The Untapped Mission Force
The following is the script for this video:
What’s that tapping? Oh—someone’s dropping seeds into a trash can. Not into the garden, but into the garbage. Wasted potential. Let’s talk about another kind of wasted potential, the kind that happens in church.
Ed Stetzer serves as Dean and Professor of Leadership and Christian Ministry at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He wrote: “We say we live in a mission field but don’t engage the mission force—the people of God.” An unengaged mission force sounds like wasted potential.
To visualize that wasted potential, let’s look at an aerial shot of a typical congregation on Sunday morning. They’re all arranged in rows—with the pastor up front. Today,100 people showed up. From up here, this group hardly looks like a mission force. It looks more like a theater crowd. So let’s drill down a bit. Tomorrow, 50 of these people will scatter into workplaces throughout the community. That means half the people here are part of the workforce in their locale.
These 50 Christ-followers will go exactly where Jesus plants them—into the world. They, then, should engage as his mission force, his kingdom agents, out there in the work world. Collectively, the 50 have spent maybe 75 hours in church on Sunday. When they scatter into the workforce that week, they’ll probably invest at least 2,000 hours.
Jesus sees each of his followers as a seed. He himself has scattered them into the field of the world. He explains it like this in one of his parables: “The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom.” So what’s causing the wasted potential? When those Christians in the workplace look in the mirror, they don’t see themselves as kingdom-of-God seed. They see themselves as “laypersons.” They do not think of themselves as agents in God’s mission force but as laity—as spiritual amateurs.
Quoting Ed Stetzer again: “[The term laypeople] sabotages the mission of God intended for ALL God’s people and teaches “lay people” that they are the ones who do nothing or are worth very little.”
Such language in the church culture has conditioned Christians in the workforce to embrace two divisions that never appear in the New Testament. The two divisions reinforce each other. The first is the sacred-secular divide. When that mountain peak splits work into two pieces, it appears that only work on the sacred side furthers God’s kingdom. Preaching. Leading worship music. Teaching Bible classes—work of that sort really matters to God. But on the secular-work side of the mountain, banking, plumbing, selling—that has only earthly value.
The second of the two divisions not seen in the New Testament is the clergy-laity divide. It works hand-in-hand with the sacred-secular divide. How? Supposedly the clergy devote themselves to the work of heaven and the laity carry out the work of earth.
Back in our original Sunday gathering, the dividing line is easy to see. The one up front preaches the sermons, does almost all the praying, and emcees the weekly gathering. The congregation calls this the work of ministry. So they speak of this clergyperson as their “minister.”
Ephesians 4:11 and 12 correct this kind of arrangement: “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service.” Service, in the Greek, literally means ministry. So the New Testament says the work of ministry, the work of serving, belongs to the people, to the whole church.
Church leaders are to equip and prepare Jesus-followers to do their work. To “equip” means to “make fully ready.” Pastors are the among those who equip the Christians to do the ministry. Scripture never calls church leaders “clergy,” nor does it call Christians “laypersons.” God calls all of us into full-time Christian service.
This brings us back to that half of the congregation who will head into the work world on Monday. Jesus is scattering them as kingdom seed into the soil of their workplaces. But they typically have not been “made fully ready” to serve as agents of his kingdom out there. Wasted potential. How, then, can their church leaders help them become fully ready for their work in the world?
Let’s begin by cleaning up our language. Send the terms “clergy” and “laity” packing. Widen the reach of “minister” and “ministry” to include all believers. Include every Christian inside the circle of those in “full-time Christian service.” Cancel adjectives like “sacred,” or “spiritual,” or “secular” when they separate work into false categories.
In addition to kingdom language, Christians need kingdom vision for their work. The world, the flesh, and the devil offer many distorted motives for working. These need to be replaced with carefully explained kingdom-of-God reasons for working. For example:
The very act of working reflects the working God. But there’s more! Christian workers get to reflect the light of Christ into the dark corners of their workplaces.
Paul says offering our bodies is a spiritual act of worship. Work gets done through our bodies. So Christians in the work world may offer what their bodies accomplish as worship.
God’s “six days you shall labor and do all your work” command still applies. Getting up and going to work is an act of obedience.
God’s kingdom extends over every workplace in the world. So working means serving as his property manager within the sphere of responsibility of any job.The sin-darkened work world can be a lonely place for Christians. But if they seek each other out, they can encourage, minister to, and pray for one another.
In the workplace, truth must come not only through the mouth but through every part of the Christian’s body. Embodied truth will make the gospel visible and stimulate how-and-why questions from non-Christians.
Joseph and Daniel grew through workplace challenges, setbacks, and trials. So, too, Christians today mature as they—through faith—face the demands of the work world.God promised to bless all people through Abraham. Jesus, the pinnacle of that blessing, now enables Christians—through the goods and services they produce—to bless the world.
Wages and salaries permit Christians to pay their own way, provide for their families, give to the poor, donate to worthy causes, and pay taxes that support those who serve God in government.
Dropping seeds into the garbage rather than into a garden wastes all that potential inside the seeds. How can church leaders block the waste of those seeds Jesus plants in the work world?
Negatively, they can make every effort to remove the sacred-secular and the clergy-laity divide. Positively, they can communicate the biblical vision for working. They can stand against the world’s motives for working with kingdom-of-God reasons for getting up and going to work.
Let’s stop wasting all that potential in the kingdom-seeds Jesus has planted in the work world.
The Untapped Mission Force
This book explains and illustrates many reasons Jesus sends his followers into the workforce.
