I have a dream

Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Forth in thy name O Lord I go, my daily labour to pursue...” is a classic statement of how early Methodists understood the role of the Christian in the workplace.

One stanza goes:

Thee may I set at my right hand,
Whose eyes mine inmost substance see,
And labour on at Thy command,
And offer all my works to Thee.

It suggests the workplace is God-given; a venue where the Christian may legitimately practice living in God’s presence; where product is ‘sacrament’ – where we may offer to God elements “which earth has given and human hands have made.”

The Challenge

There are many reasons why the Wesleys were able to touch the hearts of the England of their time. One was the insistence that a personal relationship with God was possible, in a prevailing religious context that shared the Deistic perspective that God was like a clockmaker: having created the world he left it to its own devices. John Wesley’s account of his heart being ‘strangely warmed’ sums up what this was relationship was all about.

Another major Wesleyan achievement was to connect to the aspirations of an emerging middle class. ‘And Can it Be’, the hymn often cited as the ‘Methodist National Anthem’, illustrates the point. What do we gain? ...an interest in my Saviour’s blood. Charles Wesley, whose hymns are replete with Scripture allusion is unashamedly about using the language of commerce.

Another was the way the Wesleys organised. Much has been made of their ‘classes’ and this was the basic building block. People would attend regularly, read the Scriptures and pray together, and contribute a regular amount to support extension work. What is less known outside Methodism was that when John Wesley saw a task needing to be done, he formed ‘A Company of 100’. This model still operates today and is the constitutional basis of a lot of Methodist organisations.

Lack of ability to connect with the aspirations and language of the world of emerging business is at least one of the failings of today’s church. Of course there are serious constraints: I suspect today’s workplace is unaccommodating of spirituality than how Wesley’s 18^th century emerging middle class adherents found it.

But we play into the hands of the estrangement between faith and work. I have a friend who worked for British Coal. Never once was his working world addressed in the parish he attended. I once attended a businessmen’s breakfast where a speaker testified, “I’m a Christian full-time and a businessman to defray the expenses.” So much of what we do in our churches widens the gulf between Sunday and the world of work.

In our intercessions for the church you would think that all that mattered were its clergy and bishops. Why are we so bad at praying for lay people in their vocation? It encourages people to view living a “Christian life” as something separate from “working life” where one has little to offer the other. Churches function more as a respite for the worker than a powerhouse to resource their main mission opportunities.

This is reinforced by the fact that most of the programs of our churches are geared to the leisure hours of Christian people rather than to assisting them in the area where they give most of their time at the highest level of their ability.

So what needs to be done to support the individual Christian in the workplace? To recover a vision to be part of a Christian movement that is salt and light in the workplace as the Wesleyan Movement achieved is laudable, but it will require fresh insights and imagination as well as recovering old ones.

This question becomes more problematic if we uncritically take the workplace as a “given” or uncritically marry our faith to theories which essentially grow from a modernist mindset. Work itself is in crisis. The economic crisis of 2008 was not simply that banks failed. It was symptomatic of how Western society has “systematically undermined its own social, moral and economic foundations of the last century.” (Simon T. Walker, Leading with Everything to Give, 2011, p 406)

Some practical steps

The Christian in isolation cannot flourish unaided or and cannot operate in isolation in the workplace. S/he needs to be able to inspired and connected. Yet this is harder than ever. Churches need to make a conscious effort to inspire Christian people in their working commitments.

• We need to establish the principle that people’s knowledge of their faith needs to be at the same level as their professional knowledge and practice. Our churches need to be much more serious about being places of learning. Ours is an age of biblical illiteracy. One reason is a massive lack of confidence in the Bible even among Christians. It will only be recovered when there is honest and intelligent engagement with the hard questions that even children ask when they hear the Bible read.

• We need to think through how our churches can put witness at work on the liturgical map. Are there slots in our services where people talk about the challenges and opportunities that exist at work and seek prayer for their endeavours? We are good at harvest festivals. Why is there no regular slot on the church calendar where people dedicate their laptops and hand-held devices to God for his work?

• We need to look to people like the Benedictines, Wesleyans and the Clapham Sect for a rule of life that can be lived with a focus on the present-day workplace. Living by a rhythm of daily prayer with habits such as praying as you switch on the computer or shooting arrow prayers as you pass a colleague’s workspace.

• We need to gear our churches to offer networks, forums and dialogue about new ways of working and new approaches to work, daring to believe it may be possible to make the impact that Quaker and Huguenot businesses once did. Is there a way of our churches being places that not only talk theory but encourage Christians to create businesses that orient their vision and values around the rule of God: “What would things be like around here if God was in charge?” (NT Wright)

Dare I say it, if we were doing this a ‘lost’ generation of young people would come running?