1. A tool to be used in corporate worship (Sunday or Saturday): Interviewing every week or each month a person who works in the world Monday to Friday and praying for them.
· TTT (This Time Tomorrow) What will you be doing this time tomorrow? Do you think God will be there? How can we pray for you?
2. A tool to be used by small groups: Connecting small group Bible study with Sunday sermons, especially when you are doing a series on work, service, or vocational discernment. Using published Bible study guides in small groups that cover work and service.
3. Seminar tools in the local church: Offering short seminars focusing on aspects of work life using members as presenters. For example, “Whose Work Matters to God,” “Discerning Your Calling” and “Taking Your Soul to Work.” You can invite church members to join regular Webinars by HK-IMT or other faith and work organizations.
4. Christian education tools in the local church: Consider a Sunday school class on work. The “Doing God’s Business” films1 and 2 can be used with this. The films and the study guides for discussion are available. https://hk-imt.thinkific.com/collections
5. Staffing tools: Larger churches can employ a staff person to be marketplace pastor, encouraging people in their integration of faith and work, visiting and mentoring people in the workplace, running seminars and classes for integration. Smaller churches can draw into leadership a retired person who is self-employed or working as a volunteer to be a marketplace pastor or a marketplace coach. This person could also minister to youth in the area of vocational discernment and seeing that all good occupations are arenas for serving God and neighbour.
6. Communication tools: When church directories are printed or put online, and with the permission of the people, name their occupation.
7. Pastoral care tools: Church leaders can visit people in the workplace for a minimum of two hours, possibly longer, offering to pray silently for them when they are there and visiting over coffee breaks or lunches, discussing the way their work is a ministry, issues they face, and what difference their faith makes to how they handle these. If a pastor were to spend a half day every week in the workplace of members, there could be extensive learning on the part of the pastor and the worker as well as positive encouragement for the worker.
8. Commissioning tools: When people have a proven ministry in the workplace or some arena of out-of-church engagement, they can be publicly commissioned to this ministry in a Sunday service or a church gathering, using resources that are available through IMT.
9. Networking tools: Monthly or biweekly noon-hour or breakfast gatherings of people working in the same geographical area can accomplish extraordinary one-another ministry and mutual upbuilding for ministry in the workplace.
10. Vocational discernment tools: The local church is the best context in which persons can discern their callings, since we have some idea of “who is calling” and “what the calling of God means to people”. This can be done through youth programs, through Sunday school youth and adult classes, through children’s programs, and through occasional seminars with hands on exercises, such as the seminar offered by IMT.
11. But there is a further way the church can be the servant of the kingdom. It is this: by creating kingdom consciousness so that the people of God can see signs of the kingdom coming, celebrate that, and pray that the kingdom will indeed come more and more.
The church is sign, sacrament, and servant of the kingdom of God. As John Bright says, “The New Testament Church is the people of the Kingdom of God.” In so being and doing the church’s life and work is an acted prayer, “Your kingdom come.” The big thing for the church to do is not to bring in the church, but to be a sign, sacrament, and servant of the kingdom of God.
Adapted and developed from the Kingdom of God in Working Clothes by Paul Stevens page 159-161.
Please contact Mr. Jimmy Pak jimmy.pak@hk-imt.org if you’d like more information.