Bridging The Gap Or Christ In The Workplace Series

I haven't always worn a suit to work. A couple of days after I married

Lavonne I got my first job in working my way through college. It was at

the John Morrell Meat Packing Plant In Sioux Falls, South Dakota. After

a summer of that we went off to Bethel and I got a number of jobs. I

worked in a Battery Factory, the St. Paul Foundry, Curtis 1000 Printing

Company, and in between these major jobs I did a number of custodial

jobs. In every case they were dirty jobs and I spent a good portion of my

educational years with a variety of messiness. I pulled the toenails off

from pigs for a while. I pulled thousands of batteries apart and had holes

in my clothes all the time because of the acid that would splash on me. I

worked so close to a foundry blast furnace where everybody was a mass of

soot for 8 to 10 hours a day. The dirt clung to you so that you looked more

black than white. I had my hands in printers ink for 4 years and seldom to

never did I have it all clean from under my nails.

I had a lot of dirty jobs in those years, but I learned that the work

place is a place where Christians can grow, and where their witness can

make a difference. Only once did I have the privilege of leading a fellow

worker to Christ on the job, but I had many opportunities to share my

faith. I discovered that Christian convictions are a whole lot easier to have

on Sunday in the church than on Monday at work. For 4 years I worked

with a boss who was an atheist. He rejected the Bible and the Christian

perspective on life. For 5 days a week I worked with this man. He did me

more good than many of my professors and pastors because he forced me

to defend my convictions, and to make them relevant in the real world of

the work place.

My struggle to bridge the gap between Sunday and Monday changed

my whole perspective on life and made me a skeptical Christian. I mean

this in a good sense. I became skeptical of easy and pat answers that

Christians spout off that do not fit the reality of people's everyday lives.

Working with people of all different backgrounds and convictions made

me realize that we often let our narrow experience of life shape our

theology and limit God to our puny perspective. One of the best things the

work place did for me was to make the world a bigger place. If forced me

to broaden my perspective. If Christianity is to be relevant it must enable

the Christian to learn how to work with all kinds of people, and do it in

such a way that they are accepted as part of the team. In other words, you

have to be accepted by your fellow workers as a person before they will

have any interest in accepting your witness for Christ.

Your work and your witness are not two separate things. They are

one because your work is the foundation to your witness. Poor work, or

poor working relationships will so undermine your witness that it will be

basically workless in its impact. Paul says in Col. 3:17, "And whatever

you do, whether in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God the Father through Him." Paul says the Christian

life consists in what you say and what you do. Prov. 12:14 is saying the

same thing: "From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things as

surely as the work of his hands rewards him." Words and work are the

two means whereby we experience the good life. The Old Testament agree

that the two key elements for success in bridging the gap between our

worship and our workplace will be our words and our work, or what we

say and what we do.

These are the two tracks on which the train of Christian living make

progress into the secular world. If you do and say the right and wise

things you will be able to transfer the truth of Sunday into the workplace

on Monday. If any changes are going to take place, and if you are going to

let Christ transform your daily work, you need to focus on these two

things. Let's first consider-

I. OUR WORK.

Solomon says the work of our hands is what rewards us. Everything

about life that we enjoy and praise God for comes to us by means of work.

Our homes, possessions, churches, schools, cities, stores and roads all come