Earthquake Alert – What in the World is God Doing?
Kent Humphreys
Today the church of Jesus Christ is facing perhaps its greatest challenge since Christ’s resurrection. And unfortunately, the only institution that is slower to change than the government is the church. On a given Sunday only 17% of the population attends church in the U.S., closely following the pattern of Europe. Yet, the church is unaware that is becoming ineffective. The Spirit of God is creative and constantly doing new things among us in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. So the question is: “What in the world is God doing today, and what does he want us as leaders to do?” I want to look at briefly at just one area where God is obviously at work in our day-The Workplace.
For the last twenty or thirty years God has become more and more active in His followers in the workplace, just as the church in many countries was becoming more and more institutional. While many churches invited the “lost” to come in, they have kept the followers “inside and busy with programs”, except for the occasional controlled activities out in the community or around the globe. Although mission trips are more common than ever, most of our members continue to compartmentalize their lives into “the sacred and the secular”. The “priesthood of the believer” is preached but not practiced. The largest churches grow by adding staff and increasingly place the focus on the professional and the platform. When the followers get really “spiritual”, then they give up their job (and their relationships with the lost) and go on the staff of a local church or Para-church organization. Will God have to bring a spiritual earthquake to get our attention?
While hundreds of workplace organizations have sprung up in the U.S. alone, few have had much dialogue with the local church until just recently. This dialogue is very healthy and encouraging. I have personally witnessed this expansion globally over the last five years. These marketplace organizations attract, train, and release workers back into the workplace to model Christ and live out their faith in their professions. Many did try to serve the local churches at first, but they were not allowed to because most churches want to tightly control their leaders and resources. This is ironic, because churches need leaders, money, and inroads into the secular community. However, in the past church leadership has not trusted the workplace organizations to give the leaders back to the church. Such partnerships would increase giving, produce more leaders, and open the doors to those who do not know Christ. My book, Shepherding Horses, has addressed this issue by encouraging workplace leaders to build bridges with their pastors and work together to reach their cities. Conversations are taking place among these leaders for the first time in years. Both sides are learning to listen and deciding to lay their control issues on the altar before God.
In the last few years a few local churches have started to emphasize the workplace, but many programs become focused on the church building, the pastor or staff, and large groups. Are we building churches or His Kingdom? Some workplace organizations have gradually become religious and built institutions just like the local church. When we get all of the leaders out of their silos in the areas of the marketplace, education, government, the arts, the media, and the church to come together in Kingdom unity, emphasizing relationships and community, then we will see transformation in our cities.
In a recent survey in Dallas-Ft. Worth, it was estimated that the average church budget costs $25,000 per baptism, while the average workplace chaplain costs only $1,700 per baptism. Perhaps every church should turn a third of their staff into workplace chaplains and provide them free to the organizations in their community. Our baptisms would triple over night. Perhaps we need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of our giving and our programs. It has been calculated that the average full-time workplace chaplain leads twenty-eight people to Christ per year, while many churches do not lead one adult to Christ in a year. One part-time workplace chaplain led 750 people to Christ over fifteen years. And even more important, ordinary believers are free as they share Christ naturally in their sphere of influence. What a bargain!
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God Has Moved!
Cape Town, South Africa, October 17, 2010. The first evening of the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization concluded with an astounding revelation: “God Has Moved!” Church leaders from around the globe reported that over the last twelve months there has been convincing evidence that the Spirit of the Living God has moved outside of the walls of local churches and into the workplace. In keeping with the model of His Son Jesus while Jesus was on the earth, it appears that God began moving sometime in late 2008 or early 2009 outside of the confines of religious institutions. It took several months for even the most spiritual churches to realize that God was moving. For nearly a year most of them continued with their normal activities and services with not much of a drop in attendance. However, by the fall of 2009, it was obvious that God has moved His center of operation to where the majority of the lost population was located: in the workplaces of the villages, towns, and cities around the globe. Lausanne’s purpose of the Whole Church…with the Whole Gospel… to the Whole World was coming alive.
The leaders reported that this move of God was similar to the experience of the children of Israel as they traveled for in the wilderness. God showed Himself as a cloud by day and fire by night. The leaders admitted that they had been so busy in their committees and conferences that they had taken their eyes off of the Lord for just a short time. They certainly meant well in all of their sacrificial efforts, but God had literally placed His presence into the hearts of ordinary believers out in the workplace. This move of God has caused church leaders to make some drastic renovations of their facilities and programs in order to keep up with what God has been doing. Worship centers became a lot less like entertainment venues and looked more like staging zones for a large army. While worship was even more vibrant, the primary focus shifted away from the large gathering to small group equipping. As various churches took seriously the Great Commission, they experienced lower attendance. Once the retooling was in place and working, churches began to see true followers of Jesus flocking to join them.
These changes were accompanied by times of deep repentance and prayer. Leaders from the marketplace, education, government, the media, and the arts joined hands which church leaders to concentrate on the lost in their everyday world. Many pastors confessed that they had taken their eyes off of their high calling. They admitted that the pressures had been so intense to build their churches, they had neglected His Kingdom. Church leaders had been gradually deceived into measuring success by the size of their buildings, budget, and attendance. They had focused on bringing people into their facility instead of sending them out. As this process worked its way into the fabric of many churches, the talented professionals had taken center stage and the paid staff had grown rapidly. The ordinary Christians in the pew became demanding consumers wanting to be entertained and willing to pay for the professionals to do the work of the ministry.
Never before have Christian institutions been this flexible to change this quickly in response to a move of God. Local churches now look more like equipping centers as the primary focus is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry out where the lost are located in the workplace. Pastors began to ask the question, “How can we help YOU in the ministry that God has given YOU where He has sovereignly placed YOU in your workplace?” These passionate followers of Jesus have been meeting in small groups in homes and office complexes and factories. They are learning how to recognize the open doors of crises and are building relationships and sharing the good news of the Gospel of Christ. Some workplace chaplains are leading more people to Christ than their entire church did last year. Baptisms are taking place in factories in China. Prayer meetings are now allowed in government offices in the United States. Biblically based seminars are being presented in companies in South Africa. Young believers are leading house churches in Iran. Business leaders in Europe are modeling their values and beliefs in the secular culture. Latin American marketplaces are being transformed by the Holy Spirit as the leaders have chosen to be led by Him alone.
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