Why Every Church Leader Needs to Understand Where the People of God Work
To achieve its God-sent purpose, a church must engage with its surrounding socio-economic and cultural environment. It does this mainly through its members who are immersed, by and large, in the world, Monday to Friday. It does this because the whole church is on a mission, and the mission of God is wholistic, or integral, as is commonly called today. Since most human activities occur in the marketplace, a church must influence the marketplace and the people who work there if it desires to initiate and augment a makeover to align with godly behaviors and God’s holistic design for life in the world. At the same time, the church must also hold on to its unwavering focus on biblical doctrines and protect itself from the marketplace's unscriptural effects from creeping into the church. The church must restrict its direction of integration to be only one way from the church outwards to the secular world. Moreover, the priority is always to ensure that Jesus remains visible and relevant to all humanity by lifting up the Holy Trinity, abiding by biblical teachings, and being salt, yeast, and light wherever people are placed. In this way, the church in the marketplace, in the scattered life of the church, is on a kingdom of God mission.
A Historical Perspective
The Bible indicates that the early church was always a part of the lives of the surrounding communities. Paul made tents and sold them in the local marketplace. It is where trade and mercantilism occur, and almost all human activities, from worship to relationship-building to decision-making, are conducted. Over the years, with an ascending clericalism, the priests in the church were held in high regard, and members were subservient to them. However, the advent of the Protestant Reformation re-introduced the biblical concept of the 'royal priesthood of all believers,’ the church's influence in the marketplace was effectively undermined along with the clergy’s roles and authority. With the rise of consumption and materialism, particularly under the capitalistic socio-political and economic structure in the secular world, some churches opted to minimize or refrain from engaging entirely outside of their physical boundaries in case the negative repercussions of difficulties would harm the churches. This compartmentalized approach has led churches to adopt a misguided position of further separating the sacred from the secular: worship on Sunday and work on Monday. That is dualism. So, we need to ask where most believers work.
What Is a Marketplace?
In essence, a marketplace is where commercial trade and exchange activities can take place to meet a person’s resource needs. Individuals can negotiate, barter, buy, and sell their products and commodities to meet their financial needs and satisfy their quest for products and services. An 'invisible hand' guides the market's transactions to ensure that the prices paid and sold for the goods and services always gravitate towards an equilibrium point, where the amount of demand and supply approach equality. This mechanism aids in fostering an efficient production and consumption framework that maximizes gains and offers satisfaction to all. Therefore, the marketplace, in a nutshell, encompasses many necessary and voluntary human activities and engagements in the secular realm that are generally outside the church's purview.
Why Is the Marketplace Important?
Without an efficient trading infrastructure like the marketplace, people and communities needing specific merchandise and services cannot acquire them efficiently and quickly, thus preventing access to things that help communities grow and thrive economically. Ultimately, impoverished people are raised in their living standards. God has designed humans to be intellectual beings by infusing them with the ability to have free will and to make decisions for themselves. This ability to make what is supposed to be their most idealistic decisions assists in initiating and sustaining an equitable and just society to flourish. Humanity's intellect and the desire to seek new trading opportunities in marketplaces worldwide have also nurtured sea and marine explorations. The benefits of greater trading activities have also helped enhance communications and have boosted interactions in a global world inhabited by diverse peoples who otherwise may not be able to communicate with one another.
The marketplace setup that boosts trade and exchange allows for more efficient stewardship of earthly resources. In addition, the common medium of exchange used in the marketplace presents a fair and widely accepted measurable valuation standard for goods and services that reduce predatory practices in the economic system. Knowing that the market will always offer the most reasonable prices depending on consumer demand and production supply at any time will enable consumers and producers to plan their consumption and production that are the most optimal and provide the greatest financial return, thus ensuring proper utilization of resources at all times.
The timely and appropriate use of resources fosters employment opportunities that utilize humanity's God-given gifts and talents. Corporations' requirements for skilled and unskilled labor rise as they engage in more extensive trade activities. Moreover, with greater market demand for goods and services, corporations must compete in an increasingly competitive and cut-throat business environment, thus forcing them to research, explore, incubate, and nurture new innovative ideas and creativity to get the edge over their competitors. This vicious cycle of innovation, demand, and supply will continue to feed and nourish the market's participants and wonderfully improve the livelihood of many, though sadly not for all.
Scripture shows that God created humans to live and thrive in communities. The marketplace provides a location, both in-person and online, where all individuals can congregate with one another freely to communicate, interact face-to-face, conduct personal and corporate activities, and address meeting their fundamental needs.
Why Must the Church Engage With the Marketplace?
Like everything God has created, the marketplace, a sophisticated and complex economic apparatus, is likely an invention resulting from God's creativity. God created humans to be intelligent mammals with the ability to have free will. He also endowed humans with unique gifts of skills and talents to enable them to flourish and prosper. The complicated but effective economic trading system in the marketplace allows exchanges to occur that help communities function optimally. The importance of the marketplace and its central role in the lives of the early Christians have made economic injustice a core ministry of Jesus. Throughout his ministry, Jesus advocated for those marginalized who suffered under the economic plight of his time. Jesus strove to eliminate the existing inequities and sought to inject a fairer and more balanced economic structure that benefits everyone instead of the select few at the pinnacle of the establishment. Jesus taught his disciples about the effects of wealth, money, prosperity, and other economic issues. He cautioned his followers to refrain from engaging in unethical and immoral financial conduct and activities and admonished those who use economic might to perpetuate injustice.
The marketplace and its myriad of positive and negative impacts on communities in the first century continued to make headwinds after Jesus's death. Even the early Patristic Fathers recognized that Christianity has an inherent tie to the economics of the secular marketplace. They wrote extensively on money and wealth in society and how they intersect with biblical principles. They were particularly concerned with the apparent destruction that worshipping and glorifying financial and material goods could bring to humanity.
Historically, even with some cautionary views of the marketplace's integrity and its plausible detrimental consequences, the church has usually promoted humanity’s causes in the secular market that benefitted society's positive progress. It recognized that the market principles embedded in the marketplace infrastructure allow for the accumulation of wealth and resources that, if applied thoughtfully and appropriately, can help bring flourishing to God's people. Wealth creation is God’s willful providence of communal benefits to his people and should not be denigrated and condemned. Instead, humans should use their God-given wealth for the greater good of humanity in alignment with Scripture and as God wishes. The link between theology and the economy is so strong that the combined two subjects have been known as ‘economic theology.’
In light of the centuries-old connection between the church and community engagement, the church, as a unified body of Christ followers, must fulfill their God-appointed duties to serve in the world on behalf of God's reign (kingdom). Since the marketplace constitutes almost the entire domain where human activities occur beyond the church walls, churches must not disengage themselves from the secular environment but remain committed to the intricacies and happenings going around in the world. Moreover, almost all churches' congregations are composed of individuals living and working in the secular sphere daily. For many, their only stated Christian interaction is Sunday worship, with their remaining time spent in the secular marketplace. Having the church immersed and integrated with the outside world helps it understand the realistic challenges and hostilities that its congregation encounters daily, thus giving the church a much-needed advantage in knowledge and understanding for meeting its congregation's sacred needs. Additionally, through engagement in the marketplace, Christians can use the platform to proclaim God's sovereignty and bring their faith and belief to those outside their church family. So, in a sense, we cannot “go” to church. We are the church wherever we go.
As salt and light to the world, Christians must use their voices as one church under God to participate in public discourse, especially in issues identified as critical by Jesus's ministry priorities. Taking an active role and voicing their concerns allows churches to bring attention to and guide discussions of policies on ethics, morals, and compassion for the weak, marginalized, and oppressed communities. With the general public's infatuation and obsession with consumerism and materialism in a capitalistic society, the church can help boost the positive aspects of productivity in the marketplace while acting as a barrier to safeguard against the effects of unhealthy consumption and other encroachments of capitalism's ills. Its participation in the secular market can also give the marketplace a dose of recovery medication from the stresses attributed to the materialistic culture. Also, the church can assist in shifting some of the congregation's down-putting mindset toward the capitalist economy in the direction of a modestly positive view of the capitalist economy.
By being fully involved in the public arena, the church can play an influential role and command a voice to help sustain God’s creation and move forward God’s ultimate reconciliation plan for humanity to fruition. In this regard, the church already holds sway in the public’s opinion on social issues. It can extend its leadership to other marketplace areas like work, vocation, and wealth, thus suggesting that a church engaging with the marketplace is biblically appropriate and aligns with God’s divine call to his people to labor and prosper. After all, the traditional church priority of focusing on redeeming souls alone cannot provide the economic needs and render God's abundance to humanity, demonstrating that the dualistic view that church sacredness is superior to secular economic realities is false and that both the text of the Bible and a Christian worldview are equally important in living and working seamlessly.
What are the Challenges for a Church to Engage in the Marketplace?
Every good thing comes with challenges. However, it is understood and encouraged that churches must be empowered within their localities to shepherd the members to deal with the potential adversities in the marketplace. Too much integration may result in the market pushing back. Further, when churches begin adapting and adjusting their theological beliefs and practices to remain relevant to secular society's culture, there is a risk that the immoral and unethical traits in the material realm may creep into the gathered life of the community. Depending on the church leadership and the congregation's degree of faith, absorbing the marketplace's misguided and false ideologies into the church settings can manifest in disastrous situations, threatening the church’s existence and risking being perceived as succumbing to a materialistic worldview. The church can also be deemed not holy enough since the church’s priority is to serve God’s mission of redemption and reconciliation. The external threat emanating from the marketplace is especially concerning when a church is continually affected by its localized political, cultural, and socio-economic problems and cannot distance itself.
One main challenge to churches engaging in the secular sphere pertains to the qualifications of its leaders. Most of the church’s pastoral leaders today have not been trained and equipped to communicate on marketplace strengths and challenges, particularly those church leaders who do not have education beyond Bible college or seminary and have no previous work experience in non-pastoral settings. Despite their motivation and intention to interact more with their congregations on issues relating to faith, work, economics, and vocation outside the domain of the church settings, their lack of adequate exposure to these topics in the real world may inhibit them from pursuing and intervening further into this area of church engagement. Their insufficient training is even more stark for many churches with large congregations since these churches tend to have many members involved in multitudes of diverse careers and professions, thus requiring the pastoral staff to have certain levels of knowledge and expertise in different occupations in various specific marketplaces. In addition, church leaders may also find it taxing and unwelcome to preach on the market when their congregation perceives their Sunday church service to be a holistic worship encounter with God that is entirely unrelated and detached from their “unholy” secular day-to-day engagements.
How Should a Church Engage with the Marketplace?
For a church to engage effectively with the marketplace, it has to rely on its leadership for support. The pastoral staff and elders must be willing to take up the necessary studies and training to fully commit to immersing and participating in the marketplace's ideas, activities, projects, and all other socio-economic agendas of the market. They can visit some of their members in the workplace, even for an hour or two, taking half a day each week to do this. They have to take the stance that marketplace involvement is not against Scripture and is considered appropriate biblically for a church to undertake. In this connection, the church must encourage its congregation to see that the secular market is a fertile and vital place for the kingdom of God to take root and grow. Further, church leaders can embrace faith and work, workers, and workplaces as one of the church's preferential missional goals.
Awareness and recognizing its surrounding environment is critical to ensure that the church does not get entangled with unnecessary issues that have no bearing on its mission in advocating and promoting the integration of faith and work. The mission must consider the community's demographics and economic circumstances to minimize potential negative feedback and repercussions and ensure fruitful engagement with the marketplace. The church can also adapt to accommodate different locations and their unique needs, if necessary. There must be a clear distinction between scripturally sound doctrines of redemption and the secular elements in the market to preserve the church's God-given responsibilities. Any engagement with the marketplace must not violate the Bible and should adhere to biblical teachings at all times, with the church prioritizing its calling as God’s ambassador serving under the reign of God.
Conclusion
It is not unbiblical for churches to have active roles in the marketplace. In fact, without the existence of the market, churches would be left with few other missional tasks. The marketplace is the center of human activity, and without the church being at the core of the secular sphere, its influence and ministerial work, particularly in defending the weak and the marginalized, would be undermined. Moreover, God's plan for humanity to flourish will not be realized without the church exerting its position on ethics, morals, equality, and justice in the public domain. As Christ's followers, the primary goal of a church is to fulfill its obligations and duties to God, which is proclaiming his authority and rule over all things and bringing and transforming lives for God's glory. Therefore, churches cannot deliver on their promises to build up God's kingdom without engaging with the marketplace, where many crucial decisions that affect humanity take place, further attesting to the church's need and its leadership's need for deep integration.
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