When you talk to working women and men these days, you get the feeling that just over the horizon there's good news for Good News proclaimers. Workers are saying out loud that they want to find spiritual meaning in their daily living, especially at work. Most North Americans spend most of their day at work. This reality has wide implications for congregational evangelism efforts. The following paragraphs provide seven hints for beginning a congregational emphasis that starts with the basic truth: Most evangelism happens at work!
1. Think of the Good News as a wide idea. While the central message of Christianity is God's bringing good into our world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's not all the good that God has done and is still doing. Working evangelists can also proclaim and embody these benefits of God's work:
2. Honor and equip workers for all kinds and styles of evangelism. Evangelizing workers do more than witness at work. While "naming the Name" is still a valid way of thinking about on-the-job witnessing, other behaviors also embody God's Good News in the personal lives of working men and women. They include:
3. Use language that workers understand. Don't expect evangelizing workers to primarily use the language of churchly platitudes to converse about the connection of faith and life. The language of business already includes a healthy dose of spiritually connected phrases, ideas, and ideals. We must learn to translate churchly constructs into words that workers understand.
4. Honor the ways in which God is using the "secular world" for God's own purposes. God's Good News in Christ Jesus operates within a developing sea-change of North American business philosophy. Corporate bottom-liners have underscored the wisdom and benefits of spiritual and ethical elements in the workplace. Deeper and wider applications of Christ-based principles find their way into enterprises of all kinds.
5. Honor and affirm what's already happening. Evangelizing women and men do God's work through their own work, on their own terms, and in their own ways. They know when they're effective and when they're phony. They have a sense of how far the message of Christ will spread without being lost or diluted. They understand intuitively how and when to sow God's Word to achieve the greatest benefit and greatest return.
6. Listen to what working women and men are already doing! Consider what you might learn from working men and women in your congregation. Listen as they tell how they consider this matter a part of their sense of vocation, how their successes in sharing all of God's mighty acts could be taught and caught by other members.
7. Think of your congregation as "an equipping center" for evangelists at work. Evaluate how the programs and activities of your congregations honor, affirm, and equip members with specific information, attitudes, and skills that they can use as "full-range evangelists" in their work. Look for places where matters of ethics, excellence in work, recognition of work as mission, and relationships at work are considered in sermons, adult education, small group ministries, and committees. As you follow these hints and those from within your own heart, cherish in your soul the attitude that your congregation's working members even those considered "inactive" are a gifted, capable force for spreading every kind of good news that God has graciously given to this world. And rejoice that you can be their partner in this wonderful work!
Writer: Bob Sitze, Ministry in Daily Life, Division for Congregational Ministries. Copyright 1996 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America