Russell Media - Mark

There seems to be a serious conflict with our current lives and strongly held concepts about church and ministry.

So many churches that I know of, which are actually great churches, hold to a local church-centric view of ministry. This means that the goal of the staff is to get the lay people involved in ministry, which is defined as either volunteering at the physical church location or through church organized service projects in the community.

Undoubtedly both of those are valuable and needed avenues. However, this is really what I call "faith addition", living your faith means 'adding' certain activities to your already busy life.

The contrast to this is "faith integration', living your faith means integrating your faith into whatever you are doing.

The average church goer in America spends 70-80 hours a year at church. The average work week is getting close to 50 hours a week or 2500 hours a year. If living one's faith means doing things at church then we are not on a whole living our faith very much.

If however, living our faith means following Christ in everything we do, everywhere we are then the doors have opened to a deeper, more meaningful conversation.

As a result, it seems we need to take seriously what it means to follow Jesus in the workplace.

Thoughts?

Mark Russell