Connecting Sunday Morning to Monday Morning

In order for a Christian businessman to see their business as missions, to embrace the characteristics of a mission-focused great commission company, to understand their vocation as a calling, the church must change its culture. The church must learn to connect Sunday morning worship to the boardroom on Mondays. This means it is essential for the church to embrace the missional movement and celebrate missionaries already deployed in all spectrums of life, including the office tower.

Reggie McNeal, provides a glimpse in Missional Renaissance of what the culture shift looks like: “Moving from a member to a missionary culture means making heroes of Jesus followers who are using their life assignments as missionary posts to bless people” (55). A church moving from a member to a missionary culture means story telling, life coaching, developing strategies and providing training (McNeal 151). It will become the role of the pastor and leaders in a missional church to explain to the businessman what it means to see business as mission, a lesson in theology (McNeal 150). The pastor will need to continue to provide good teaching as well and help to develop a theological perspective in all of life (McNeal 150).McNeal writes the pastor and other church leaders will help connect Sunday morning to Monday morning by providing life coaching, displaying how the businessman can live missionally, and be a missionary in their current vocation (151).

These shifts will mark a radical departure for a majority of businessmen in the church, in eras past- ‘others’ were missionaries, and now the church is calling for the businessman to be one. “God had a mission in mind that everyone could participate in, a far cry from a member culture that gathers on Sunday to watch a few people exercise their gifts” (McNeal 55).

The culture shift connecting Sunday morning to Monday morning requires church leaders to display how God is at work everywhere and we are to join in. McNeal compares this to a being on a life long mission trip:

On mission trips, people focus on the work of God around them, alert to the Spirit’s prompting, usually serving people in very tangible ways, often in ways that involve some sacrifice or even discomfort. Life on mission is more intentional and more integrated. (54)

Life on mission is integrated into the fabric of business everyday; it requires church leaders to push their congregations to be incarnational. “The incarnational understanding of who the church is declares that we are the body of Christ in the world today” (McNeal 50).

Pastors will need to bless businessmen, set them apart and release them as missionaries to their workplaces. McNeal states they should be commissioned, “commission people as missionaries to apartment complexes, to business ventures, to school classrooms” (53).

The missional church is a church of celebration; displaying ‘others’ are valued in God’s eyes. In essence the businessman is taught the daily routine is where God is represented, and through this routine the Lord does his finest work. “The idea is that in their daily lives and daily routines, in their relationships and social networks, in their fields of influence, the people of God represent God to people and people to God” (McNeal 55).

Connecting Sunday morning to Monday morning will not be an easy overnight transition (Nelson 189). It will require discipline from both the pastoral leaders and the business community.

When a Christian businessman represents God in the office, the office becomes a place of life transformation.

Sources:

McNeal, Reggie. Missional Renaissance, Changing The Scorecard For The Church. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. Print.

Nelson, Tom. Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011. Print.