What is Marketplace Ministry?

Is it a new phenomenon?


UNDERSTANDING THE MINISTRY IN THE WORKPLACE
Rev Wong Fong Yang
City Discipleship Presbyterian Church

There is this movement of the Holy Spirit in the world today to awaken the giant within the Church. The movement is about seeing the workplace as the ministry of God. Ministry is not confined to the four walls of the church building when Christians go there on Saturday or Sunday. Ministry is not about 'full-time' ministry carried out by 'full-time' workers. There is ministry in the church and there is also ministry in the marketplace. We do church work in the church but we also do the work of the church in the marketplace. This has nothing to do with nuances or word play. It has to do with sound theology of ministry.

Dick Halverson rightly puts it this way: "There is a distinction between church work and the work of the church. Church work is what you do for the organized institution of the church. The work of the church is what is done between Sundays when the church is scattered all over the metropolitan area where it is located - in homes, schools, offices, on construction sites, in marketplaces."

Majority of the Christians are in the '9 to 5' window working in the marketplace, my hunch is that many are oblivious of the fact that their works there are ministry that God has called them into. Most Christians see their work simply as a career. Few view it as a ministry.

It is a known fact that pastors may know how to equip their members for church ministry but I wonder how many know how to equip them for marketplace ministry.

We commission Sunday school teachers publicly for teaching children in the church but we don't do that to those Christian teachers who are teaching in the schools, colleges or universities out there. Our practice revealed the deficiency of the theology of workplace.

During the reformation in 17th century, theologians had debunked the faulty theology of work. In those days, Christians viewed work in the church as sacred and work in the market square as secular. That is why Christians put 'full time' workers on a high pedestal. It is as if that 'full-time' work in the church as a higher calling while the rest are second class Christians. It is true that church work is sacred, so as work at homes and in the marketplace. Nothing is secular. The residual of the reformers' understanding of work is again brought to the surface.

What are Christians called to do in the workplace? Is it to do evangelism?

Is God's mission in the workplace to be defined as witnessing for Christ?

What is really workplace ministry?

Is it about transforming the marketplace with biblical values? Is showing compassion to the needy in the society through Christians in the marketplace as ministry?

Is doing a job with competency and excellence as a ministry unto Jesus?

Is carrying out social justice and speaking for the voiceless in the workplace a ministry equivalent to leading a worship service in the church?