Does the Holy Spirit know about this?

When I talk to missionaries in rapidly Westernizing countries like India and China, they unanimously agree that the greatest threat to revival in those countries is the adoption of Western work patterns and the Western consumerist mindset. Add in American lust for cheap goods and you’ve got people in China working in factories 18 hour days, seven days a week, all year round. And if someone drops, they replace that person with someone else. If we don’t think that’s going to put a damper on evangelism and revival, we’re nuts. Most of the revival we see going on is largely confined to the countryside for this very reason.

I am not saying to leave the workplace. I’m asking for Christians to rethink the workplace and their role in it. That’s an entirely different thing.

If anything, I’m the one saying that the 1950s idea of the workplace (the idea we still support today) is wrong. Why is it that so many Christians support the industrial revolution and its fallout without even once thinking what was lost and what might be regained by rethinking industrialism and its progeny?

A quick study shows the Church in America uncritically embraced industrialism as a resul of postmillenialism and triumphalism that swept the American Church in the late 19th century. We have seen the massive damage that uncritical embrace has caused to our culture and to Christianity. Yet virtually no Christian leaders on the national level will question how we do work today. Why? In many ways, the way we do work is largely responsible for many of the social evils the Christian culture wars address (especially those that directly impact the family), yet nothing is done about that root disease. In fact, most Christian leaders support the defective system.

It’s simply astonishing to me.

All this from a seemingly “simple” question?

I had read your initial question before heading out of town the other day and thought about it while driving. I had a much simpler answer which has probably already been mentioned (didn’t go back to that post)–”Incarnating Christ in thought, word and action.”

Can we overthink it? Naval gaze just a bit too much? It seems like you were headed somewhere with this and I’m wondering if the comment thread led you in another direction.

Anyways…………good reading. I can count on you and your friends for that!

This is something I’m sensitive too as the pastor of the church I used to work at used this approach to utterly undermine every other ministry at the church. Because he saw as general what was God’s own work in his heart he felt everyone had his own purpose and his own calling and his own weaknesses. He exhorted in sermons for people to do what was clearly something God was telling him to do.

He couldn’t see how other people could do and were doing what he himself wasn’t and felt unable to do. And this led to a lot of similar calls against supposed consumerism (even as he was a consumer and judge of “just the right kind of Christian’). He undercut what others did because it didn’t fit into his model of what should be done. He upset ministries meant to encourage so that people could go out and do more visibly active evangelism such as door-to-door, which is immensely ineffective but very visible.

He broke people’s morale because he would rail against people doing other things, even as he expected their work to fund his opinions.

Full time ministry is funded by people who do work, and should be working, in other settings, living as Christ would live amidst that work.

Again, if you can’t be a reflection of the kingdom within a work setting then those exact same issues will rise up in a full time setting, and once again the blame won’t be put on oneself, but upon the parishioners. The grass is never greener on the other side. And the attitude that it has, or that blames others, undermines even more ministry that’s happening whether anyone thinks it can or not.

Which is why my dad, for instance, prays and ministers to other juvenile hall teachers and workers, by doing first an execeptional job as a teacher there, and then as a quiet, receptive source who people know is aware of deeper, spiritual things, leading to a slow change of the whole spiritual atmosphere within what might be a very spiritually oppressive place. He touches the lives of kids who have been utterly rejected, touches the lives of fellow workers who have often rejected the church as being entirely irrelevant, and becomes a reflection of the Spirit to people who really are looking for God. All while the more active, revival interested Christians turn people off, and then complain that no one wants to hear the message they are preaching, a message that seems to have the words of Christ but is not of Christ and Spirit.

You said, “How that will be a Christian witness is beyond me.”

It seems to me that Paul addressed this issue in Ephesians 6…

5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

I think the mentality that ministry doesn’t happen amidst the ordinariness of life has been a hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom. For that matter, the advancement of the kingdom isn’t our responsibility. We are to open our eyes to the work of the kingdom already occurring and make ourselves a part of what God is doing.

When we limit our understanding of the kingdom and ministry to a churchy understanding of ministry and spiritual life, we actually hinder the potential of ministry that could occur if we released people into a missional understanding of ministry in the midst of the world.

The church in India and China flourishes because it is a grassroots movement of ordinary believers understanding the function of ministry as a part of everyday life, including work, who are not relinquishing their responsibility to minister to a specialized group of clergy and professionals.

Consumerism is another issue. The reality is that most of us don’t have the luxury of full-time ministry, and often working 40 hours a week is simply to care for our families, which is also a biblical command.

I hear stories all the time.

You have this modern image of ministry, and are then judging others for not meeting this very 1950s approach.

Yes, people need to be better, but it’s absolutely ludicrous to think this only happens if people have to leave the workplace.

Honestly, it sounds to me like you’re wrestling with a calling, and instead of acting out on it you’re pushing the blame elsewhere, accusing others for not doing the things the Spirit is asking you to do. And like a lot of people in that position you push your anger elsewhere because there are myriads of folks doing exactly what you don’t feel you are able to do.

Ministry and work. Like I said before, it worked for Paul and it works for millions of wonderful, much better than you and I, Christian around the world who don’t have the luxury of being able to choose. There is a place for full time ministry, but the fact is that this country is absolutly filled with full time ministers who aren’t leading revivals either.

Maybe the reason is folks are always wanting to be, do, or act somewhere else and blame the situation for the kingdom work they refuse to do. It’s easier to be outraged than obedient.

I respectfully counter that simply doing your job well is a lowest common denominator result. How that will be a Christian witness is beyond me. Your average moral Buddhist will achieve the same result.

If the Kingdom is not advanced at work, where will it then be advanced? And by whom? The length of the average commute and work week continues to rise drastically in this country. When will the work of the Kingdom get done if the work of paying for our lavish lifestyles consumes all the rest of our time? When?

Ministry or work. That seems to be the dividing line. Choose one or the other.

I’m not saying that a person in a work environment can’t have a few meaningful conversations with lost people or even start a work Bible study that brings forth some fruit. I’m saying that’s not enough to make a huge difference.

Take a look around. Where are the huge revivals breaking out at this company and that? They aren’t there. And they aren’t there because Joe Christian at work can’t devote the time needed to make them happen.

(Meanwhile, the Church in this country continues to diminish. Our lampstand is being removed and setup in India and China, in countries where the people take ministry seriously, while we continue to dabble in it.)

It’s not just discipleship that suffers in the workplace, but justice. Few Christians in a workplace are willing to confront unjust work situations. They do not fight for the jobs of people readily let go so the big boss can get a bigger golden parachute. Christians are absolutely mute on those issues when they simply cannot be and still consider themselves Christians.

But who is willing to go there? What church in our highly individualistic, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” culture is going to stand behind someone who loses his job because he points out unjust and ungodly business practices?

I can answer that: none. And that’s wrong of those churches. In fact, in most churches, you lose your job for any reason and the help you get from your church to find work or pay your bills while you look for work is zero. Nothing. And that’s wrong, too. Read Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-37 and tell me if you see the early Church living that way. Then ask yourself how we got so far away from the biblical model.

No, our entire view of work in this country is flawed and ungodly, but where are the Christians who are pointing this out? Where are the pastors and preachers preaching on this topic, on an area that consumes more daily time in our lives than any other? They are absolutely silent. And that’s an utter travesty.