Gordon Preece is Director of Ethos: EA Centre for Christianity & Society, Theologian for Lausanne Marketplace Ministry, and board member of the Theology of Work Project. He is organising and speaking at the Redeeming Work conference in Melbourne, April 4th-5th.

There has been a flurry of new activity on the global and Australian faith­–work frontier recently. Among the key players are Lausanne Marketplace Ministry and Workplace Network, BAM (Business as Mission), the Theology of Work Project which has produced a complete, free commentary on every biblical book and its application to work, the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and Regent College, the pre-eminent theological institution in the work/faith area.

Among the locals are CMA (Christian Ministry Advancement—Brisbane-based), Ethos Business, Ridley Marketplace Institute, River of Life, Arrow Executive Leadership (all Melbourne-based) plus City Bible Forum, and Redeemer City to City and its related, soon-to-be launched Faith & Work Centre (all Sydney-based or connected) and others. Many of these have a national focus.

What’s behind this flurry of activity? Can work really be redeemed? What are the biblical foundations of this broad movement and how can we get on board?

Over recent decades there has arisen a growing conviction that the role of God’s scattered people on Monday (not just gathered on Sunday) has been neglected, ignoring the connection between God’s redeeming work in Christ and the workaday world of most Christians. Through concerted efforts by the above groups the high percentage of Christians who haven’t heard a sermon on work has been dropping, and recent surveys by UK Evangelical Alliance and the Australian Christian Life Survey indicate rising levels of engagement by churches with work. There is still plenty to be done, but we’re heading in the right direction: the supertanker of the church is slowly turning towards the workplace as a critical area of everyday worship (Rom 12:1-2), ministry and mission.

However, talk of “redeeming work” may set some heresy bells ringing. Isn’t redemption only Jesus’ job, buying individuals back from the power of sin? And isn’t it an ‘inside job’, transforming individuals inwardly and spiritually?

It’s true that redemption starts with individuals’ inward transformation (John 3), but it certainly doesn’t stop there. Even in John 3:16 the transforming power of God’s loving grace is for the whole world/cosmos. Further, being “born again” (John 3:3) is something as much for the whole creation groaning under hard labour like the Hebrew slaves in Egypt or a mother in childbirth (Rom 8:22-23) as for individuals.

Further, Colossians 1 shows that the redemption and reconciliation Christ brings is because he is the one through whom and for whom all things were created. In Revelation’s terms Christ is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.

‘All things’ obviously includes work, where we spend most time and can influence most people and society. It includes not only people but the ‘principalities and powers’, both spiritual and structural, supernatural and natural/cultural that were created by Christ, have fallen, and will be finally redeemed by him. This includes economics, politics, culture, the whole public domain of life and work, and this is 24/7, not just Sundays.

Instead of giving a postmodern ‘whatever’ shrug at society and workplace problems, forgetting that they are created and can be redeemed in Christ, we need to loudly say ‘Amen’ to Paul’s “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17). And that clearly includes our work, probably the primary place where we prove the reality of Christ’s limitless lordship everyday.

One way of presenting Colossians’ creation–fall–redemption framework is to set work in a Trinitarian context of three commissions, our work reflecting God’s triune work in the world, the best basis for a balanced view of Christian life and work.

I’ll illustrate this from a recent experience in India with three taxi drivers. The first, picking me up from Asha Christian Development Project in New Delhi told me how much Christians were appreciated in India for their development and welfare work. This, and other work, is part of the Father’s commission (Gen 1:26-28) for us to rule over creation responsibly as God’s junior partners, through our work (cf. Ps 8).

The second taxi-driver, meeting me at dawn at Varanasi, the Hindu spiritual capital, told me he had to thank Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god pictured on his dashboard, for his first customer of the day. He was a workplace Hindu!

But our role, according to the Great Commission or discipling mandate, is to call people from idols to the true and living God, to follow the crucified and risen Jesus who has authority and dominion over all creation, fulfilling what humanity was meant to do through the creation commission.

When we make disciples of all nations, that includes every sphere of those nations, making disciples who reflect Jesus’ lordship in business, education, leisure, politics and transport.

The third taxi-driver was a Christian taking us to a Christian college in Bangalore. After listening to our conversation, he said he’d become a Christian at a church where he’d seen Jesus’ relevance to his everyday life. He clearly had the gift of the gab, and real pastoral concern.

I told him he could be the pastor and evangelist of this cab as the Holy Spirit had given him these gifts as ways to fulfil the Great Commission.
In all three commissions God works through us in Christ to redeem a creation gone wrong. As Luther says, ‘God carves the crooked wood and makes it straight’.