people spend the greatest amount of their time as well.

Reflections on Whole Life Integration

Willy Kotiuga has posted a provocative draft “People At Work: Preparing To Be The Whole Church”to be presented at Lausanne 2010 in South Africa later this year. 

He draws on models of workers in the Bible to challenge the church to create a sacred work environment wherever God has placed them. Joseph worked every day in Egypt bringing his God-given values including accountability, responsibility, excellence, teamwork, risk-taking, forgiveness and support to the workplace. While these are desirable from a professional standpoint, they also demonstrate an application of the character of God and the qualities of 
a Kingdom worker. Each of these character qualities, among others, provide opportunities for discipling those in the marketplace in godly living, but also provide opportunities to lead them into a relationship with the Lord. Kotiuga concludes, “There is no sacred-secular divide in promoting these values.” When God’s children work “as unto the Lord” the workplace is sanctified.

Your Work Is Worship

When work is done from this perspective one realizes with Bradley Moore “Your Work Is Worship.” Quoting author and activist Dave Gibbons in the book Our Souls at Work

“The word glory conveys the idea of beauty. So as we do good work that reflects God’s character…we unleash his beauty. People see God. Our work is a way to worship God. It has intrinsic value and can demonstrate God’s character when we do good work. Faith and work are to be seamless. Work is an expression of our life in Christ. Separating the two is like separating “being” from “doing.”  How do you know who you are being without considering what you are doing?”

Responding to the Gibbons quote Bradley says,

“These few sentences sealed the deal for me as far as pulling together the oft-segregated work and spiritual realms into one happy path towards the Kingdom of God. We can not separate who we are from what we are doing. How could anyone lead a double-life like that?”

Conclusion

This article opened with a question, “Why did Chris call his work in the café sacred?” Those who live their whole life for the Lord do not have a secular-sacred divide and present their whole life as a “living sacrifice” to God. With God there are no compartments. God’s policy is 
to live your whole life for him, and all of life is equally important to him and is critical in his plan of redemption.

“My sacred space is a café,”  

/ Phill

begins Chris’ blog entry where he talks about his marketplace ministry. He goes on to explain, “… it’s sacred space for me precisely because the people around me there aren’t all Christians. In fact, most are unchurched or de-churched.  And I love them.” Chris works part time at the café and realizes God has put him in his position for a purpose. There are daily opportunities to touch the lives of those who need to know his Savior.

He continues, “The cafe becomes sacred space for me every time I have a deep conversation with a coworker or listen to a regular customer share their life-story.  The relationships I’ve been able to develop with co-workers and customers are sacred relationships.  Some people talk to their barista they (sic) way one does to the proverbial bartender, and at times I feel like taking off my shoes because I know I’m on holy ground when someone opens up to me.”

This story is instructive for several reasons. Chris was intentional in his choice to be bi-vocational. He recognizes that the café environment gives him an entryway into the community. He has continual opportunity to meet people who would not normally set foot inside a church. He meets them on their terms in a setting where they are comfortable. He can demonstrate the love of Christ in very natural ways non-believers can understand and relate to.

The Church has not done a good job of teaching its members that we are all called to be ambassadors for the Kingdom of God and that we are all called to go out to all the world (including the marketplace) and make disciples. [1 Pet 2.9 – But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.]

Chris says he also does it because it gives him a way to demonstrate and model for the other members of his congregation how they, as disciples of Christ, can find meaning in their “ordinary” jobs. “Our churches are filled with people who are discontent with their work and who rarely think of their jobs as places where they can participate in the Kingdom of God.”

This story brings life and relevance to 1 Cor 10.31 “…whatever you do…do all for the Glory of God”.

Chris’ other vocation is as a pastor, but he sometimes says, “the place where I do the most real ministry is the cafe.” He is considered “bi-vocational” because he works half-time in a church and part-time at the café. Yet he does not see any difference between the two “jobs” when it comes to proclaiming the Gospel.

Chris concludes his article, “there’s no separation between the two – each job complements and enriches the other.”

As I reflect on Chris’ experience, I can’t help but ask, “Would Chris be any less a minister of the gospel if he only worked at the café?” This is tentmaking – sharing the Gospel in the workplace where God puts you.

I encourage the reader to go to Chris’ blog and read the account in his own words.

Creating a Kingdom Values Based Corporate Culture: 

/ Phill

http://globalopps.org/tmbriefs/BAM.png

Putting the “M” in Business as Mission

The BP oil platform failure and subsequent leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a major news focus these days. People are asking, “What could have led to such a catastrophic failure?” In the days to come this will be analyzed ad nauseam. Many factors are being discussed. One that keeps coming up is that there was a corporate culture of indifference.

Business gurus are nearly unanimous. Clear core values are essential for success. They need to be understood and internalized by everyone in the company. They do not guarantee success, but their absence guarantees mediocrity or failure. I want to look at the idea of corporate culture in light of the growing interest of Business as Mission (BAM) as a type of tentmaking work.

In Christian circles a lot of interest has been generated about BAM and the importance of having businesses run by Christians in order to bring a witness to the international marketplace. It sounds great. But what does it actually mean?

What makes a business Christian?

Is it enough that the business is run by a Christian?Can there be a corporate culture based on Kingdom values? If so, what does it look like? Should the employer use work time for “devotional meetings”. Can he obligate employees to participate?

Maybe the path one takes is to have a chaplain on staff and make that person available to staff or even to customers. Does this make the company a business as mission company.

What if the business measures its success by looking at the “Triple Bottom Line” taking into account more than just profit, but also social and spiritual impact?

These activities may be desirable, but in some ways they miss the main point. They are not what make a company a BAM company.

Companies, like people, have a “personality” or “style” in the way they act and in the way they relate to their staff and constituencies. Our core values determine how we interpret and interact with our environment. In organizations we refer to this as its corporate culture.

Every company has a culture, whether consciously developed or not. Sometimes the corporate culture is given slightly different names: culture of the organization (Eldred), core values (Johnson), core ideals (Collins), for example.

Corporate culture, like our social culture, is instilled in us by everything around us, people and environment, and we are not always consciously aware of it and how it influences everything we do. It shapes our worldview and informs all of our decisions.

When the company culture is well aligned, fewer rules are needed because the staff is motivated internally to do the right thing. The company values are internalized and guide all actions assisting staff in the interpretation of the messages they receive and in determining what the appropriate response should be.

Having a Christian corporate culture means incorporating Kingdom values not only into our goals, but also into the staff’s way of thinking and operating – into the core of the company’s “being.” The values need to be a part of who the company is and how it behaves. In other words Kingdom values need to be part of the personality of the company.

No one activity makes a company a BAM company. It starts with an understanding of the the values of the Kingdom of God and exemplifies it in the sum of its attitudes and activities. Essentially the company runs as one company simultaneously under the sovereignty of the the Kingdom as God with its requirements and the laws or legal requirements that govern its host country.

What are those values? Ken Eldred has a useful list to prime our thinking in the third chapter of his book, God Is at Work.

He gives 10 common features that characterize BAM companies.

1. The presence of a Christian or Christians with a sphere of influence.
2. A product or service in harmony with God’s creational purpose.
3. A mission or business purpose that is larger and deeper than mere financial (though including it) so that the business contributes in some way to the Kingdom of God.
4. The product or service is offered with such excellence that it suggests the presence of the Kingdom and invites opportunity to witness.
5. Customers are treated with dignity and respect and not just as a means of profit.
6. Employees and workers are equipped to achieve greater potential in their life and, if they are Christians, to work wholeheartedly with faith, home and love.
7. All aspects of the business are considered to be potentially a ministry and subject to prayer.
8. The culture (values, symbols, governing beliefs) of the organization line up with God’s word and Kingdom purposes.
9. The business runs on grace.
10. The leaders are servants, dedicated to serve the mission of the business, the best interest of the employees, the customers and the shareholders because they are first of all servants of God.