This week's episode, Why Business is Full Time Ministry. Welcome back to Theology of Business. I'm your host, Darren Shearer, author of the book Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World. And this is the show that helps marketplace leaders to partner with God in business to make a greater impact in society and in eternity. If you want to learn more about how to do business for the glory of God, this show is for you. This is a podcast by Christian business leaders for Christian business leaders. If you're interested in starting and developing your own blogging website, I want to invite you to a free webinar that I'll be teaching titled How to Start a WordPress Blogging Website. The decision to start publishing blog posts consistently has been one of the best decisions I ever made. It's helped me to find my voice, to master my subject, and to change people's lives. At this webinar, I'll be talking about reasons why you should start a blog if you haven't already, how to pick the right domain name, how to set up your WordPress website, how to add features that will supercharge your website, how to write and upload a blog post, and how to get readers to your blog. So if this is something that you're interested in, I encourage you to register at highbridgebooks.com forward slash webinar. The event will happen on April the 16th at 11 a.m. Central Time. In meetings with the operators of his Chick fil A restaurants, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, he likes to ask the business leaders as they're sitting around a table, he asks them, what are your aspirations? And inevitably, at least one of them will respond that they they say that they want to be in full-time ministry. So, of course, what they mean by this is that working in a local church or in a more traditional nonprofit ministry role would be a more legitimate form of Christian ministry than leading a for-profit business. So Dan Cathy, he likes to take this opportunity to explain to these Chick-fil-A operators that being a business leader is an important ministry role as part of the church. And when I say church, of course, I mean the universal church, not just the local church. He tells them that the front counter at their Chick-fil-A restaurants is their pulpit. And he reminds them that the thousands of people who come to their stores each week are their congregations. And of course, the pastoral care that they provide for their employees is something that the founder, Truett Cathy, really had as one of his top priorities is to take care of his employees and to share the love of Christ with the workers of Chick-fil-A. So, as a Christian in the marketplace, do you consider yourself in the ministry? Are you in full-time ministry? About 85% of the Christian workforce works in a for-profit company. So why is it that very few of these Christians, in my experience, seem to view themselves as being in full-time ministry? They don't necessarily view themselves as being full-time ministers of the gospel. When business professionals don't view their for-profit work as ministry, here are a few of the consequences. They don't read their Bibles, pray, or worship God outside of church services. Because Sunday morning, you know, the your local church, that's where all that stuff is supposed to happen. Your your pastor facilitates all of that for you so that you can just kind of do your business during the week and leave the church stuff, the Bible stuff to your to your pastor. They don't share their faith or make disciples because again, they just kind of view themselves I'm just I'm just a businessman or I'm just a businesswoman. I'm called to make money and that's about it. They don't hold themselves to the same standards of Christian conduct as though they consider to be in full-time ministry. And they don't activate their spiritual gifts, and that's something that we've talked about the last couple of episodes, is the fact that spiritual gifts are intended primarily for the marketplace if you're a marketplace Christian, because that's where you spend the bulk of your time. And then they assume God isn't relevant outside of the institutional church because they haven't really seen the connection between their Christian faith, between God and their business. These Christians have been conditioned to think that ministry is only supposed to happen in church on a Sunday. Yet of Jesus' 132 appearances in the New Testament, 122 of them were in the marketplace. And of the 52 parables that Jesus told, 45 had a workplace context. Of the 40 divine interventions recorded in the book of Acts, 39 of them happened in the marketplace. But there's been a general sense in the institutional church culture that if your salary isn't paid for by Christian organization, like when I say Christian organization, I mean like a local church or a missions board or a parachurch ministry, then if you if that's not where your your salary comes from, then you're just a crowd Christian. And again, this is no small issue because keep in mind that about 85% of the Christian workforce works in a for-profit company, not in what we would consider a traditional ministry position. I think some of this came from a term that was invented not in the early church, but in about the third century church, which is still uh kind of early, but the term was the laity. So, where did the term the laity or layman come from? Alexander Fair, when he was observing that the concept of the laity didn't emerge in the church until about the third century, he said the layman is a strange being, subject to mutation, born the prisoner of an analogy, conditioned by a climate of the conflict, and formed in a cultic environment. This comes from his book, The Emergence of the Lady in the Early Church. So I want to unpack this statement just a little bit. He said that the layman is a strange being. Why did he say that? That's because nobody really knows what a layman is. We only know what a layman is not. A layman is somebody that uh that doesn't get paid by a Christian institution. The term the lady was invented by church leaders around this time not to identify what these people were, but to identify what they were not. They were not deacons, they were not priests, bishops, they did not have an official church title, even though they were they were in the marketplace, they were doing uh roles in the marketplace, rubbing shoulders with lost people, and with their brothers and sisters in Christ out there in the workplace. The term lady comes from the Greek word laikos, meaning of the people. So basically, a layman was just part of the crowd. And today the term has become synonymous with ignorance. You think about the this statement, the layman's guide to this, that, and the other thing. Basically, we're saying that this is an outsider, this is uh a second-class citizen, somebody that's kind of on the fringes, they don't have the inside scoop on what's really going on. Ferv also said that the layman is subject to mutation. He said this because the role of the lady continues to be modified through the centuries to suit the preferences of nuclear church leaders. And and I say nuclear church again, distinguishing from the extended church, which is the 85% of Christians that are in the marketplace, so so the role of the lady has been modified to suit the preferences of nuclear church leaders, not necessarily to activate their spiritual gifts and mobilize them for ministry among the extended church in the marketplace. And then when he says that the layman was born the prisoner of an analogy, he's referring to the Old Testament analogy to the priest structure, and because there were the priests and then there was everyone else. And some prominent church leaders even today teach that there is still a king and a priest distinction in the New Testament church when the New Testament doesn't make this distinction. In this dichotomy, the local church leaders are the priests, while the business professionals in the marketplace are the kings that exist primarily to give money to their priests or their pastors and their temples, which are considered to be the church buildings. So we're gonna explore this right now. The point that I want to make here today is that marketplace Christians are royal priests, they're not just second-class priests or backup priests. All Christians are priests in the New Testament sense. And in fact, the Apostle Peter he taught that all born-again Christians are royal priests. That's in 1 Peter chapter 2. We're not either kings or priests, we are at once, at the same time, kings and priests, a royal priest. That's what you and I are as children of God, as born-again Christians. Being a royal priest, it may mean that you're supposed to help out at your local church on Sunday as a parking lot attendant or as a greeter or helping out in the nursery or on the worship team or whatever it is. Or uh, but at the same time, I want to encourage you not to minimize your role as a priest. You're not a junior priest, you're not a second-tier priest or a backup priest. You're the only priest that many of the people in your workplace will encounter on a regular basis. So, what does a priest do? If we're if we're priests in the marketplace, in our businesses, then there are two core functions of a priest. And approximately 85% of the church is called to exercise these priestly duties in a business setting. So the first role that I want to talk about is as Peter talks about in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 5, he says that priests offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. As a marketplace Christian, as a Christian in business, what spiritual sacrifices do you make to God through Jesus Christ on a daily basis in your business? And you might think, when you think of priests, you might think of uh, you know, of the the man that wears the funny hat with with the big cloak on, kind of dangling the the pot of incense as he walks down the aisle, but that's not necessarily the image that we're getting here from the Apostle Peter. He says that what priests do is they offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So, what sacrifices do you make to God in the marketplace every day? Do you offer the sacrifice of personal holiness in the marketplace through the way that you live and conduct business? Uh Paul says in Romans chapter 12 that we're to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is our reasonable act of worship. So that sacrifice of personal holiness, we don't have uh we're not authorized to just kind of do business our own way as Christians. We have to acknowledge God in all of our ways, as it says in Proverbs, and then He will direct our path. I mean, His ways are the best ways, and that's what this podcast is all about is to do business God's way, to partner with God in business. So the sacrifice of personal holiness in the marketplace through the way that you conduct business is a spiritual sacrifice that you're offering to God in business. Have you ever had to forgive someone in business? And I'm sure you have probably multiple times, as I have. Consider that each time you forgive someone in business, maybe you've been ripped off, maybe you've lost thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, maybe millions of dollars even in a business transaction. Every time you forgive someone, you're making a sacrifice that is pleasing to God because you're reflecting the character of God Himself. In business, do you sacrifice your financial earnings to God on a daily basis or on a regular basis, a monthly basis, a weekly basis through giving your tithes and offerings? Have you ever had to sacrifice extra time at the office to spend time with your family? Yet another spiritual sacrifice. In fact, your work itself should be a sacrificial offering to God. The term work in its different forms is mentioned more than 800 times in the Bible. That's more than all of the words used to express worship, music, praise, and singing combined. So that's the first function of a priest. As marketplace priests, we are to offer spiritual sacrifices. Number two is marketplace priests proclaim the excellencies of Christ in the marketplace. First Peter chapter two, verse nine, continuing down a few more verses, he says that priests proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. In the Old Testament, the priest was responsible for going to God on behalf of the people, and then he would go to the people on behalf of God.
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SPEAKER_00L. Moody once said, and I think this is very appropriate for a marketplace Christians, he said, Of one hundred men, one will read the Bible, the other ninety-nine will read the Christian. As marketplace priests, we are called to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus in a business setting. That means sharing who he is and what he's done for us. And this involves modeling and teaching the ways of God through how we conduct business. Peter said, if someone asks you about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. So the way in which we conduct ourselves in the marketplace, it ought to make people curious enough to ask people about our Christian hope. And by the way, people ask that question in different ways. They might not come right out and say, What must I do to be saved? But they might ask questions about your your marriage or about relationships or about the way that you conduct yourself uh with integrity, how you uh how you have you have such peace in the midst of very adverse uh situations in the workplace. People will ask for the reason for the hope that's within you in many different ways. So, as Peter says, always be ready to explain it. And this is part of what it means to proclaim the excellencies of Christ in the marketplace. So, as we close here, you're not merely a layman, you are both a king and a priest, called to offer spiritual sacrifices to God and to share Jesus with your coworkers, with your customers, your vendors, bosses, board members, shareholders, or anyone else that you come in contact with in the marketplace. You're a frontline Christian. And if you're called to the marketplace, don't wish you were the pastor of a local church or that you were working in a nonprofit or that you were a missionary overseas someplace. If you're called to be a marketplace Christian, make certain of that calling and recognize that if you haven't realized it before today, you are hereby in the ministry. God has called you to represent him right where you are in that business setting. I want to pray for you today. Heavenly Father, I thank you that you have strategically placed your people in the marketplace. God, to not only encourage our brothers and sisters that are out there working in business every day, but to seek and to save the lost as you came to do. That's why you spent so much of your time in the marketplace. God, I pray that you would help us to open our eyes, help us to recognize our calling to be royal priests, that we wouldn't wait for our pastor to minister to the people that you've called us to minister to, that we would support our pastors, that we would honor our spiritual leaders, but that we would we would absolutely fulfill every uh every ministry assignment in that business setting that you have called us to, that we would stand for righteousness, that we would make those sacr those spiritual sacrifices, uh, whether it's a sacrifice of forgiveness, uh a sacrifice of personal holiness, that we would uh, if necessary, make that sacrifice of that extra time spent at the office, that our work it would be done with such excellence that it would be a fragrant offering to you, and that we would proclaim the excellencies of Christ in the marketplace, that we would let people know whose we are by how we conduct ourselves, and that people would want to know, they would want to know the reason for the hope that's within us. Help us to honor you in business this week and in every other aspect of our life. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. That's all for this week. You can comment on this episode at theologyofbusiness.com. And as a reminder, if you're interested in starting and developing your own blogging website, I invite you to a free webinar that I'll be teaching on April the 16th at 11 a.m. Central Time. This webinar is titled How to Start a WordPress Blogging Website. And you can register at hybridbooks.com forward slash webinar. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.