J. N. N. Ng'ang'a - Meditations for   16 - 22 January 2012:  Options of Christian professionals who want to influence their world for Christ

Day 1

Acts 18

1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. 4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

What are the options of Christian professionals who want to influence their world for Christ?

In this book we have spent a lot of time emphasizing that one must only do that for which he has heard God's call to do because whatever
we do we are supposed to do it for the glory of God. So we must assume that whatever business or career you are doing is your call, is your God-given mission for your life. So what options are there then if you are not going to be a person who is called to church work or  full-time employee of the church? You are still a full time employee of God but in a non-church area. What are the options you have to influence others whom your profession brings your way, into the kingdom of God, so that they can live a  life of contentment that God intended all his creation to experience.

Tent Making

The first approach for a Christian professional, is what we call tent making. I regard this aporch as so important that I have put my talk on the issue given in the 1988 students mission conference(COMMISSION) organized  by fellowship of Christian unions in kenya(FOCUS).

Today, tent making specifically refers to professionals using  a business or a skill to work for a living, normally in a cross cultural situation, in order to witness for Christ as they work. Of course you can be a tent maker in your culture, but generally speaking it seems the term is used for missionaries who are not paid by the church but do other jobs that pay for the witnessing they do and  for their living.They really have in their mind to influence the culture they are working in as they witness for Christ. It is a ministry which takes place primarily in a commercial context. In other words not a church context but a commercial or  career context. You may be a scientist doing research in a particular culture and as you interact with those people, you seek to represent Christ among them and establish the church of Christ in that area.

But the access is through your profession as a scientist or as a civil engineer making a road through a community over several years. But let's look at other options that one has.

Workplace Ministries

This is an extension of the tent making approach. It requires that , in your place of work you create ministries that are specifically ministering to your workmates, in addition to your job .It is quite similar to tent making and focuses on utilizing the work place as a means of presenting the gospel to your work colleagues. However, in contrast, work place ministries refers to what is done everywhere ,whereas tent making is something we refer to what you do when you are in another culture. Work place ministry most likely will occur within the same cultural setting. You may not therefore need to be crossing any border to minister the gospel.


So in work place ministry,  you look at your  working environment, seeing for example how you can utilize your break times, or by coming early before work time,etc.Banks staff can  come early before work to pray together for the work in the bank. Then that way you attract other people who may not be Christians to get to become Christians. Work place ministries are unlikely to be in a hostile enviroment.

But in most so called Christian countries, work place ministries are possible where you call people together during lunch hour by advertising something interesting that can attract them there.This assits in establishing a church within your workplace.  And it will certainly be both useful for nurturing the Christians who are there and may be weak, and also attracting total non-Christians to consider the claims of Jesus Christ

Day 2

Col 3

17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of
the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him

Establish An Enterprise with aim of evangelizing the employees and clients

Thirdly, you could also as a professional or as a business person establish an enterprise in order to develop an area economically and influence the community values. In other words you are going as a professional in the area, not primarily to preach but to help improve the economics of that particular culture or place where you have gone. Enterprise development is close to what we will discuss a little later called business as a mission, BAM. It  refers to the start up of small enterprises through the use of micro finance loans. So you go to a place that is poverty ridden as a Christian investor but you want to use your investment skills in order to influence that community. You could  start a micro finance loan system, for example. Its aim is to empower those affected by poverty to start small scale businesses and in effect change that community.  Enterprise development focuses largely on community development, not just an individual but you are trying to develop the whole community and it represents a more passive Christian model because they come to you for business not for Christianity. The intention is not necessarily to actively promote the communication of the gospel but to encourage the development and eradication of poverty. In the process of developing the community, if they know you to be a Christian, it will help them to consider that this person who has helped us to develop, his values must be  good values to have .Enterprise development system of affecting a cross cultural place is a wonderful system of opening up an otherwise closed area. For those  in professions and business who may be investors, this is a wonderful way. You can still go on within your career as a banker,  as an economist, and still be a person who influence that place with the gospel.

Business For Mission

Next we therefore come to what I am calling business for mission. This is where you are  using your business skill to make money that you tunnel into ministry. This is  a common practice for linking business and mission, using business money to fund holistic transformation  and even evangelism. So you can see the key word is transformation. In other words the reason why I am doing this business is to generate an income that will pay for mission work. You are going to be funding direct ministry but your business may be a normal business. You may be selling pencils but pencils are not the mission. It is that the profit you get out of the pencils, you will just pay yourself a salary, all of the profit or most of the profit you are going to channel into mission work to reach out to  the lost.There might be nothing  Christian about the business itself, because it is only the income that is put into mission.



Mission Through Business

You could also do mission through business. That's now different because the business is not being done in order to get profit to invest in mission but you are actually doing your business as the vehicle to communicate the gospel, whether profit is made or not. You are using your business as an avenue for evangelism either through being a testimony in the market place or by funding evangelistic practices. You are not embarrassed about you business itself being seen as an evangelistic tool. So here you have no problem using the business to sell things that people can read. Like if you put a Christian bookshop, you are actually making money, it is a business, but those books that people are reading will affect them as Muslims. So you are actually using business as a mission. But in the same way, you can also start a business that is openly Christian, where your intention is to employ people and then once they  join your business, every morning they must accept there will be chapel. So your business is the one that is giving you the congregation for your chapel meetings. That is what we  are calling business for mission. You are doing mission through business. So your major aim is mission but you are using the business to accomplish it.

Day 3

Col 3

23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord,
not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the
Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25 Anyone who does
wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.

Business As Mission Or BAM or profession as missionBut you could also have business as mission or what we famously

But you could also have business as mission or what we famously call BAM. Here is a vision for doing business in kingdom enhancing ways. This means subjecting every business decision, policy and practice to the biblical values of stewardship, reconciliation, justice, dignity and peace. Here, you view business as a primary institution to holistically serve people's needs in a way that demonstrate the reality of God.

It is really about the practice of business according to kingdom values with kingdom purposes. In this context work and ministry are the same word. In other words, when you are doing what you are doing, it must be done in a way that clearly indicates you are serving God. Here you are doing business as mission.

Your attitude to work then will be different if you are going to use you career, your business as mission so that you look at what you do on a daily basis,( although it is earning you a salary or earning you a profit), you see it as God given mission. To achieve this , some few things have to be considered. You have to look at your profession as a mission in such a way that you see God as calling you, not just working for  self advancement.

And if this is the way you are looking at your business, you as a Christian business professional will not need to be freed from your business to go into ministry because your career is ministry, your ministry is your career, your business is ministry, your ministry is your business. So you never talk of, ooh I need to resign my job to go and work for the Lord because what you are doing will be working for the Lord. You will not see your business or your career as enemy territory to be invaded for Christ. You will not say, ooh pray for me. I am going to work the next two weeks. No. The workplace will be a place you look at as God's place, cleaned by God.You will be working as a Christian there seeking to impact whoever it is you are working with who may not know the Lord. And you will not be convinced that Christian principles, simply don't work in the realm of the world. There are people like that who believe that there are  Christian principles that work in   church but in their places of work those principles can't work.   They argue that there is no way you can do business in a Christian way because then you will never make money. That  there is so much corruption that if you insist on you Christian principles, you will never make money. No. When you do your career as mission or your business as mission, you believe that every area of this world is God's world and so you are not convinced that Christian principles don't work in the real world. If they are really good biblical principles, they must work even there. And you will not have unbiblical thinking that ministry and business are by definition separate entities as we have discussed elsewhere in this book. This  dichotomy of life, you will not believe in it. You will believe the way you are at work is the way you are at home, is the way you are at church, nothing changes. You are the same person. And you don't change your behaviour or your beliefs, you continue with them wherever you are. And you don't think that your life can be compartmentalised into the sacred and secular because to you there is not time you are allowed to be secular. You are sacred everywhere you go.

And you don't think that you need to  establish phony business as mission enterprises to survive. Yes business could be used to access fields that are closed for Christians. In other words when you do a business,it will be  fully business and it is also fully ministry, it is one and the same thing. You don't start pretending  in an area that you are selling charcoal but actually your job is to witness, therefore you do not do good  charcoal selling business. If you enter into charcoal selling, you really must meet the customers' demands. It must be a genuine business done to make money like every other business  and yet you are doing it in such a way that it is affecting people's lives because of the values you have and you are exhibiting in the way you do it. So it must not be a phony business.

Day 4

Matt 6:33

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will
be given to you as well.

Helping People Become Better Off Economically Is not An End.

And also you must not assume that helping people become better off economically is an end. This success doesn't satisfy your Christian mission. You need to understand   that economic success doesn't necessarily lead to Christian  values. In other words you are not the type who is thinking that if your business is making a lot of profits, then you really are fulfilling God's will. No.

The business as a mission must not only make profit, it must also make spiritual impact.... all at the same time. In the same way you are not a successful professional if you  think that because you have had a lot of promotion, even if you have not spiritual impact ,God is very pleased. No. You both want the promotion but you also want people to get saved through your being in that profession or in that business.

The fact that my business has helped so many people to come from poverty  is  good. If your business has helped people to become richer, that's good. But what is the benefit of a person who has become  rich only to go to hell. Whether you are poor or rich, if you are going to hell, it is of no use. We who are Christians believe that rich people require rescue, just as poor people require rescue. So if all you are doing is to empower them to go to hell richer, it isn't useful. You want the people to be happier on earth but  even happier in heaven by helping them economically, but also helping  them to get to know the Lord.

So in order to truly be a Christian  professional,  to use your profession as a mission, or to use you business as a mission, you need the
following:

You need vital characteristics of a kingdom person.

Clearly indicating that the way you are living your life is really following godly kingdom principles. That you live  fully  integrated life. Whatever business you take, it must be a business where somebody does not see  you as destroying human beings. They see you as helping human beings. Let's say for example you are involved in drug trafficking and it is destroying people's lives, it doesn't matter how much you try to call it ministry....it is not ministry. It must be that the business you are doing itself is helping human beings who are God's creation. It must be the kind of business that does  not  contradict you when you give a testimony.

You must seek to influence your organization so that you  impact the world for God.


Whatever you do, look for ways of how your profession, your organization, your business will affect the world with the gospel.  You must view your profession or your business operation as part of God's spiritual purpose. In other words, whatever  I am doing God intended it to affect mankind for the kingdom purposes either directly or remotely .


There must also be as far as it is possible, the explicit presentation of the gospel in your business life.

Obviously, like we said elsewhere, you must not use your employer's time to directly  preach to people or to witness to people. But the way you work should open up possibilities that you can use your break time to present the gospel clearly to the people who are working with you or who are working for you. The people are grateful for sustenance in the sense that you have helped them to get a job, you have supervised them well in the job, they now have income, all which is important. But  they will even be more grateful that in addition to the income, they have come to know the grace of God and to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior.



conclusion

That's what you should be doing in you professional life if you want to be used of the Lord outside the church boundaries. Therefore,  all Christians need to have a ministry. It is important that if you call yourself a Christian, you must tell me, how is you life a ministry to the lost or how is it  helping Christians to grow. All you do should be both a career and a ministry, all at the same time. And please remember we are created to impact our sphere  of influence with kingdom values, whatever career we go to. And whether it is a business or a career, if you are going to carry it as a mission, pray that God opens doors for you to influence others.

The church must encourage  the whole congregation at home and abroad, so that every Christian l who comes to the Sunday service will spend the rest of the week serving God and not just making money.Day 5

Day 5

Acts 1:8

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth."

Direct evangelism

Thus in addition to his good performance, Christian  ways of working  that attract people to him, the Christian professional needs to directly verbalize the gospel to others.

One of the ways one can do that is by giving people who have become his friends a gospel tract to read. For a tract to be useful to a non-Christian, it must have the gospel in summary. Also  whenever we are talking to somebody about he gospel we must ensure we cover at least four things. The person we  approach must be brought to  understand the four parts of the gospel.

This  include first  the sinfulness of man. That's what the gospel says. That we are sinful but man hardly accepts his sinfulness. So the gospel brings us to where we know and accept we are sinful.

Number two, we must know who Jesus is. That He is the Son of God who came and died for our sins. So until the non-Christian  knows who Jesus is and why he came, we cannot claim to have witnessed to him.

Thirdly, he must understand that salvation is possible even for the weakest because it is by grace through faith ...apart from any works. He must come to where he knows that as good as he might think he is , he cannot be good enough to please the holy God.he threfgore needs gods forgiveness

And lastly, you must bring him to where you give him the assurance of that free gift of salvation if he  invites Jesus into his life. He must know that he has role to play which is critical if he is to become friends with God. Jesus did it all.. but He waits for each of us to accept his offer of free salvation.

So if you want to give a tract to someone, although it may be trying to preach the gospel through a story, you must check that the four items are actually in that story. Tracts are helpful to use in situations where it is difficult to actually talk to a person in depth about the gospel. For example, you have no time at work but you become such close friends that somebody will trust you enough to read  if you tell him to read something.... invest his time in reading it. If you have no time at work where you can really, without using employer's time, talk to him, a tract could be useful.

But also after having a conversation with someone, you would like him to have something to go home  with, something you would like to leave with the person as some kind of follow up material to go and think about what you have been discussing.

In either case, this would be helpful and something that one would use. So gospel tracts is one way of communicating the gospel directly. But I have also used videos where you have a video that again covers those four items . It may be drama, it may be a sermon, but you realize it will explain those four things well . You could say, eeh why don't you watch this over the weekend?

It could also be a book. Like Basic Christianity  by John Stott, that you know it is going to give the basic information. Or use books that provoke one to think about his future like books on the second coming. If you give Left behind series , you know that the message will come through somehow despite it being a book that is like a novel, and somebody will enjoy but at the same time the message will come through.

Of course some people even use car stickers to pass the message, or badges or signs.

But really the best method is conversation, having a friendly conversation with someone regarding a current event, it can be football, etc. You can use a football invent to go through to the four points we talked about.

But you could also do evening, after work  house to house visit to reach your community. You could , promise to visit your  work colleague in his home  or invite him  for a dinner in your house.  I think that will be possible with people who have been impacted by the way you work.

Of course if you are really reaching a whole community, open airs meeting in countries that are not hostile to the gospel  are still a possibility. Also  organizing outreach  around malls and shopping centers. Like a Christmas Carol service around a shopping centre where people seem to have  idle time where they could listen to you.

All these are methods that one could use to be able to affect the community that he is seeking to influence. But all of them start with a walk in life that shows you are a Christian, not just in word, but deed.

Day 6

Matt 28



18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in  the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And
surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

How can the church act as the one sending professionals  as missionaries to industry


With Africa today facing  a great deal of exploitation, Christian Professionals like lawyers, doctors, teachers and engineers among others must see themselves  as the privileged few who can help the helpless realize their  rights as God's creation.

In the course of the strong using their privileges, there tends to be the practice of injustice and exploitation of the poor masses. That is the world to which a Christian professional is called to make a difference. Not just by preaching but by working to bring justice into the society.

What is the role of the Christian professional then in raising the standard of working and in defending the helpless against the exploitation? If you are a Christian professional, should you just sit there and do nothing and work like every other professional when you know that your profession is not giving the right service for what it is paid for?

Secondly, should a Christian professional just be happy that he has good ethics for himself or should he also worry that the others working with him should also have ethical practices? Are there some aspects of professional ethics, that you need to introduce into your profession so that even non Christian professionals are forced  to act humanely to all.  Should he seek to influence society so that they  have God pleasing ethics in the career or in the profession or in the community that he is working? This will bring the fear of God where you work .

As said elsewhere, a Christian should only do that which he can for and in the name of the Lord. That means he is called by God to do it and he is doing it in his name and for his glory. That way he will be giving the kind of service that honours God as we saw elsewhere. And we have also seen that he will be serving the Lord.

You know, if he is really doing  good work, then certainly it will be honouring to God and his work ethics will be something that will be pleasing to God. This is  an important requirement for everybody who is going to enter into an area where he wants to represent God in a profession.

So the church in turn , must identify, affirm and pray for people who are working in industry so that they will see themselves as missionaries from the church to the industry they are working. And the professional himself should receive the church affirmation and go into the society to honour the name of God as a missionary from God and from the church.They should consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world's most pressing and physical needs through business as a mission, like we saw earlier.

You must always remember that the gospel has the power to transform individuals, community and societies, so as you go there in the name of the Lord, go knowing that in addition to your profession meeting physical , social and psychological needs ,there can be spiritual change. Christian business should therefore be part of this holistic transformation using their profession or their business.

This is the message of Lucern  Committee for World Evangelization, September 2004 paper on Business As A Mission. God has called and equipped business people to make a kingdom difference in and through their businesses. Church with a strategic mission to reach people for Christ will  recognize business professionals  as their important  arm. We must utilize businesses to  evangelize places, for the purpose of bringing the kingdom of God to the unreached peoples.

We must believe in the redemptive potential of business itself and attempt to make an impact, both financial impact, social impact, spiritual impact and environmental impact, using our profession and our businesses.

Day 7

Eph 6

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with
sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to
win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing
the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were
serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward
everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them,
since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and
there is no favoritism with him.

The joy of any Christian professional is to help his employer's shareholders make a profit and yet at the same time  the people who have worked for him or  with him are left better than before the joined his organization.

After many years of working in  industry the things that gives me joy is not the many promotions I got, retiring  as part of top  national leadership team of one of the largest multinational corporation, but the many individuals I helped up the career ladder, and some of whom ended up sharing my faith . Some went on to higher heights than I could never achieve and I am glad God gave me a chance to assist them on their journey to become top performers.  Even many who never gave their life to Christ to my knowledge , the fact that I had a chance to challenge them with gospel leaves me happy that they still have choice to follow the life giving way of the God's kingdom just because  we worked together .

In every job I took, I felt God expected me to help even the worst worker to change for the better. I understood the main task of a manager as to assist his staff to realize their potential rather than condemn them  un -assisted. Once my expatriate boss felt that I was taking too much time trying to help  people he thought we should fire rather than keep assisting. My view is, if you work only with people who can work without assistance , then the role of the manager might not be needed. His work is to recruit the best but for them to realize their potential, he still needs to assist them, given he has gone through similar challenges. Only in case of pilferage where trust is lost or when assistance to improve performance did not yield any good results, did I believe that  dismissal could  be considered.

So your business or  your profession must  be seen as socially responsible. There is no way it will send a gospel message if it is not seen as assisting society. It needs to be producing income, but be  managed by God's kingdom principles.

So  what makes a business or a profession Christian? It has to be the presence of Christian or Christians in working a Christian way. People, born again, are the ones who can be said to be Christian. Society looking might say : oh this is a Christian professional or this is a Christian business.

The  product or service also must be in harmony with God's creational purposes. So if you are doing drugs or alcohol, you need to ask yourself whether you are really a Christian professional or your mission can  be said to be Christian when the product itself that you are selling is
questionable.

A mission or business or profession purpose that is larger and deeper than mere financial profit is required. So you cannot call yourself a Christian professional if all you intend is to affect people by giving them a service but you do not pray that, that service in addition ,not only helps them socially, financially but also helps them spiritually. Your presence should meet more than just physical requirements.

The product or service is offered with an  excellence that suggest the presence of God. So you should do it in such a way that the standard will make somebody attracted because you are doing it on behalf of God. Your clients are treated with dignity and respect and not just as a means of making money

This will suggest to them that you are a godly man and this may help them to come to ask why you act so differently like we covered earlier. The employees and workers must be equipped to achieve greater potential in their lives if they are Christians and working for you. In other words if you are really a Christian employer, you must think about the people themselves. That's the message of Colossians 3: 22-25. And it is also the message of love in 1 Corinthians 13:13 and 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3.

All aspects of business are considered to be potentially a ministry and a subject of prayer. There is no secular, sacred division. So whatever you do you put it as a point of prayer and you seek God to help you in dealing with whatever it is that will help you to serve the Lord through each day's tasks..

It will be important that we feel that what we are doing daily in serving the Lord in our jobs  is actually impacting society for His glory.