As part of my preparation for attending Cape Town 2010 I’ve been reading the advance papers.  The latest is People At Work: Preparing To Be The Whole Church by Willy Kotiuga.  Below are a few highlights and then my comments.

I agree fully with Willy’s view that:

One of the largest ‘unactivated’ peoples’ groups that spans across all nations and continents is the workplace where most of the world’s populations is actively engaged in earning income to support their families.

Within youth ministry we understand that the biggest mission field are local schools, so the church should see workplaces as the biggest mission field.  In the UK many people are only at home briefly as they travel into work and socialise outside of their local community, this makes workplace ministry even more important.

Over the last few years of church I’ve heard very few sermons and even less training opportunities on ministry in the work place.  I can think of two good responses:

• This Time Tomorrow: whilst in church instead of highlighting a missionary, once a month a church I belonged to used to invite someone up to speak about what they’d be doing that time tomorrow and how the church could support and pray for them.
• My dad works long hours and travels regularly which meant a normal fortnightly home group didn’t work for him, but along with a few other people set up a group to meet monthly on a Saturday morning designed for those with busy work lives, and to include time to engage with their work life.

Church leaders need to get out of their holy huddle and spend time engaging and listening to their congregations on this topic, this is one where paid ministry staff can’t have all the answers.