Serve Through Your Enterprise

The church has failed us when it comes to helping us understand what serving God looks like from a practical standpoint. We have been led to believe that when the Bible speaks of worship, it is speaking of ritual, but when we study the root words or original text of what worship, service, and work have in common, we find the same word. Work, ministry, employment, deputyship, service, worship can all mean the exact same thing. So why have we not been enlightened about the fact that we are supposed to work or serve for six days then rest on the seventh? Why have we been led to believe that the work that we do for the customer, either through an employer when employed or directly when an entrepreneur, is not ministry or service? Many of us are falsely under the impression that worship does not include work during the week and that worship is music, when clearly it is not limited to music. Worship can include music, but it is not limited to it. We are supposed to serve God everyday with six days of work and one day of rest. The rest is just as important as the work. 

We should tailor our enterprises to the service of the customer, employees, and partners (suppliers, vendors, etc). When we begin to see our work, outside of the church building, as serving God, we can do everything with excellence. We should not have a separate set of values for our work and a seperate set when we fellowship with believers. A life of service will become a life of good business practices, without corruption and malicious behavior. A child of God should be an example to those in the workplace, because all the work they do is in service to God. This does not mean that the employer or other employees should take advantage of that fact, but it does mean that the Christian needs to make others enjoy doing business with them. The real boss of a believer is God, so the Christian needs to act as though God sees everything that they do, and that everything they do is worship. “Work is worship” and “how we treat people is ministry,” should be motivating mantras of believers in the marketplace. We are not supposed to be perfect, God is the only One who is perfect, but we are supposed to strive to please God through our work and rest. 

When you serve people through your enterprise, you can use business metrics as a window into your Christian life. Customers respond to honesty, attention, good products and services, and pricing. When we serve the customer as if we are serving God, we will be able to watch profits or the general health of the business to know how well we are doing. If our staff are always disgruntled, we need to check our hearts to see if there is a principle that we are not following well. We spend most of our time at work and the workplace should be the number one place where we reach people for God. We do not have to be Bible beaters, but we can be ambassadors of Christ. The workplace or marketplace should be the number one mission field and the currency of that mission field is economics. When the customer is not serviced well, they tend to not return. We have to be salt and light in our business dealings with others in order to shine the light on the benefits of a life spent serving God. People can start their journey of serving God by learning to serve others. We are called to love God and love others as ourselves. 

We cannot earn revenues at the expense of our staff and clients. We have an obligation to God to provide our customers with products that make their lives better and work environments that bring growth to our staff. We can be generous to everyone who comes across our path because God causes the sun to shine on the righteous and the unrighteous.  In mirroring our God who shows no partiality, we, too, should  be fair with everyone with whom we do business. Enterprise is one of the only places where being good is rewarded in real time. If and when we are dishonest in our dealings with our stakeholders, it is only a matter of time before the walls come crumbling down. One of the challenges we have with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofits is that they can exist for a long time without ever bringing the customers satisfaction. Most nonprofit entities focus on satisfying their internal hierarchy and sponsors. Meanwhile, they leave the customers, its citizens or target market, without an opportunity to opt out or protest in the best way. For-profit enterprises cease to exist when they ignore the citizenry. People can vote with their money, resulting in the fall of the bad actor and the rise of a business that is willing to keep its promises. 

The Bible is full of examples of people who made a significant impact in the marketplace or public arena. There aren’t too many stories of work being done only within the temple or within the church. Church is there to equip people in the service of God. This means that an accountant is just as much a servant of God as a pastor. In the eyes of the Lord, we are all equal and we need to play our roles with the utmost dedication. We are to work for six days and then rest on the seventh. We are supposed to work or serve God through work and rest. The organizations we work for should not take God’s place, they are merely instruments in our service. We can fail our organization while at the same time pleasing God, and please God while pleasing our bosses. Work is ministry and ministry is work. As long as we are doing what we believe God to be asking of us, we are in ministry. For most of us, this is not within the four walls of the church, but outside of them. When the pandemic hit, churches were shown the possibilities of the reach that technology can offer. Churches now need to pivot into helping their attendees be effective ambassadors for Christ, not better members of the church organization. The church needs to help us shine the light of Christ everywhere we go. We are called to go out into all the world; our workplaces being part of that great big world.