Witnessing in the Workplace

God gives us the amazing and yet challenging command to work. Work was created by God and practiced by Adam before the fall into sin. As Adam and Eve were trimming the garden leaves, God was glorified. As Jesus was doing carpentry with His father Joseph, His Heavenly Father was being honoured! Even our most ordinary work is a privilege given from God to work for Him wherever He has placed us, as we do it with love to Him and our neighbour. However, often our work is frustrating and hard. When the stress overloads and the deadlines get closer, how can we continue our gift and calling of work to God’s glory? How can we use these situations to be witnesses in the workplace? This article helps us understand our calling to remind ourselves that when work is exhausting and feels meaningless, it is actually a God-designed gift that we can use to witness His name in the workplace.

Sitting at my desk, I buried my head in my hands and clenched my jaw. EVERYTHING was going wrong. The phone rang with an irritating beep, my desk was strewn with scribbled post-its, and I had spilled my water into my keyboard and had just finished mitigating the damage. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and angry. It had been like this for days now in the office...stress was mounting as we struggled to meet our monthly goals, leadership was lacking and the summer sun beckoned as I was confined to my 9-5 prison cell. Ok, I knew I was being dramatic. But I couldn’t seem to think rationally when nothing was going right. “God, WHY do I have to work, and will I have to do this for the rest of my life?” I thought in anger. “What am I even here for? All I do is answer phones, meet with people, type emails and repeat. How am I even fulfilling Your commission? I feel so useless.”

My coworker walked past me. Her workload had been doubled with a whole summer of being short-staffed, and in the midst of buying a home, she had stress in all parts of her life. But she cheerfully asked me if there was anything she could do. “Katrina, you are so busy! Is there anything I can help with? Take a deep breath, it will get better soon.” She always maintained a cheerful attitude despite any circumstance, while it seemed like my mood divebombed at the first sign of trouble. Feeling guilty I sat in my chair and thought. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one that’s filled with peace? Aren’t I the one who is supposed to trust in God in all things and do my work diligently? She isn’t even a Christian. Why is she being so caring to me?”

No matter what your vocation, and yes, let me be clear: your ordinary job is a vocation (i.e. a glorious calling where you work as God’s joyful servant out of love for your neighbour; Eph. 6:5-9), your work is the place where you spend the most time. It is also your mission field. Unless you work in a distinctly Christian company, it’s likely that in your work life, you are surrounded by unbelievers. Wonderful, hardworking, kind, thoughtful, funny and intelligent unbelievers made in the image of God- yet lacking the true joy and forgiveness found in trusting Jesus for their salvation. If you work a blue-collar job, the line of professionalism that disguises a great deal of sin might be weaker still, and the people you are surrounded with might do and say things that directly contradict God’s Word in a more shocking way. Whatever your circumstances, the question still remains. How can we take the opportunities the Lord sets in front of us and be faithful witnesses in our workplace?

As evidenced by the story above, the first thing is something I have not mastered, and won’t this side of heaven. One of the best ways you can identify yourself as a Christian and be an example to your coworkers is by the things you DON’T do. For example:

•  You stub your toe and don’t curse.

• You hear office gossip and leave the room instead of delighting in the juicy details.

• You don’t steal from your employer by wasting time during the day or using your phone excessively.

• You don’t get easily irritated when small inconveniences happen.

• You don’t tell others about your dislike of your boss or other coworkers.

• You don’t make everything about yourself and your achievements or work only for recognition and reward.

  
  

Yikes. This list is already looking convicting, as these are all things I have done in the past and still catch myself committing at times. It’s important to be honest with yourself and confront your workplace habits, as it’s easy to slip into sins that “everyone else is doing”. The life of a Christian is not just a list of dont’s, however. Some of the greatest ways we can show Christ in our lives is through the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control... how much happier our workplaces would be if these were our first instinct! Yes, you may get weird looks and get teased, might be given strange names (as my office so sweetly named me “the morality meter”) or in worst cases, might get harassed or disliked for your convictions. But God rewards doing right, always. You might lose a promotion because you are unwilling to bend the rules.You might be mocked. You might lose opportunities because you won’t work on Sundays. You might even lose your job; yet God will reward your faithfulness to Him and His law.

So besides these clear cases of refusing to do wrong, what can a Christian DO in the workplace to show the love of Christ and evangelize in a worldly setting?

1. Pray for your coworkers, and let them know you are doing so.

Your coworkers NEED prayer. You might have a unique knowledge of their home life that they don’t share with loved ones. You might know their marriage is struggling, that they are dealing with health issues, or that they are caught in a sinful cycle that can never fulfill them. Pray for them. Along with your prayers, let them know that you are praying for them. If they share something that one of their friends or family is going through, pray for them too. We don’t need to have a generic “thinking of you” response to pain and sin. Thinking is nice, but can’t accomplish much. We have direct access to a Heavenly Father who cares for them as His wayward creation! Even if you casually mention that you are praying for them, most people will appreciate the action even if they don’t believe the efficacy. Something shocking that happened to me after I started this is that other coworkers who would never pray themselves started asking me to pray for them. This is a non-invasive way to storm heaven’s gates and let the Holy Spirit do the real work.

2. Be honest about how you spend your time.

My coworkers often ask on Monday morning “So, what did everyone do this weekend?” It was a few months into my job that I realized I was only mentioning the things I did on Saturday. There is no need to hide the fact that you keep the Sabbath or attend church. Paul certainly knows man’s natural hearts when he states “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”. So, I started casually mentioning that I heard a great sermon, or that my young adults group met after church. This can spark good conversations if someone might be interested in Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity. If you volunteer with your church, you can mention what you do with your spare time too. My coworkers know that on Thursdays I need to go straight from work to teach ESL. It’s not virtue signaling to share facts. Do you know Michael goes to softball practices on Fridays, and Marlene goes to knitting club every other week? Well, they can know that you go to church every Sunday.

3. Visibly pray before your meals.

This is the practice that I have seen make the most impact in my work life, as it’s so unusual and public. Many of us may not eat every lunch with our coworkers, but if they see you praying, they will ask questions, especially if they don’t know you very well. Respectful curiosity should be encouraged. And yes, sometimes you might feel like a zoo animal if they incredulously ask why you “can’t do anything” and if you “live under a rock”, but the possibility of exposing them to Christianity far outweighs a little embarrassment. Don’t change what you would do at home simply because you are at work.

4. Don’t curse or take God’s name in vain, and avoid lewd conversation and crass jokes.

Your coworkers will notice this much more than you realize. In a world where almost every exclamation is disrespecting the Lord and the most popular comedians base their jokes on moral degradation, refusing to do either is peculiar. Your coworkers might even ask you about it, and out of respect many of my coworkers won’t curse around me. I never had to ask them to stop, but you might be in the situation where you could kindly ask someone to try to improve their language. It isn’t “holier than thou” to try to keep them from offending a Holy God.

5. Treat your workplace as your mission field.

You have been placed there for a reason. While you glorify God as you work unto Him, also look for ways to make Him known to those around you. You have the unique ability to evangelize to people through your actions, and pray for opportunities to use your words as well. Evangelizing to people who do not know you is wonderful, but there is something powerful, humbling and convicting about speaking of Christ to someone who knows you and how you live your life. Let the way you conduct yourself in the workplace and the way you love others be like clothes that make the gospel attractive (Titus 2:10).

Believers are called to be witnesses to God’s free and amazing grace that He has given us. Do you know this grace? Then show it. There is a temptation to be a “private Christian” and to keep our religion to ourselves out of respect for others. Well, there is nothing respectful or loving about depriving people knowledge of salvation and their need of a Savior. As Matthew 5:13-16 states,

13 “Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

15 Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.”

You don’t need to be a missionary in another country to be greatly used by God. He has called you to be faithful where you are right now, and to spread the Gospel by your witness and the words of life you share with others. We will never do this perfectly. When we do something wrong we will be tempted to believe that we have destroyed any credibility we may have had. If this happens, ask forgiveness from God, and ask forgiveness of your coworkers. God can even use our failings as occasions to clarify that Christians are not moralists saved because we are good people, but sinners who have been rescued by a great Saviour (1 Timothy 1:15)! Realize how weak of a sinner you are and how much you need to daily draw on God’s grace... then “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

~ Katrina Van Grouw