Tag: workplace pastor

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Serving Others

What Attitude Will You Take To Your Workplace Today?

Your Workplace…workplace caution sign stating - caution, people working

Does it ever get stressful?
Do you ever find it frustrating?
Are the situations you experience there unfair?

Certainly your workplace has some significant challenges. And yet, it is where God has placed you right now. He might move you somewhere different tomorrow, but for today… He has you in your current situation. And wherever He has placed you, there are people there that need you to serve them.

That isn’t always a cheerful thought, because we would prefer that someone serve us. But as a follower of Christ, you are called to be a servant… even to those rascals you work with!

“In the Workplace, believers are given an opportunity through the gospel to serve in several different directions—upward, downward, and laterally.”

“Serving upward means consistently working hard, knowing you ultimately work for the Lord. Believers should be the best employees on the job because they realize their work is truly done for God’s glory. Serving one’s supervisor well is a means of serving Christ Well. And if a believer works for another believer, he should serve that person even better.” (see 1 Tim. 6:1—2 & Col. 3:23-24).

“Believers Who are supervising others are given the opportunity to serve downward. By treating employees well and fairly, calling out the best of their gifts, the supervisor honors his or her ultimate Boss in heaven, who sees everything that’s done on the job…and who is not impressed with the lines and boxes on the org chart.” (see Col. 4:1).

“Most believers are also given the opportunity to serve laterally, assisting the colleagues who work alongside them. Because of the gospel, believers should encourage and serve these who are equal to them in responsibility, without being a burden to them, without being the slouch at the office who must continually be bailed out by others. One of the best ways a believer serves those who work alongside him is just to do his job well. That alone is more spiritual and gospel-centric than many people realize.” (see 1 Thess. 4:11-12).

You have the opportunity today to be a Workplace Pastor to the people who serve above you, below you, and beside you. How will you use that opportunity?

Why do we find it so hard to embrace this role of Workplace Pastor to serve those around us?

(Quotes from ‘Creature of the Word’ by Matt Chandler)

Categories
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.)

Categories
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.