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 PrintableVersion A sacrifice too far?Thoughts on misdirecting our keen young people‘Jesus’s instruction for us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for the harvest tells us that the need of the day is to get as many young men and women as possible into full-time paid gospel ministry’ reflects a prevailing culture among ‘our kind of evangelicals’. Our emphasis on getting ‘good people’ into our apprenticeships, ministry training schemes and equivalents, and in turn sending them to theological college and into ‘ministry’, speaks volumes about our priorities — for our churches and for the individuals concerned. Full-time?And this drive for ‘full-time’ workers is understandable and, to a point, necessary. The fields are indeed ripe for harvest, and Jesus did instruct us to ask our Father for workers in the field. But to equate workers primarily, or preferably, with those in full-time paid gospel work does not seem to be very thought-through. If the harvest-fields are ripe with the lost, and the work needed is for their salvation, then is it not time we re-assessed our strategies for finding and defining our ‘workers’? Many full-time paid Christian workers I know (myself included) comment on the difficulties they have in making and maintaining contact with non-Christians. In contrast, people I know working in so-called secular jobs have plenty of contact time with non-Christians. One teacher came back from work one day elated because he had the opportunity to present the gospel to a full staff room where over 40 non-Christians were listening. How many times in the last six months have I been able to speak to that number of non-Christians? How many times in the last six months have you been able to speak to that number? Even at many CU missions there tend to be relatively few non-Christians present! Yet these are the very contexts into which we expect our apprentices, our ministry trainees, our workers to go. Where is the front line?Isn’t it madness to take as many gifted, able and passionate people as we can out of that mission field and get them into situations where they are leading BS groups of Christians, preaching to church buildings full of Christians and moving chairs or sticking stamps on letters? Surely it would be a wise strategy to keep many of them involved in the workplace and equip them to be gospel ministers there; to train them for front-line gospel ministry, not church maintenance; to devise strategies to try and get Christians working together — that Christian colleagues may be seen to be Christ’s disciples as they love one another. We should be looking for teachers, shop assistants, bankers, cleaners, plumbers and secretaries to stay in those jobs, and to be equipped gospel workers so that they can make the best use of every opportunity. We should be rejoicing with them that they are able to live their daily lives before non-Christians, establishing credibility and provoking the questions that ask them to give the reason for the hope that they have. Of course, some people should be ‘full time’, and initiatives like 9:38 do a good job of encouraging people into that kind of ministry. We do need to sacrifice some good people to train others and nurture the right kind of culture in our churches. But sacrifice it is, because we are taking people out of those contexts where non-Christians are plentiful and asking them to have limited or mainly formal contact with non-Christians, so that they have the time and resources to teach and so train others. Making a hierarchy?The drive to get as many people as possible into full-time paid gospel ministry is also modelling to our church family, and wider constituency, that real gospel ministry demands you come away from these mission fields! As a result, we risk elevating one type of work or ministry above another, and failing to acknowledge and therefore equip the ‘non-full-time paid workers’ as the gospel ministers they truly are. This implicit, or explicit, hierarchy is not only unnecessary but also potentially counter-productive and harmful. Perhaps the reason we don’t find more people recognising this as gospel ministry is because of the kudos that in our sub-culture comes from being a full-time paid gospel worker. And perhaps, for some of us who are in that kind of ministry, the thought of moving out of that into the workplace is one sacrifice we are more reluctant to make than we would dare admit. Yet professionalism always has been, and will continue to be, the enemy of authentic gospel ministry. In the market placePaul makes a lot of his daily work, and he never seems to view it as an intrusion, or even a necessary evil (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2), whereas for many evangelicals, ‘tent-making’ is often viewed as less than ideal, or at best a stopgap until you can find enough money. Yet there is great benefit in viewing it as a gospel strategy that puts you in the market place, among people who need to hear the gospel. Perhaps a generation or two ago, it made sense to invest all our efforts and resources in training people to preach from a pulpit? People would come into a building and sit under the sound of gospel ministry. Consequently, people needed to be equipped to take that opportunity because once upon a time, pulpit ministry was front-line gospel ministry. Not any more! The front-line is out there in the office block, the schoolyard and the factory floor. So many non-Christians (colleagues, bosses, employees) will never come to a meeting, and increasing numbers of them will never hear the gospel unless gifted, able and passionate gospel workers with the necessary tools make intentional moves to go to, and stay in, the ripe harvest fields of the so-called ‘secular’ workplace. Steve Timmis,
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