Marketplace Missions Continued

In my previous marketplace mission post, I discussed the need for the church to swing the organizational arm of missions to support the Christian Business Professional to take the gospel to work. Additionally, the church has to change their language to communicate to them about missions in a way they can understand, in a way that will connect the dots. In this post, I will explain why marketplace missions is a natural extension for most of the congregation of a church.
Why marketplace missions?
The Christian business professional can spend about 45-50 hours a week doing work related activities making it easily the place where they spend most of their time. The only way this statement would not be true is if they spent every minute of every hour on the weekend focused on one particular thing. The maximum amount of hours they have on Saturday and Sunday is 48. If you allow them to sleep during that time frame, the maximum amount of time they have in reality is 34 hours. And those hours get chewed up quickly with honey-do lists, and stuff that has been put off during the week. After having spent five days of the grind at work, most of them are looking to unwind to get ready for the next week as the process repeats itself all over again.
Christian business professionals are probably familiar with the saying “I spend more time at work than I do with my own family.” In most cases, this is true, especially if you are looking in the context of quality time. The amount of time spent building and maintaining relationships to function well at their job, and accomplish tasks is extraordinary. Even if relationship building is seen as part of the job, Christian professionals are part of the lives of many who are not saved, through work. These relationships expose them to all sorts of life events where the gospel can play a significant role. Life happens for those at work, and in most cases, those life events are shared at work. Think about the conversations that members of a congregation will have at work that they will not have anywhere else: death in a family, sometimes tragic; heartbreak; disappointment; yearning for something more in life; and happy events with kids. All of this part of the day to day conversations at work.
These interactions are not forced. Christian professionals do not have to go to some social gathering to meet people and start building relationships. ALL of them, have already built these relationships.
Exposing the gospel to different people groups and cultures is critical to all overseas missions group. A new overseas missionary could take years to develop relationships, and become embedded in the culture. Even then they are limited to one culture and one people group. Foreign missions serve a small area where the culture and people group are primarily the same.
Imagine a scenario where a missionary could expose the gospel to numerous people groups and cultures. Imagine a scenario where the missionary has been embedded in this culture for an extended period and has already created the relationships necessary to speak into their lives. Would church leadership be interested in tapping into this great missions opportunity?
The workplace is the great melting pot of social classes and cultures. This can be seen all over the world and is uniquely true in the American workforce. In my current vocation I am exposed to a variety of cultures: African American Youth, Korean, Japanese, and Hispanic. Within these different cultures, I have a variety of social classes which represent different lifestyle choices. The gospel is relevant in all cases.
That being said, delivering the gospel in the workplace is not without challenges. The workplace has become increasingly hostile to Christianity. Learning how to communicate the gospel in a way that is meaningful for the various cultures can be difficult as well. However, I am convinced that if the church focused on marketplace missions in the same manner as they do overseas missions, these hurdles could be overcome. The marketplace represents the low hanging fruit of the harvest, and it happens to represent the place of the largest harvest, especially in America.

It’s time to rethink missions

It is time to change the language associated with missions.

When you hear the word “missions” what do you think? Do you think of unusual people who go off to wild parts of the world to spread the gospel? Do you think of organizations who collect water and food to send to area’s of the world in need? If you answered yes to these questions, go ahead and nod your head in acknowledgment, and know that you are not alone. In fact, when I hear the word “missionary” I think of a gutsy family moving to Saudi Arabia, or some dangerous part of the world to bring those people real hope through the gospel.

What would cause this?

While I am sure there are many reasons that the average person believes that this is all missions is, the church should be concerned that this is the perception of missions work. Pastors and various ministries are now working diligently to promote the idea of taking the gospel to work, and are having a hard time gaining any traction. The next couple of posts will focus on the concept of marketplace missions and hopefully will begin to present some of the challenges that the church has with it, and why it is crucial.

The church organization does not align to the language of the church.

Pastors have done an increasingly excellent job at preaching to the idea of marketplace missions. This idea of taking the gospel to work has been gaining momentum, but the organizational support for this has been lagging. In fact, very few churches have the organizational structure to support a dedicated effort to the most common missions field in the United States and Europe, the workplace. For those of you in ministry, imagine being asked to build a building, but not being given any money or architectural plans to make it. Now, can you imagine our frustration.

To a trained eye in business, this is plain to see. You can see it in mission conferences where the sole focus is on oversea’s missions. You can see it in missions meetings where the focus only appears to be for those who are willing to travel to exotic locations. The call that pastors continue to make to 75% to 80% of those who are, or have the potential of being marketplace missionaries, are excluded. How can these working professionals be expected to view themselves as missionaries in their “Jerusalem” when the church they attend only promotes missionary work in the context of leaving Jerusalem? If church language encourages missionary work as being exclusive to traveling somewhere, how can those that choose marketplace missions be expected to see their pivotal role in the Kingdom as being missional?

How can this be fixed?

The book on marketplace missions is still being written. No seriously, I’m about halfway through it at this point. Because the marketplace missions concept is in its infancy, there is no proven method, no simple answer, and no marketplace missionary guide for dummies. What I can present is an idea based on business principles that have been written about and executed by people like Steve Jobs and Jack Welsh. It’s called aligning the organization to support the mission.

Consider this, if part of the mission of the church is missions, then ALL of the missions must be supported by the organization. This support would include the concept of marketplace missions work. It must be promoted and supported. Money must be allocated to it, and educational resources dedicated to it. In fact, I would argue that since 75% to 80% of a church congregation has the potential of being a marketplace missionary, that 75% to 80% of your missions budget should be solely dedicated to this effort.

Also, any missions conference must make room for, and give prominence to based on its potential, marketplace missions. When you get a chance, google and look at any missions conference you can find. Do you see anything associated with marketplace missions? No? I didn’t either.

When you walk through your church, there is no doubt that you see the posters, signs, and cards to support overseas missions. Take the time to count the number of posters, educational offerings, missions meetings, etc. for marketplace missions. Can’t find them? I couldn’t either.

The point of this isn’t to shame your local church or condemn them for the way they are approaching missions. But, if the church is genuinely looking for a paradigm shift in missions and evangelism, this is it. And it all starts with aligning the organization to support all missions, foreign and domestic.

Why is this important?

Can you imagine what a missions effort would look like if the organizational support arm of the church swung around to help business professionals by any means necessary in taking the gospel to work? Think of the relationships that have been built by the Christian professional through years of working in the same company. What a missionary would have to train for and work at for years, the business professional has already accomplished. Think about the number of cultures wrapped up in one master culture of a company where a Christian works. What would take a missionary years to master, has already been learned by the Christian business professional.

In other words, the church has thousands, maybe millions, of marketplace missionaries, who have excellent relationships and are embedded in the cultures of multiple people groups at work. The unsaved in the business world is the most significant field to harvest, and the workers are standing in the barn waiting for leadership to take them into the field.

In the next post, I will review why marketplace missions is a natural extension for most of the congregation of a church.

Funny Thing About History… It Repeats

Have you ever wondered why Israel failed at their job to evangelize the world (Scripture calls it being a priest nation) and why they missed Jesus as their Messiah? And, are we falling into the same trappings in the US, now?!?!?! I think so…

I posed these questions to one of my classmates and this is what she said (I think she’s right):

I believe Israel looked inward partially because they were an “obstinate people”, as God declared through Isaiah (Isaiah 65:2), but also because they walked the fine line of not mingling with the Canaanites and other peoples they encountered during the Exodus and as they conquered the Holy Land, yet living life as the apple of God’s eye and slated to be a kingdom of priests. It can be hard to understand how to follow God without becoming legalistic. The same holds true today in the US today. One need not look far to find Christian groups that have separated so far from the rest of the world that they cannot possibly be a witness to those around them that don’t know Christ. Even just by spending almost exclusively time in our Christian circles, we can easily get caught up in a separate world.

Personally, I think that they focused in on the tangible aspect of the covenant – the land – without thinking about the purpose of the covenant (or rather they mistook the purpose of the covenant). I think they thought that they were so cool with God that He just loved blessing them for their own prosperity and enjoyment rather than the prosperity being a sign/proof to glorify God and make it possible for Israel to engage in the ministry of reconciliation.

I think we do the same here and now… We get so caught up in the tangible (the physical/material prosperity God has allowed this nation to have) and we get so comfortable in our own exclusive Christian circles that we become useless for the Kingdom (I say “we” on purpose, because I’m including me). I heard a quote somewhere that, “money (blessings) is (are) like manuer… it’s no good unless you spread it all around (like fertalizer)”… What God blessed Israel with and what He has blessed us with (corporately and individually) wasn’t just for our enjoyment and ease (why would there be so much about suffering in the NT if that were the case)… Instead it is for us to be a blessing to others in order to share God’s message of Love, forgiveness, righteousness, etc… You know, the ministry of reconciliation (spoken of in 2 Corinthians 5).

Like I said, I’ve been thining about ancient Israel’s failures for several years and somewhat paralelling that to the US. But, the stats Dr. Wheeler shared in my personal evangelism class were so shocking (i.e. some 90% + of Christians don’t actively share their faith AT ALL) that it shook me out of my stupor… I think now way more than ever that personal evangelism and world missions is not just an important aspect of the Christian life, but it is THE most important aspect of it… Greg Stier of Dare2Share ministries calls it “THE Cause.” I just hope we, as the Body of Christ, take our calling in Matthew 28 and 2 Corinthians 5 so much more seriously and that we get on board with God’s program so that we do not continue to flounder away in the same old rut that ancient Israel did.