Market Place Ministry

Excerpts from Lausanne paper

`In Scripture there is no ancient or modern, eastern or western dualistically derived gap between private and public, faith and work, charity and justice. There we have many images of God as a worker (Genesis 1-2, John 5:17, Revelation 21:5), specifically as shepherd (Psalm 23), warrior (Exodus 15:3), teacher (Psalm 143:10, Proverbs 15:33), potter (Jeremiah 18:6, Romans 9:20-21) and as vinedresser (Isaiah 5:1-7, John 15:1-6).50 We also find that marketplace Christians such as Joseph, Esther, Daniel, Nehemiah, Lydia, Priscilla and Aquila are very prominent among God’s people.

To bridge the gap in our partial perceptions of God’s work we need to be more thoroughly trinitarian instead of having in practice a unitarian (one person) theology playing favourites with the Trinity. In good Augustinian trinitarian theology, the three persons of the Trinity all cooperate in their work in the world. Yet each takes the lead in the trinitarian activity for their special part in salvation history – so while the Father is primary in creation, the Word/Son is involved (John 1:1, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:3, etc) and the Creator Spirit too (Genesis 1:2, Psalm 104: 30 ‘You created all of them by your Spirit, and you give new life to the earth’). Christ is primary in relation to reconciliation, the Spirit in transformation and completion. Yet they work together.

Individuals, institutions and marketplace ministries often grasp one aspect of the Trinity’s work and highlight their own particular gifts as the greatest and compete with others. There is nothing wrong with having a particular emphasis or calling but it is imperialistic to be claiming ‘ours is more essential’ as if the body is one organ (1Corinthians 12:14-31). Some will focus more on creation development and maintenance, some on evangelism, others on spiritual gifts and new creation. Yet we should all affirm the importance of each and bless each one’s work if we are to have a properly balanced view of God’s trinitarian work in creation, reconciliation and transformation. This is why we need to develop a three mandate/commission theology (see diagram).

 

Some only have a creational/cultural commission emphasis. They rightly stress the biblical wisdom tradition that we are creatures first, then Christians and stress the horizontal relationship to the world. Yet they can become easily secularised and lose a sense of the evangelistic urgency and christological finality and uniqueness, in their comfortable chaplaincy to secular, pluralistic societies.

Others are rightly Christ-centred and urgently evangelistic. However, they forget that Christ is also the creator as John 1 and Colossians1:15-20 and the first chapter of almost every NT book shows. They stress the urgency of training more ‘fulltime Christian workers’ for kingdom work and see ordinary or ‘secular’ work as worthwhile only ‘to put food on the table and money in the plate’ or for opportunities for verbal evangelism or ‘kingdom work’ alone. They fail to recognise that exercising dominion is kingdom work and that the kingdom is ‘creation healed’ as Hans Kung said. Witness and mission is broader than verbal evangelism or proclamation, although the latter is included and important.

Others correctly remind us of our experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence, empowering and healing and of the immanence of the Kingdom’s coming. However, they can forget that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Word/Christ and of the Creator. They, therefore, confine the Spirit and spiritual gifts to the church, making them irrelevant to the workplace.Yet gifts of administration, craftsmanship, mercy, evangelism, political leadership and counsel among others are obviously relevant to the workplace. Thus they rightly pray for spiritual healing in church, but not for the work of Christian and non-Christian doctors who also have God’s gifts. On the other hand, some workplace chaplaincy groups using a relational pastoral model focus on the human spirit at work without any reference to God’s creative Spirit, ordering Word or redemptive word incarnate.

 This is a brief excerpt is from an occasional paper from Lausanne called Market Place Ministry – the full paper can be found at here