To my fellow Christ followers!
A million or more South Africans attend a prayer meeting called on short notice. Amazing! Most of those are involved in a range of workplaces, from farms to factories, open plan offices to private cubicles in climate controlled environments.
Yet many Christians are not able to link their work to their faith; there is a disconnect between the two, it is as if we live in two parallel universes. For too long have we set our beliefs at the workplace door when we arrive at work on a Monday, only to pick up our mantel of religion on a Sunday. We have allowed others to determine the agenda and set the rules. We pay our employees low rates of pay and justify this by pointing to the economy as if this is out of our control. We have turned the Gospel of our loving Father into religious dogma used to beat down and enslave others.
It is a central aim of the Labour Law Academy to help Christians to see the relevance of their work to their faith, and their faith to their work. For that reason, and in furtherance of the gospel, there is a section dealing with this. It is intended as a provocation to fellow Christ followers and as a means of revealing the gospel to those who seek the truth.
We argue in these pages that all work -including so called secular work- is as much a calling from God as the ministry of the priest. When we work, we are the ‘fingers of God’, the agents of his providential love for others. If we see work like this the purpose of work becomes elevated from making a living to loving our neighbour and releases us from the crushing burden of working primarily to prove ourselves. By becoming God-centred in all aspects of our lives we learn to treat all others with respect and build a society which thrives.
There are two resources which I highly recommend: the God at Work site, which is linked to Alpha and the work of Nicky Gumble. The second is the Faith and Work Alliance, a South African based work linked to Gospel in Life and Tim Keller. I have place links to both below.
Yours in Christ
Sean