Christian Businesspeople Believe the Marketplace May be Key for Revival

Frank Stirk/TN : Mar 19, 2007
Christian Week

"If revival comes, it's going to start where there are roadways to other groups so that it spreads. Now the business community, they're beginning to have Bible studies. They've got networks. They want to see things happen."

Those who minister among Vancouver B.C.'s business and professional community would like to see more businesspeople encouraged and empowered to minister the Gospel throughout the week in their places of business.

"They need to be sort of validated as significant agents of God's Kingdom right where they work," says Tim Ernst of The Navigators.

According to a report in Christian Week, Dr. Richard Blackaby, president of Blackaby Ministries International in Cochrane, Alberta, believes that part of the problem is that some full-time pastors can lose touch with, and be intimidated by the marketplace.

Paul Williams, who teaches marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College, says whenever he asks his students if they have "given as much attention to thinking Christianly about your work as you gave to studying it from a secular point of view,...99 times out of 100, the answer is ‘No.' And that doesn't make for good workers, because they see their work content as irrelevant to serving God, and they see the people around them as a means to an end. So they're not actually loving them for themselves. It's utterly counterproductive to my mind and contrary to how the Gospel actually commands us to live."

Blackaby believes God could well be preparing these same businesspeople to revive the Church.. "If revival comes, it's going to start where there are roadways to other groups so that it spreads," he says. "Now the business community, they're beginning to have Bible studies. They've got networks. They want to see things happen."