Chuck Proudfit, “Citywide Marketplace Ministry as 21st Century Workplace Ekklesia”

 

Chuck Proudfit, “Citywide Marketplace Ministry as 21st Century Workplace Ekklesia”; Faith@Work Summit, Dallas, Oct. 24, 2016 (posted online Oct 25, 2017); 15:32 - Transcript (2018 words) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ccUfj7yNG0&t=407s

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The Faith At Work Movement is on the cusp, destined for great things. God uses people from all kinds of walks of life and all kinds of professions to advance his kingdom. Work is a crucible that God uses to refine us. Everybody's work matters to God. The only thing that really brings lasting change is the gospel of Jesus Christ applied to every area of life.

Leadership is people who can take other people’s pain and turn it into passion. Are you overwhelmed by Jesus Christ? Imagine for a moment that you're someone coming to faith through work. That you're a young working professional just out of school and starting a career disillusionment with work sparks a spiritual search. You spend years studying world religion and philosophy. You come to Christ with the New Testament church as your frame of reference for church, where the Apostles came from the marketplace, where the work world was a central staging area for ministry, where God acted supernaturally in, and through, work.

Imagine as a new believer struggling to integrate faith and work with little support from the local church and few Christian role models I can imagine all of this because it's my story. I came to Christ through work and now I follow him there. I've learned through trial and error that faith does permeate every aspect of work life and work really is worship.

I come to you not as someone who grew up in the church. Because I came to Christ as a thirty-something. I don't have a divinity degree and I've never been employed in a traditional ministry. I come to you as a missionary from the marketplace with an unconventional but practical perspective as part of a thriving model for citywide marketplace ministry in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I know that when it comes to Faith-At-Work, we've got our work cut out for us. Most working Christians separate faith and work going to church on Sunday and work on Monday. Connecting and mobilizing the church at work has become my life's work. I celebrate the faith at work initiative I do see from the local church missional communities the Peres Church and every day working Christians.

I recognize how they come together as the “Big C” church at work. More than this, though I realize how they form an “ecclesia at work,” where the rivets are relationships, for example. And early in my Christian walk I remember looking for a local church with a focus on work life.

I was fortunate to meet a young entrepreneurial pastor named Jeff Greer. Jeff had recently planted a local church called Grace Chapel. He had a vision that really appealed to me of a campus filled with enterprises that would minister through products and services through the work week and then offer worship services on the weekend.

Revenue from the enterprises would cover some of the operating costs for Grace Chapel.

As the years have passed this vision has come to pass. And today this campus is filled with enterprises and it includes an Innovation Center that raises up faith-based entrepreneurs and also teaches local church pastors about work/life ministry.

About 20 percent of Grace Chapel’s operating costs are covered by the enterprises and Jeff has a BHAG, a “Big Holy Audacious Goal,” that a day would come when a hundred percent of the operating costs at Grace Chapel are covered by the enterprises, so that a hundred percent of tithes and offerings can be released for ministry in the community.

Grace Chapel has made a lot of progress but it hasn't come without challenges even from the local church. At one point I heard of a pastor in a nearby Township who had been preaching against Grace Chapel’s model from the pulpit. He was  describing it as a money-changing  operation. And when I brought this to  pastor, Jeff, I was expecting him to be offended. His response surprised me and  it showed me how thick-skinned pastors  need to become. Jeff laughed and he said  to me, “Chuck, that's not theology. That's jealousy.”

I love the local church. I've become an elder at Grace Chapel. I am a champion for the local church as a faith pillar in every community. Having said all this, the hard truth is that the local church needs to take a leading role in Faith-At-Work, but far too many local churches are disengaged. Not only that: far too many working Christians are neglecting the opportunity to cultivate work/life ministry in their congregations. The good news is that leaders like Jeff are building God's church at work.

They understand that flourishing in the marketplace comes from relationships. The marketplace has been a catalyst for success at Grace Chapel, but also for survival at New Hope Ministries. New Hope had been a small and struggling local church in Ohio's poorest Township. Pastor Paula Bussard couldn't look to the fifty-member congregation for support of any kind, because the members were consumed with personal challenges. Desperate for help, she reached out to the surrounding community, especially local churches, but to no avail. It turns out it was Christian marketplace leaders who came alongside Paula.

They helped her to reposition New Hope as a missional community larger than a small group, but smaller than a self-sustaining congregation. New Hope now imports its leadership talent and financial support. It's become a prototype as a holistic healing center addressing everything from drug addiction to financial stewardship. It's become well-known in its community and now it has advocates like police officers, government officials, community leaders from the marketplace. One hundred percent of New Hope's congregants are now receiving intensive care, and double that number from the surrounding township.

The hard truth is that missional communities like New Hope often struggle to survive because they're too isolated from the broader body of Christ. The good news is that leaders like Paula are building God's church at work. They understand that flourishing in the marketplace comes from relationships. Another perspective comes from the parachurch.  the parent church’s objective is to come alongside the full work of the church, but it doesn't always work out that way.

I thank my colleague Ron Touby, who had been a director with Athletes In Action [Mason, Ohio], a division of Cru, one of the largest parachurch ministries in the world. Ron had seen some of the blossoming of marketplace ministry – and Cincinnati and he wanted to get involved at the same time Cru had been doing some soul-searching about its ministry mindset and approach as a “big dog on the block.” Cru empowered Ron to come alongside existing ministry efforts rather than creating something new and separate from scratch. For those of you who are practitioners, you know that that is something rare and precious.

Ron has become a Cru role model for integrated ministry in a city he's now taking the lead to spark similar collaborative relationships in other cities. We've launched a national learning community for citywide marketplace ministry and Ron has brought Cru representation. The hard truth is that parachurch ministries sometimes succeed in spiritual silos, rather than seriously exploring how they can work better together.

The good news is that leaders like Ron are building God's church at work. They understand that flourishing in the marketplace comes from relationships. Sometimes God moves at work not through a collective ministry effort, but rather through the faithful obedience of an everyday working Christian who seizes a spiritual moment at work.

I think of my colleague Michelle Thompson and business consulting Michelle is still paving the way for the work world to see female African-American professionals as credible.

We experienced this recently on a strategy project at a large privately held family business in Kentucky. After getting excellent results, the client admitted to us that at first they'd been ambivalent about working with Michelle, because they had never before worked with an African-American woman.

It had taken some getting used to, but because they did this century old firm has now hired its very first African-American woman. Michelle is a missionary in the marketplace, but the hard truth is that every-day working Christians like Michelle rarely receive the appreciation that official missionaries receive for their work.

The good news is that leaders like Michelle are building God's church at work they understand that flourishing in the marketplace comes from relationships. The stories I've shared are independent – but they're also interconnected – not just because I was a witness to all of them, but because they express the fullness of the church.

The word that ties them all together is ecclesia.

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus is typically quoted to say, “I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” In this passage, the exact translation of the word “church” is ecclesia. This is significant, because the concept of ecclesia originated hundreds of years before Jesus’s birth. Ecclesia originated in Greece as a governing assembly, but it was perfected by the Roman Empire. When Rome would conquer a territory they would win the peace by sending out what they called an “ecclesia:” A small number of upstanding Roman citizens who had moved into the conquered territory. They move in with the locals, acculturating them in the language and the lifestyle of Rome, until everyone around them walked and talked like a Roman. It's striking that in Matthew 16:18 Jesus did not say, “I will build my synagogue,” or, “I will build my temple,” although he loved them both. Jesus said, “I will build my ecclesia,” a small number of fully devoted followers who will infiltrate the culture around them for Christ –and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

This was a brilliant strategy on Jesus’s part. He was co-opting a familiar Roman concept and infusing it with Kingdom DNA. The early church executed this strategy with excellence within a few hundred years it had grown from a hundred and twenty believers in an upper room in Jerusalem to become a transformational force for change across the Roman Empire.

And beyond the stories I've shared, our stories about the ecclesia at work – beyond the four walls, there are also stories about the at work on purpose ministry. And you can learn more about us by visiting at workonpurpose.org/faithatwork.

At Work On Purpose is a twenty-first century expression of the first century ecclesia at work. We're a community of over 8,000 working Christians in Cincinnati who are coming together; together to restore the city's marketplace for Christ – one job, one employer, one industry, at a time – to engage working Christians across church-homes, denominations, zip codes, and ministries, to operate as a spiritual network of influence throughout an entire city, to connect marketplace resources to city-reaching initiatives, so we can better transform the communities where we work and where we live.

At Work On Purpose is in ecclesia in Cincinnati's marketplace. It's also part of a much larger ecclesia we all call the marketplace ministry movement as we step forward into ecclesia. We know that God has created every one of us for a purpose, and that he's prepared good works in advance for us to do.

We accept that our job is less to participate in marketplace ministry programming and more to be the programming where we work we accept the fact that much of our spiritual fruit will grow on other people's trees.

Consider this: our society is rapidly becoming post-Christian, but the ecclesia, which was so effective in the pre-Christian society of the early church, can be equally effective for us today. Young working professionals, like I once was, are increasingly unlikely to step inside a local church, but we can be the local church that steps into their cubicles. We can be the spiritual difference in their lives leading them to the Lord and growing them in Christ – all with the work world as a venue. All with the overarching insight that the spiritual economy of the marketplace is relationships, and the currency is love. Thank you.

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