You’re an Insider! Could your job be about more than getting your work done?
Have you ever seen those statistics that show how much time the average person might spend on certain activities throughout their lives? For example, it’s been said that the average person spends 2 years of their life watching commercials, 2.5 years cooking, and just over 4 years driving their car.
All kinds of activities get measured—but one in particular typically comes out at the top: work.
Did you know that, on average, a person spends 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, in the workplace?! That’s 2080 hours in a workplace during a typical year—just think about how much time that is over a lifetime!
And while it’s interesting enough to think about how much time we spend at work, a recent article in Christianity Today called Amplifying Evangelism, actually challenged Christians to think differently about their time there: What if all those hours at work open up the opportunity for the believer to share their faith with the people they work with?
Consider this. What if God put you in your job as an insider with the potential to enter into spiritual conversations with the people you work with? What if the relationships you have built with your co-workers are actually the vehicles that could open their hearts to the idea of Jesus?
Teri Dykhuis is an Environmental Compliance Engineer at Fermilab outside Chicago and she began thinking about this idea years ago, asking these questions: Is there a reason that God has placed me here in this atomic particle splitting science lab that goes beyond just getting my job done? Am I supposed to be here as the Presence of Jesus?
Soon she felt led to begin a lunchtime Bible Conversation Group. She put out invites and people showed up. Ten years later, Teri is now known as “The Bible Lady” and has led a number of her colleagues to Jesus through this safe place at lunch, where people can come and engage in spiritual conversations.
Christianity Today’s article went on to mention five ways to do what Teri has been able to do—that is, to be effective in workplace evangelism—all of which are very connected to Q Place’s 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations. The bottom line of effective workplace evangelism? This: What holds many people back from entering into this kind of ministry at their workplace is a general lack of know-how.
Do you want to impact your co-workers? Do you want God to use all your time spent at work not only for the present but also for eternity? Could your job be for more than getting your work done?
Q Place would like to introduce you once again to The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations. Who knows? Through you and them, God might start a movement at your job.
Jeffrey Klein
National Field Director