It was at the company's annual gala dinner that Pete chose to pour out what had been on his heart for nearly six weeks. Pete was one of 78 consultants we employed around the world. I was General Manager. He was intense and full of unusual passion as he described his latest consulting assignment. The client was the World Bank and the location the Philippines. They were scoping a major training and consulting programme to rebuild local government.

Pete described walking through a slum and discarding a near empty water bottle onto the ground with little thought. He watched as a young, very malnourished child ran in, grabbed the bottle, drank the last drops of clean water and stowed it carefully into an old sack so he could sell it to earn his survival. That simple image had burned into Pete's memory and even now at the dinner table Pete broke down and wept as he shared his experience with me, seemingly unaware of any at the table. With quiet sobs he told of how it had kept him awake at night ever since - the contrast of his own indifference and waste and the desperate scrabble for survival by a little boy. The flashy extravagance of the hotel hosting the dinner seemed to mock us as he spoke.

I was a bit embarrassed as he unburdened himself with no apparent awareness or concern about the other eight people at our table. I was moved when he said he had been waiting for six weeks for this meeting with me to be able to share how he felt with the only person who might understand - the only Christian he knew.

How profoundly I realised that being "salt" and "light" meant being right here in the workplace. Pete had no connection to the church. It had not occurred to him that he could walk down the road and into any one of a dozen ‘brands' of church. Nor did he have the confidence that anyone there would have understood his heart without adding to his burden a guilt about being successful in business and demanding he give it up to redeem himself. Pete went on to express gratitude to a God he had not yet met for a well-being he felt he did not deserve as of right. He committed himself to working even harder in his business to change the society he had ‘scoped', to use the skills and opportunities he had been given in life and to wisely manage his own material aspirations to make a difference to the poor he had just met.

I realized I had no non-Christian contacts outside of the workplace. Here at work I had 78 and they were more than contacts, they had become friends. Jesus called his disciples "friends".

I journey now with a different company. Returning from Australia I now work with Christians and am involved with training other Christians across New Zealand. I am constantly made aware that the workplace provides the greatest and most challenging opportunity for the Christian community to fulfill its mission, and I believe, to find renewal in its own ranks.

The workplace is the largest and most significant meeting place of Christian and non-Christian communities. Where once our neighbours and immediate geographic community provided the core of our friendships, today we are more likely to find our community at work, or as Christians in the church. In the workplace we have no choice other than to mix. In almost every other area of life we can choose to be with only our Christian and church friends - too busy for ‘new' others, our social capacity stretched beyond absorbing the new neighbour, or the other parents at the children's sports game. Our schedule at church too full to take up the invitation to be a Trustee in the local school, or on the play-centre social committee. At work we meet the world in its lostness, in its different values. Here for many of us lies our only opportunity for mission.

Engagement and support for this mission at work has huge value for the church. If we preach about work itself, affirm the calling of congregation members to the workplace, equip them with appropriate skills to live and share the faith they have, we will find we have a missions team larger than we have ever known - an evangelistic presence in society we could only dream about.

We can help our congregations to understand and engage the ethical challenges. We can use scripture to help them resist the immoral possibilities common to this world in general, and the workplace in particular. We can teach them to identify and name the subtleties of the ‘authorities' of power, materialism, competition and greed, and train them in all things to ‘stand your  ground'.¹ Not only is this a responsible expression of the mandate of church leaders to ‘prepare God's people for works of service'², it also adds qualitatively to the sense of communion and belonging of the congregation.

Work makes up between 50 and 70 percent of the waking hours of most adults. Including in preaching and teaching the brief suggestions above and the many wonderful interactions with working life found in scripture will demonstrate understanding and communicate inclusiveness. It will welcome those whose lives are so dominated by work as participants in the life and mission of the church. The relevance of the church has been challenged in recent times by both the secular community and by members of the church community itself. While the language of this ‘less relevant' accusation is a very blunt instrument and sweeps into its complaint without discernment the very many wonderful and effective programs of the wider church, we would be unwise to not hear a hearts cry within the complaint. The workplace has sadly, in many congregations had little mention in teaching. This leads to an unfortunate dualism in life between private and public faith and lays us open to the charge of not being relevant for this life.

If we engage with and affirm the workplace in our teaching and preaching the individual Christian discovers greater conviction that their faith is relevant to all of life. Their skills, education and gifting, normally given over to the fulfillment of the secular goals of shareholders and proprietors of businesses, have value to God and the mission of the church. These same skills if recognized can do much to enhance and modernise the community life of the church.

Communication and media skills enhance the delivery of important messages from teaching to notices to promotion. Accounting and legal skills allow us to become more accountable. Personnel management skills help us to better manage staff and look after volunteers. The list can continue. The workplaces of our society have often recognized and anticipated the fallenness of humanity (while not calling it sin) with proceedures and laws, while we have assumed a level of sanctification in our Christian institutions that does not allow that sin is still with us and maturation into Christ's likeness is a journey not yet complete. Within the business community we find a leadership capacity the church community needs because much of our leadership is based on pastoral and teaching capacities rather than leadership gifting. This business leadership needs to engage in theological reflection as much as we need to embrace those leadership skills.

Amongst the business community there is an intuitive understanding of faith.  The expression of risk, of investing into the hoped for and yet unseen is well understood in business. One of the joys of my role is to spend time with Christian business people who will invest time and money, take risks, mortgage houses in obedience to what they believe God has asked of them as stewards of the particular resources that He has given them.

Partnering together these kinds of giftings is a powerful combination for the body of Christ and its mission. The inclusion of all Christians into an understanding of their calling to the workplace, the frameworks by which to critique it and the skills to live their lives with effectiveness and intent, will bless the world, the church and God. 

1        Eph 6:13
2        Eph 4:13

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