Blog - Supporting Believers
A friend of ours works in a department that raises funds for a large hospital. While helping her to develop a workplace testimony, I visited her office. She mentioned how a Christian janitor had noticed she seemed exhausted. How could he could pray for her? Might he share her need—without her name—with other believers in the hospital? She agreed. Hearing this much, I wanted to learn the rest of the story. So, with her help, I arranged a meeting with the janitor.
read more...Have you heard a “workplace testimony”? Like diamonds, such testimonies are rare but valuable. A workplace testimony is a report from one Christian's work world that encourages other believers to see and carry out God's purposes in their own work world and lives. If you were to develop a workplace testimony, where could you use it to encourage? Wherever Christians gather—in church assemblies, small group meetings or even over coffee with one or two others. The impact of such reports often amazes me.
read more...Over coffee, a Christian friend recently told of his fear he was beginning to think and talk like the unbelievers in his workplace. So far as he knows, no one else in his job-related circle has made any commitment to follow Christ. Although he meets with other believers evenings and weekends, most of his prime-time hours isolate him from other members of Christ's body.
read more...How can you intentionally identify other believers in the workplace? Doing so will probably take you out of your comfort zone. That's true in just about any work-world environment. But connecting with believers in a military setting can present even greater challenges—challenges the rest of us can learn from.
read more...A few days ago Debbie LaFever, a woman in the small group that meets in our home, brought us up to date on her adventures as a Christ-follower in a public school. Her workplace testimony encouraged us all. So I asked her to write it up for this website.
read more...Can you help me? Your insights and experience would help me as I create a seminar for pastors and church leaders.
read more..."Mind the gap!” Those recorded words warn passengers in London's subway not to step into the void between the platform and the train car. In its paper on marketplace ministry, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization quotes those words as "an apt analogy for the gap between Sunday and Monday.” What can close the Sunday-Monday gap?
read more...This week the U.S. Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate has stagnated at 9.6 percent. Despite small gains in the private sector, we lost 95,000 jobs last month. Especially hard-hit: public schools. The news triggered countless stories in the media. How many sermons will refer to it?
read more...When Daniel Rooney arrived in Ireland as the U.S. Ambassador, what would always remind him of the importance of his work?
read more...This continues a series suggesting a number of ways to relate what happens in our church services on Sundays to life in our workplaces on weekdays. This post proposes another way to shrink that distance—pastoral visits to the workplace.
read more...George Peck’s father, a "devout Christian,” worked as an Australian coal miner. According to Peck (in the first chapter of The Laity in Ministry), his father "brought to bear upon his life in the mines the Christian faith that he professed.” But troubling thoughts kept nagging at him.
read more...Can you help me with a project? I am seeking to identify difficulties believers encounter in living out their faith on the job. What dilemmas, stresses, or unanswered questions do Christians face in the world of everyday work? What do they struggle with?
read more...After reading my last blog on living out faith in the workplace, a reader emailed me with the following challenge: "If you could create it from scratch, what would a church look like that fully embodied a proper theology of work and really empowered its members to be ministers in the workplace? What would it do? Would it even resemble the traditional church and its meetings, practices, etc.?”
read more...Leaders of a church-from-scratch don’t have to begin from scratch with the theology of work. A bumper crop of biblically sound resources on the subject is now available. Books by the thousands, videos, websites, magazine articles, and more. In this blog, I’ll include a brief description and a link to just a tiny sampling of resources.
read more...In an email, a reader asked about "the governance structure of the from-scratch church.” No pat answer will do here. The Old Testament lays down precise arrangements and rules for the priesthood. But New Testament directions for church leadership are far less structured and more open to interpretation. Even so, I believe its instructions and practices offer some wisdom for those who wish to build the theology of work into the DNA of a church-from-scratch.
read more...The church-from-scratch should pray publicly for those God has placed in the work world. Think back to your own experience in church meetings. You’ve probably heard prayers for a variety of needs: healing, finances, building projects, pastors and missionaries, church programs, safe travel, and so on. But how often have you heard prayer for those in so-called "secular” work?
read more...The newly planted (or the older) church should promote and help establish networks of believers engaged in similar occupations. Life in the 21st century creates a far greater need for such linkages than in bygone eras. Working Christians in New Testament times knew nothing of the modern forces that isolate those in today’s workplaces.
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