Inside out

For much of my life I believed that "ministry" meant one of two things: you were either a pastor or you were a missionary. My resume includes both and although I am thankful to God for these opportunities, I realize that I have limited God. Church as we have known it for the past 50 years, is changing and I believe, so is the emphasis on bringing the lost to church. That in no way diminishes the importance of preaching the gospel to those who don't know Jesus. The question has become: who is coming to listen to that gospel?

There will always be the mega-churches here in North America that draw people simply because of charismatic preachers. Remove those preachers and the interest dwindles dramatically in most cases. When Bible scholars have examined the New Testament, the conclusion has often been that Jesus and His disciples went to various regions to establish church communities. So the concept of missionaries and more recently, church planting, became the normal way to spread the Good News around the world. The emphasis was and is on getting the lost, and the saved, to join these church plants, thus creating the impression of church growth.

My struggle after returning from Estonia in 2005 was centered on the question of what ministry looked like when I wasn't leading a church. Was I suddenly disqualified from impacting the world simply because I didn't have a title and a church to lead? I quickly realized that this was a question most Christians had probably asked for centuries. Again, I looked at the Word of God and saw that the key ministry of the apostles and even Jesus occurred outside the four walls of what we would today call, "Church". For some reason we have been led to believe that it is all about Sunday services, Bible Studies and choir practices. Notice that these are all activities that take place among believers within the confines of a church building or home. The Book of Acts certainly encourages the gathering together of Christians but what we often leave out in our teaching, is the influence Christians are to have outside those walls. In fact those walls are often seen as barriers to those outside.

Recently I have looked into the possibility of becoming a Corporate Chaplain. In Toronto we already have something called the King/Bay Chaplaincy downtown. A Corporate Chaplain however, would actually have access to the employees of a business. The purpose is not to proselytize but rather to give spiritual counsel and services to individuals who might request it. Having firsthand experience as a Police Chaplain, I know the influence chaplains can have in a workplace when done properly. Within the workplace there are always individuals struggling with things like stress, abuse, addiction and marital problems. The HR department of most companies do not have the resources or even the mandate to help employees with such issues. A Chaplain would come along side the HR folks and become part of what some like to call a "wellness program". In the U.S. Corporate Chaplaincy seems to have taken root but here in Canada it is in it's infancy. Only a handful of companies, mostly in Western Canada, have chaplains.

It is exciting to be involved in something new but there is still a lot of work to be done convincing businesses that this is something that would benefit not only their employees but also their companies. It has been shown that productivity increases in companies that hire chaplains. I'm sure more studies will need to be made to use this as a selling tool.

This is a job and yet it can be an opportunity to share the love of Jesus with people that would normally never hear about Christ. Going where the need is greatest can't be a bad thing and I believe Jesus and the apostles would be right there with me if they were living here today. A key for me is the ability to build relationships and with it trust. I will be blogging in the coming weeks, letting you know how things are developing. The challenge is big but the opportunities are endless.