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Serving Others

The Workplace Pastor

I’m gonna spend one more day on this idea of us as workplace pastors, since I think it is so very important. It is necessary that we begin believing that we are called of God to be the chaplains of our offices and companies.

Many people want to feel used by God, but haven’t been freed to understand that their place of employment is the mission field that God has sent them into. It might seem a bit strange, but think about if a missionary or pastor was hired for your office/company – what would they do to meet the spiritual needs of the people there? Pray with people, reach out to them during crises, talk to them about God? What if God has placed you in your office for that specific role? In fact, I think that is EXACTLY what God has done. Let me remind you that after Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple was torn. No longer does God reside in a building built by human hands where we have to come to Him in one location on earth, but rather He now dwells within each Christian, so that His church is to leave the one location and take Him outside the church building to people everywhere.a church building symbolizing the fact that we need to leave the building and become a workplace pastor

“[We feel] incomplete inside the church walls – we want to be equipped by our church to find kingdom significance and purpose where we interact with culture, outside the church walls…. I’ve come to understand that there are millions of us who feel disconnected from our true purpose at work. Maybe you’ve had feelings at times that are similar. You sense your job or career has something critically important to do with God’s bigger story, and yet no one seems to be there to help you understand how it really works and why it is so biblical.” Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt that God wanted to use you, but weren’t quite sure how? Well, the workplace is where you spend a large portion of your day, and He wants to use you there!

“God has placed us into that workplace for a specific purpose. Paul explains that this task is not to be done just on Sunday or a few times a week, but this is a 24/7 ‘all-the-time’ assignment from God.”

“[Too many of us believe that] the pastor, the missionary, and the church staff workers are chosen, gifted, and paid to do the professional ministry…. [We] do not realize that we will come into contact with and influence more people in one day in the workplace than the “professionals” will encounter in a week or even a full month…. Yes, YOU are in full-time ministry for Jesus Christ, but you get your income from your employment in the workplace and not from your church. What a bargain for God’s kingdom work! We are paid by the secular world’s system yet are placed there in strategic positions for His purposes.”

This is the mindset that we must take. Why is this mindset so important? Why does God want us to represent Him in our workplaces to our co-workers who do not know Him? Because “Most of them will not seek out our churches, but every day they are at the next desk to us in the marketplace.” So you have to begin seeing yourself as the pastor there – praying for each person, looking for ways to speak God’s love into their lives.

Look for opportunities to speak God’s life and love into the lives of the people around you at work today. Some of them are hurting and need an encouraging word. Some of them are experiencing crisis and need your prayers. Find ways to meet their spiritual needs as their workplace pastor.

How have you seen people you know be effective in the role of “workplace pastor”?

(Businessman Kent Humphreys wrote a small book titled Christ at Work Opening Doors about us being on mission in our places of employment. The quotes above are from his book.)

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Serving Others

Your Role As The Office Minister

Yesterday I encouraged us to start believing that we are all ministers, no matter our occupational setting. If we would start thinking of ourselves as the “chaplain” or “workplace pastor” of our office or school or neighborhood, we might begin to change how we operate in our occupation.

a clock symbolizing it is time to step into our role as office ministerGod wants you to be a minister. I don’t mean that He wants you on a church staff payroll – but rather He wants you to consider yourself as the office minister in your workplace on their payroll! God doesn’t want you focused on YOUR job. What He wants is for you to be focused on HIS job.

I think as Christians we could reword a quote about our professions (from early American entrepreneur Charles Kettering) as if was from God speaking to us about our Christian Vocation to serve Him. Maybe it would look something like this –
“I don’t want any fellow working for me who has tried to put his Christianity into his occupation. What I want is a fellow whom the Christian Vocation has taken hold of. I want the Christian Vocation to get the fellow and not the fellow to try to work Christianity into His occupation. And I want the Christian Vocation to get hold of this person so hard that no matter where he is the Christian Vocation has got him for keeps. I want the Christian Vocation to have him in its clutches when he goes to bed at night, and in the morning I want that same Christian Vocation to be sitting on the foot of his bed telling him it’s time to get up and come work WITH ME. And when the Christian Vocation gets a fellow that way he’ll amount to something.”

If we could reorient our thinking so that our occupation is not what we are getting up to do each day and trying to put some of our Christian life into, if we could instead think about life as “today I am getting up to go minister and I will pray, counsel, teach, preach, study, & communicate the gospel to those who around me at work or school” then we would have a better grasp on the Christian life…this Christian vocation. So today I am getting up to go minister in the factory where God has placed me, in the office God has placed me, in the neighborhood God has placed me. I am first and foremost a minister, and wherever God places me in whatever occupation or situation, I never lose sight of the fact that God has CALLED me to be a minister first.

Even if you never asked Him about your occupational ‘calling,’ your vocational calling has never changed from the moment you call Him Savior & Lord – your calling is “minister,” “missionary,” “messenger of His gospel!” The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of each of us considering ourselves the God-appointed chaplain for our workplace, school, family, and neighborhood.

God is calling us to live out the Christian vocation and to change our minds to look at ministry as not just the church pastor’s role, but our role. Pastors just do their chaplaincy in the church building while you are the chaplain at the bank or the office or with your clients or on the golf course.

The world’s model says to chase your dreams, go after your goals, reach for the stars. But here’s the truth from God’s word – If your goals are not God’s goals, then you are never really going to be a success in His eyes – and isn’t how we are viewed by God really the only thing that matters?

Start viewing yourself as your office’s pastor and chaplain. Because they might never step into the office of a church pastor. You become the pastor that they need! What roles do you expect your pastor to do for you? Do the same for them! Start today.

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Serving Others

Something’s Got A Hold On Me

We hear ministers and missionaries talk about a calling –
“God called me into the ministry.”
“I sensed God calling me to missions.”
“The Lord called me into church work.”

There is truth to this, but there is also a danger here of misconstruing the truth – the danger of making those who are not church staff members feel that their occupation is somehow not on the same level in God’s eyes. And nothing could be further from the truth. God is calling you, too!close up picture of a phone symbolizing our calling from God

It is true that God calls some to be church staff ministers. But scripture indicates that every one of us is called to be a minister – and only a few will be on a church staff. However, there will be many School Teacher “ministers,” and many health care “ministers,” and many business-world “ministers.”

We church staff ministers developed a bad habit of calling our occupation a “vocation,” thereby implying that everyone else just has an occupation. But here is the truth – for every single believer, you have a vocation as minister. There is a difference between our occupation and our vocation. Our occupation is the job we do that gets us a paycheck this month. And that occupation can change, and probably will change, throughout your life. But our vocation as Christians is to be the same for each and every one of us – to be a minister no matter our occupation. We are to use our relationship with God to point others in the direction of Jesus Christ so that they can come to a right relationship with Him and grow in their spiritual maturity.

I don’t want your mindset to end at “I am a Christian and I should not be ashamed of that fact at work and should live out a Christian example at the office or the plant or the school.” That’s not a bad place to start, but I want us to go further. I am talking about an entire reprocessing of our understanding of life itself and why we are here.

According to the Bible, life is about being a minister of God’s gospel message. Period. Everything else in our lives is to be used to share this message with those around us.

So if your occupation is in the health care field as a doctor or nurse, your vocation should be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a doctor as you can be and use that position to share Christ’s love with patients.

Life for a teacher is to be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a teacher as you can and use that position to share Christ’s love with students and fellow teachers.

Life for a business person is to be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a business person as you can and use that position to share Christ’s love with your clients and fellow workers.

Your vocation is as a minister of the gospel no matter where you are with your occupation. My vocation is to minister, presently through my church staff position. But what if my position changes? What if I go to work in another field? Well, my occupation would change, but my vocation would not. It remains the same – minister of the gospel.

Life for each of us is to be a Christian minister. You are to use the occupation that God presently has you in to fulfill your vocation of sharing Christ’s love with those you are in contact with every day. Start thinking in terms of being the minister for your workplace – for that is what you are. You have been placed by God in your specific field to minister to those around you. Are you lifting those around you up in prayer? As their minister, you should be. Are you sharing with them how to know Christ? As their minister, you should be. Are you helping believers around you know how to grow in spiritual maturity? As their minister, you should be.

As you go to your occupation today, consider how you will live out your vocation as a minister to those around you!

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Christian Living

Wanting The Good Life

We all want a life of abundance. Jesus says He wants to provide it. But could we possibly have a wrong understanding of the promise? Have we looked at the promise through “American dream”–tinted glasses? Have we fallen prey to some trap of our own design?a mousetrap set with a piece of cheese, symbolizing the trap of equating the good life to the American dream

We often pray for safety and comfort. We pray for safe travels. We pray that everyone in our family would be healthy and whole. Our safety and comfort are issues that we feel we want & need. And when we read passages such as Romans 8:28 which states that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes, we interpret them to be saying: “God will be faithful in making my life good.”

But then sometimes our lives are not so “good” in our eyes. Tragedy comes, accidents happen, life takes a turn for the worse. And if we have banked on the “good life” as we have defined it, we get extremely rattled. We get angry with God. We might even seem to lose our faith for a season. But maybe we should remember that the end of that verse says “and are called according to His purposes.” If we understand that God will be faithful in making things good in relation to bringing glory to His name, then even our death (which seems to NOT be OUR GOOD) can be good when it is done in a way that glorifies His name (as martyrs have done).

Interestingly enough, Jesus didn’t pray for the safety & comfort of His disciples, but rather that His disciples would be kept from the evil one and would stand strong in the face of temptations. He knew that they would not have safety & comfort – in fact it is said that most of Jesus’ disciples died a martyr’s death. And so it wasn’t that he needed to pray for their safety and comfort, but rather to pray for them to be faithful to bring glory to God and advance His kingdom – not only through their lives but through their deaths. What if we began to change our prayers to ask for the things Jesus did for his disciples?

In the movie The End of the Spear, the missionaries were asked if they would use their guns if the tribe attacked them. The statement was – “Son, We can’t shoot them because they do not have Jesus, and we do. So it is OK if we die now, but not OK for them to die without Jesus.” That in no way is comfort or safety, but the deaths of these missionaries was definitely glorifying to God. The sacrifice that the men were willing to give (their lives) for the gospel paired with the love that was shown to the people by the spouses that were left behind – led the Waodani people to believe in Jesus.

If we fall into the trap of American thinking – life should always be pleasant with good things – we hinder ourselves from understanding how life that may be difficult can bring glory to God – and maybe that is the good that we need to understand that Romans 8:28 is discussing.

Paul spoke of his “thorn in the flesh” and asked that it would be removed, but when it wasn’t, Paul indicated that his comfort was less important than God gaining glory through Paul’s weaknesses which would make Paul rely more on God.

So the first thing we need to do is to start getting our minds around the glory of God and then to imitate Jesus’ prayer. We need to pray for God’s glory – even if that might mean the loss of our comfort & safety.

The second imitation we need to have is that we need to pray for one another to be kept from temptation. That is not a prayer we often pray, is it? We pray for each others’ comfort & safety, but very seldom do we pray for each other to be kept from the temptations of the evil one. What kind of difference would that make in our lives if we all began praying that for one another? We see the same statement in the model prayer – Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

In our lives, let’s look for the good that brings God glory more than brings us comfort!

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Serving Others

The Little Life-Saving Station

This parable is not one I created, but it is one of my favorites. I imagine you will quickly catch on to the meaning of the parable of this life-saving station. As you read it, I also hope you will consider where you would fit into the story…

a lighthouse that is a little life-saving station“On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for those lost at sea.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, as well as some from surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little life-saving station grew.

As time went by some of the new members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those pulled from the dangerous sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they re-decorated it beautifully with comfortable furnishings.

Over time, Less & Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work. The mission of life-saving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the life-saving activities personally.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them looked different than most of the members, and some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up. So the members immediately had a shower house built outside the main building where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting of the members, there was a split in club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being too unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal day-to-day activities and patterns of the members who gathered there. But some members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a “life-saving station.” But these few were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station further down the coast. So they did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. In time, they also evolved into a club and yet another life-saving station had to be established. If you visit that seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but I understand that now most of the shipwrecked people drown.”

So it is easy enough to realize that this parable is about the state of the church today. Now certainly it isn’t truly that gloomy! But at the same time we can see the different types of mentalities that are taking place in this story. The mentality of the rescuers who are dedicated to saving lives, a second mentality of those willing to give finances so others could serve but not a willingness to personally get their hands dirty, and a third mentality of wanting comfort and leisure for self even though people around are needing rescue.

What mentality do you have – are you one of the rescuers striving for the primary purpose, or are you hoping that things can stay safe and comfortable inside the cozy station? There are still so many people around us that are without the love of Jesus Christ. Have you looked out into the “water” around you and heard people crying out for a Savior?

I thought this exchange from Superman Returns was interesting…
Lois Lane states: “The world doesn’t need a savior, & neither do I.”
Superman asks her: “Lois, will you fly with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
[he flies Lois high above the city where it seems peaceful & still. Lois Lane listens, but to her ears, it is silent and calm.]
He then says to her – “Listen. What do you hear?”
She says: “Nothing.”
[and then for just a moment you get to hear what Superman hears with his super-powered hearing]
Superman then tells her: “I hear everything. You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior, but I hear them crying for one everyday.”

Too many times I find myself and others thinking (and listening) like Lois Lane. We think everyone is OK and that there isn’t anyone around you looking for a savior. So many people say (& write) that we don’t need a Savior and yet Jesus hears them crying for Him everyday. Do you hear (and see) “nothing” when you look at our community? or have you allowed God to open your eyes to a world that is “crying out for a Savior.” They don’t need Superman, but they do need Jesus. And He tells us that the fields are ready to be harvested – We have been called to point people to THE Savior. Let us help people find the Living Water and be rescued by Jesus – let’s continue striving to be part of an effective life-saving station.