From ReformedWord
There can be no doubt that our faith is being tried in the workplace and it is requiring more and more courage of Christians to be Christians there.
When the business community itself nowadays openly admits that it is suffering terribly from a loss of ethics, when the country has been rocked time and again in recent years by the implosion of enormous companies â€" think of Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom â€" largely as a result of malfeasance by corporate management, we can be sure that Christians will face new challenges in the working environment. On the other hand, that same ethical environment presents the followers of Christ with a grand opportunity to adorn the teaching of the Lord Jesus in the eyes of the world.
William Diehl, a former executive of Bethlehem Steel, once wrote:
"...In the almost thirty years of my professional career, my church has never once suggested that there be any type of accounting of my on-the-job ministry to others. My church has never once offered to improve those skills which could make me a better minister, nor has it ever asked if I needed any kind of support in what I was doing. There has never been an enquiry into the types of ethical decisions I must face, or whether I seek to communicate my faith to my co-workers. I have never been in a congregation where there was any type of public affirmation of a ministry in my career. In short, I must conclude that my church doesn't have the least interest whether or how I minister in my daily work." [W. Diehl, Christianity and Real Life, v-vi, cited in R. Paul Stevens, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective, 49]
No one, whether homemaker or corporate executive, teacher or salesman, carpenter or office worker, shoulde be able to say that! The church should be intensely interested in your life at work and your life of work because it is a large part of that life and service you are to offer to God in gratitude and love for his saving grace to you in Jesus Christ. The work Christians do is the presence of the Kingdom of God in the very heart of the devil’s kingdom.