Ralph Walker on being a Christian in a corporate organisation
I work in a towering headquarters building of a multinational company.
Some 4,000 employees spend eight or more hours of each working day there. It is a community the size of a small town, but with the difference that most of us spend our day in much closer contact with each other than we do with our neighbours in our streets. As with every community on earth, God has placed his people here. There has been a Christian community at my company for the past 70 years. At present our building’s Christian group has about 40 people on its emailing list, and each week anything from ten to just two or three of us meet regularly to pray, study God’s word or simply talk. Contemplating this 70th anniversary put me in a reflective frame of mind.
Christians at work
Genesis tells us that God’s creation role for man on earth is to work at subduing it and looking after it. ‘When Adam delved and Eve span’ runs the old verse, but these days most of us exercise that role working for employers in companies doing jobs far more complex than digging and spinning. Our age has designated itself as a ‘secular society’, to the extent that we are advised to leave our faith at home as we step through our front doors. The modern workplace is no exception. We believe otherwise: that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof ’. As Christians we have a two-fold duty: to fulfil that creation role and also to be salt and light for the gospel. So how does meeting as Christians in a workplace help us in that?
Isn’t our primary responsibility as Christians at work to get alongside non-Christians to evangelise them rather than gathering in our ‘holy huddle’? Can’t we each turn individually to our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at our desk or in a quiet corner of our building or outside in the local park? We meet as Christians in church on Sundays and midweek: isn’t that enough meetings? Is meeting as Christians at work just another case of the dreaded Christian ailment ‘meetingitis’?
I suggest that there might be some good reasons for Christians to meet at work as an organised ‘official’ Christian community.
Focused prayer
A first good reason is focussed prayer. Gazing from my tower I see churches with their own towers and spires punctuating the landscape all around me. I wonder in how many of those churches is prayer directed specifically at the thousands of us on their doorstep, and even if we are thought of, who like us knows what goes on in here? Obviously a workplace Christian fellowship can pray for its own members, that we may live lives that show our faith, for those in difficulty, and of course for our non-Christian colleagues — for whom perhaps no one else is praying.
Following 1 Timothy 2.1-3, it seems appropriate to pray for our CEO and other leaders, within the description of ‘kings and all who are in high positions’ that ‘we may live a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way’. Indeed, may we long continue to do so!
But in addition to these spiritual matters we believe it is right for our Christian community to pray for our company’s worldly business. As an organisation of over 100,000 employees worldwide, potentially affecting the lives of millions with a turnover of several £billion, we are a significant player on the world economic and political stage. We believe that our company makes a worthwhile contribution to this world in fulfilment of man’s mandate in Genesis to be both successful and to manage this earth’s resources responsibly, and that this is worth praying for. We pray too that our business leaders will make wise, humane and ethical decisions, taking into account not just growth and profit but also social responsibilities. It has not escaped our notice that in these times of recession, industrial decline and corporate corruption, our company has both grown and largely avoided scandal. Perhaps this is not unrelated to its Christian commu-nity’s prayers?
Being accessible
Secondly, being an established Christian community having accessible contacts and a network helps people to find us, especially newcomers to our building, and brings us together from our workplaces scattered across our vast building in a way that could not be easily achieved otherwise. The Bible directly links encouragement and answered prayer to meeting together (Hebrews 10.25, Matthew 18.20). In our Christian community the Lord has given some with pastoral gifts, some teachers, some encouragers, and organisers with an ability to put people and events together.
In the absence of an organised Christian community, acting only as isolated individual Christians, it is hard to imagine how we could even know of each other’s existence, let alone exercise and benefit from the gifts God has given us.
Official recognition
Thirdly, being an organised Christian community gives us the benefits of official recognition by the company. It has taken time and prayer for us to be seen as an established, responsible community. Our company promotes the sometimes scorned ‘diversity’ culture. Perhaps ironically, as a Christian group comprising a multitude of nationalities and the whole spectrum of company grades from temp to senior company executives, we fit well into that culture, without finding it imposes any compromise whatever upon us. Our good working relationship with ‘Human Resources’ and the ‘Facilities’ managers who run the building which has resulted from this enables us as a recognised group to do things which would be impossible for Christians acting as individuals.
For example, we are allowed to advertise our existence, meetings and contact details on the big display screens scattered around the building, to use the company email, website and internal social media, to hold Easter and Christmas services in our big auditorium open to everyone, with outside speakers free to preach the gospel, and to have an occasional stall in our building’s main concourse advertising the Christian community as one of the many other employee activity groups and making Christian literature and Bibles available. We constantly pray that this good relationship will continue.
Getting it right.
‘I spent two hours this afternoon at work talking to someone about the Lord!’ I heard someone say excitedly at a church prayer meeting, not, I hasten to add, referring to my company! Of course his enthusiasm was commendable and we prayed for the fruits of that conversation, but at the same time I wondered if that person was aware that, in doing so, four employee-hours worth of his employer’s time had in effect been stolen. Our employer doesn’t pay us to spend our time in Christian activities. That isn’t ‘marginalisation’. Neither are we paid to spend our time surfing the internet or talking about football. No employer expects colleagues never to socialise or build workplace friendships or chat around the coffee machine, but we need to be mindful of our responsibilities. It is not a good witness to be known as a time-waster. In our building we are not in church, not at home, nor in a public place, but in our employer’s time and place. Both as individuals and a workplace Christian community we need to respect the rules.
Our Christian community scrupulously avoids arranging meetings during work ‘core’ time. We run all our literature past HR (what an opportunity!). We follow the rules never to ‘accost’ anyone from the occasional stall we have on the concourse, but instead only passively (but prayerfully and often successfully!) invite those passing by to talk and take our literature. It is tempting to ignore these rules, but we believe that Romans 13.1 applies to workplace authorities too, and that the Lord will honour us if we respect our employer in this. It is a privilege to be allowed to hold organised Christian activities at all in the workplace, and one well-founded complaint could end all that. We need to prayerfully make sure we get it right.
The Lord has blessed the prayers, vision and commitment of those who started our company Christian community 70 years ago. The Lord has his people in every workplace. Where even only two or three meet he is present. If you know of other Christians where you work, consider forming a fellowship that meets regularly and perhaps approaching your employer about making it ‘official’. You won’t know until you try how much the Lord might bless and use you in doing so.
