A Great Move of God
It is also, in the US at least, a statement that is supported by a vast increase in interest in the relationship between spirituality and the workplace, in a significant rise in the number of books being published on faith and work - up from 79 in 2000 to 24 a month in 2002 - and in a widespread movement of people, as reported by Fortune magazine, who "want to mix God and business". These people, Fortune asserts, "reject the centuries-old American conviction that spirituality is a private matter. They challenge religious thinkers who disdain business as an inherently impure pursuit. They disagree with business people who say that religion is unavoidably divisive."
In the US, national and international workplace ministries have mushroomed and there are more than 900 now operational, according to YWAM's Mike McCloughlin. Ten years ago, he could only identify some 25.
It was in this context of the significant growth in lay-led interest in workplace ministry that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association hosted the annual Workplace Leader's Conference at the Billy Graham Training Centre at the Cove in North Carolina. LICC's Mark Greene was invited to deliver the keynote opening address, and three other LICC associates, Stephanie Heald, Bev Shepherd and Paul Valler were invited to attend - a further sign of the Billy Graham Organisation's commitment to the cause, not only in the USA but also in Europe.
Inevitably, the church in the US faces very different issues. They are not yet confronted by a radical national decline in church attendance and there are a horde of highly successful, very large churches able to maintain highly creative programmes without necessarily feeling any particular need to mobilise their people for workplace ministry. Nevertheless, the effects of the sacred-secular divide are just as much in evidence. Equally, US commentators have seen, like their UK counterparts, the potential of Christians to effect radical change in society through the workplace. Peter Wagner, for example, put it this way:
"Societal transformation is high on God's agenda and the chief catalytic force to bring it about will be Christians ministering in the marketplace."
In the UK, some significant progress has been made in the last decade, but overall, 'workplace' ministry is still seen as a side issue, a topic for seminars at the big conferences, but rarely a topic for the main stage. Some senior church leaders in the UK have seen the workplace's potential, but, as yet, relatively few local leaders have fully worked through the implications of the facts that so many of their people are workers, and that the core principles of workplace ministry - the ministry of all believers, mission where you are, mission through existing relationships, change what you're connected to - are principles which apply to every member of the church in whatever contexts God has placed them.
A local church may have a vision for a ministry of all believers in the neighbourhood, but overall, we lack a vision for a ministry of all believers wherever God has placed us. The US faces the same challenges, so it was particularly encouraging that there
were so many pastors at the Billy Graham Conference. As in the UK, pastors are not antagonistic to the workplace agenda; they may simply have never had the time or the resources to consider it. And that is something that all of us could help them with.
Mark Greene
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