The first disciples were mainly workers in various trades and the workplace still offers a holy ground to be a “priestly presence” to witness for Jesus, delegates heard at the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, Korea.
These were the views of Julia Garschagen, a Bible expositor at Lausanne 4 and director of Pontes Institute for Science, Culture and Faith, also a guest lecturer at the Evangelistenschule Johanneum in Wuppertal and co-leader of “truestory,” a digital youth outreach event in Germany.
“How did the gospel spread so quickly and so widely in a time without the internet?” asked Garschagen, before saying it was due to an “often overlooked, very diverse missionary force, which is the people in the workplace who gossip the gospel.”
Garschagen pointed out that the gospel initially spread quickly, as recorded in the book of Acts, through working people such as the Ethiopian eunich, a politician occupied as “a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure” (Acts 8:27), or a saleswoman called Lydia, “a dealer in purple cloth (Acts 16:14), or Aquila and his wife Priscilla, who were craftspeople – the apostle Paul “was a tentmaker as they were.” (Acts 18:3).
“The gospel traveled in the suitcases of politicians like the Ethiopian eunich. It was passed on with the goods of sales women like Lydia,” said Garschagen, who believed that the importance of workplace missionaries today often goes unnoticed.
However, in her opinion, the first Christians accepted a synergy between work and gospel witnessing to the extent that “Paul didn’t even bother to write a chapter on evangelism and the workplace.”
For Garschagen, the witness of people in the workplace is “mentioned all over the place. It’s woven into the DNA of the mission of the early church.” The significance of this fact is a valuable prototype for evangelistic strategy today because 99 percent of church members spend their lives in the workplace, she said.
When the first believers gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, Garschagen again noted they were people from different career backgrounds: fishermen, tax collectors, political activists and food industry workers. “They become the new temple of the living God,” Garschagen said, referring to 1 Corinthians 3:16. She used the phrase “heaven and earth people” to describe this spiritual identity underpinning working Christians.
Garschagen then examined how Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Acts 16 with the jailer doing his normal job looking after the two prisoners. Yet these two men carried the presence of God, as part of the temple of the living God, embodiments of heaven and earth. As a consequence, the jailer becomes a believer and carries on his work but “his workplace becomes holy ground.”
“What we can learn here in Philippi is that we carry the presence of God wherever we go,” said Garschagen. “And if the workplace of the jailer, a prison, can become a holy ground because of the presence of two Christ followers, surely your workplace can become a holy place too.”
The division between the secular and sacred was removed, said Garschagen, reiterating the point: “Here in Philippi, we see that just like this prison of the jailer, your office, your workshop, your company can become holy ground.
“You carry the presence of God to a meeting on a Monday. You bring the power of God to your business on a Tuesday, you embody Christ while you cut people's hair, while you teach, while you cook, while you do your scientific research, wherever you travel on a business trip or as a work migrant, you take the presence of God with you, just like Paul and Silas did.”
This brings a different dimension to the workplace and a new dignity, according to Garschagen.
She referenced a friend, working as a business consultant, who saw that her colleagues were not believers with no one praying or pastoring them. This acquaintance understood her workplace as a mission field with responsibility to witness for the gospel through prayer and caring for co-workers.
Every workplace is different and there may not be scenarios to openly sing worship songs, or talk openly about the Christian faith, but Garschagen said opportunities abound to seek direction from the Lord for the organization itself, as well as pastorally caring for colleagues as a “priestly presence.”
“Ask the Lord for wisdom, for creativity, for courage and for sensitivity, and ask him to help you lead life so that people will ask questions because they see your integrity.”
Garschagen gave a personal illustration of a Zambian hairdresser in London she knew, who would pray over people’s heads as she cut their hair and got to know them personally.
“I have seen quite a few people leaving her saloon transformed, not just because they had a new haircut, but because they had also gotten a taste of the love of Christ through her priestly presence.”
Garschagen acknowledged before the delegates that being a “priestly presence” in workplaces brings various challenges. Integrity requires a level of courage. She referred to a story about another friend involved in a hedge fund who refused to agree to funding the weapons industry, despite the large amount of money offered. His business partners saw him as a traitor for refusing the business opportunity. Being a priestly presence at work is thus “a tough calling.”
“It can come at the cost of your salary, of your reputation, maybe even of your whole career,” said Garschagen. “And it can feel silly and naive like [Paul and Silas] singing hymns in a prison cell, but it's got transforming power in your workplace.”
Garschagen believed that Paul did more than just earn money when he joined Aquila and his wife Priscilla tentmaking, or possibly leather making in Corinth, as recorded in Acts 18. She hypothesized that Paul got to know personally but professionally the Jews and Greeks noted as being present in the Synagogue when he preached each Sabbath.
Garschagen questioned why there were Greeks in the Jewish Temple and pondered the thought that Paul became familiar with them as customers through his secular work.
“Maybe they were his customers and his business partners,” conjectured Garschagen. “Knowing Paul, he would gossip the gospel wherever he was and while selling his goods.”
She offered imaginative perspectives on this possibility, such as Paul inviting customers to an evangelistic business lunch to talk about integrity in the business world or an evening dinner to discuss the meaning of life beyond careers.
Garschagen said Paul showed flexibility in his working life as a whole: one moment working a trade and using it as an opportunity and the next moment dedicating the majority of his time to preaching the gospel, once Silas and Timothy joined him.
“Paul was flexible as long as Christ was being displayed and declared. And I think that is a guiding principle for the mission of the early church throughout the whole book of Acts. We see there is no division between the sacred and the secular. And that means there's also no distinction in calling between lay people, full-time workers, part-time workers, whatever you may be. There are no second class citizens in the kingdom of God.”
Garschagen speculated that the early Christians did not divide working life from other missional activities: “Maybe they would have said something like, well, if we are the temple of God, then we are all full time for the Lord anyway in our work and in our life, wherever that work may be and wherever this life and the Holy Spirit may lead us.”
The pressing point made by Garschagen, called the “incarnational principle,” is that Paul learned from Christ to become like others, in order to win them for the Lord, echoing 1 Corinthians 9:22b: “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
“A leather worker to the leather workers, a lawyer to the lawyer, a cook to the cook, a teacher to the teachers,” said Garschagen. “Programs are not going to win people's hearts. People will.”
For the Church today, an exciting actuality is that Christians are already working in these different spheres: as pilots, politicians, pharmacists and other occupations.
The key question is whether the church realizes this as a calling. Garschagen told delegates that this is a “word” to church workers with the labels of pastors, theologians, evangelists and preachers.
“We need to be humble. The church is not ‘church.’ We are not the amazing guys who run the show. The church exists to train and love and equip and send out the 99% of Christians who faithfully serve their Lord and master every day in their offices, their classrooms and their shops.”
Garschagen further suggested that churches reorient the emphasis on gospel witness to learn from professionals, whom she called “workplace priests.” She suggested giving them space to be interviewed about their work, and hold regular prayer meetings for them.
Again, she offered a personal illustration of a friend who had many praying for him as a church pastor but no one praying for him when he changed direction and became a businessman. The new scenario was more challenging and he met more non-Christians but “sadly no one prayed for him anymore.”
“How about we get people of the same occupation together in one space to think and pray about what it means to be a Christian salesman or Christian nurse or Christian biologist? And how about the pastors just sit there and listen?”
Garschagen encouraged churches to consider developing a liturgy to commission people in their workplaces as priests and reassuring them of their value even if they don’t volunteer in traditional church activities because they carry out God's mission in another part of the kingdom.
At the end of her talk, Garschagen invited delegates involved as work priests to stand and receive prayer. Praying over them, she said:
“Lord Jesus, we are so thankful that we as a church have got so many different members, different cultures, different career paths, different callings, but we all united in the calling to follow you and to serve you.
“And today we especially want to commit our brothers and sisters to your hands who faithfully work every day in the secular world. We honor them Lord, just like you honor them, we pray.
“Would you anoint them? Would you bless them? Would you give them courage? Would you give them stamina? Would you give them opportunities, Lord? And would you give them love and patience? And would you radiate through them Lord, so that indeed other people would ask questions?”
