Faith & Work Factsheet

Faith and Work Facts and Quotes

Following are helpful facts and information on the faith and work movement.

Media Contact:

Os Hillman

678-455-6262 os@icwm.net

Permission granted to reproduce this page with following credit:

“Source: Os Hillman, International Coalition of Workplace Ministries, www.icwm.net

The Movement

“5 years ago – only one conference on spirituality and the workplace; now there are hundreds.” – 1999 Business Week magazine
10,000 Bible and prayer groups in workplaces that meet regularly” – 1999 Business Week
79 Books Published on Faith & Work in Year 2000, “12 Books A Month Published in 2002“ – Pete Hammond, Intervarsity Press
“… a mostly unorganized mass of believers–a counterculture bubbling up all over corporate America–who want to bridge the traditional divide between spirituality and work. Historically, such folk operated below the radar, on their own or in small workplace groups where they prayed or studied the Bible. But now they are getting organized and going public to agitate for change.”FortuneMagazine,
July 16, 2001
“People who want to mix God and business are rebels on several fronts. They reject the centuries-old American conviction that spirituality is a private matter. They challenge religious thinkers who disdain business as an inherently impure pursuit. They disagree with business people who say thatreligion is unavoidably divisive.”Fortune Magazine,
July 16, 2001
“Today, a spiritual revival is sweeping across Corporate America as people of all stripes are mixing mysticism into their management, importing into office corridors the lessons usually dolled out in churches, temples, and mosques. Gone is the old taboo against talking about God at work. – BusinessWeek Magazine, November 1999
“Ten years ago we could identity only 25 national or international workplace ministries; today we can identify more than 900.” Mike McLoughlin, YWAM Marketplace Mission

Biblical Precedent

New Testament– Of Jesus’ 132 public appearances in NT, 122 were in themarketplace
Of 52 parables Jesus told, 45 had a workplace context. Of 40 divine interventions recorded in Acts, 39 were in the marketplace.
Jesus spent his adult life as a carpenter until age 30 before he went into a preaching ministry in the workplace. Jesus called 12 workplace individuals, not clergy, to build His church.
Work is Worship – The Hebrew word “Avodah” is root for word from which we get the words work and worship.
Work in its different forms is mentioned more than 800 times in the Bible, more than all the words used to express worship, music, praise, and singing combined
.
“54% of Jesus’ reported teaching ministry arose out of issues posed by others” in the scope of daily life experience. – Lewis and Lewis, LICC

Quotables on Work and Faith

“The spiritual manifests itself in a life which knows no division into sacred and secular.”

Oswald Chambers

“Spirituality in the workplace is exploding.”

Laura Nash, Business Ethicist, Harvard University

His doing nothing wonderful (his first 30 years) is in itself a kind of wonder.”

Saint Bonaventure

“I believe one of the next great moves of God is going to be through the believers in the workplace”. Dr. Billy Graham

“God has begun an evangelism movement in the workplace that has the potential to transform our society as we know it”.

Franklin Graham

“God is marshalling his people in the workplace as never before in history. God is up to something. The next spiritual awakening could take place in the marketplace.”

Henry Blackaby

“Workplace believers seldom feel served by their churches in their jobs and careers on issues of faith and biblical ethics.”

Pete Hammond, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship

“We are convinced that England

will never be converted until the laity use the opportunities daily afforded by their various professions, crafts and occupations.”

Towards the Conversion of

England, 1945

“There is a distinction between church work and the work of the church. Church work is what you do for the organized institution of the church. The work of the church is what is done between Sundays when the church is scattered all over the metropolitan area where it is located – in homes, schools, offices, on construction jobs, in market places.”

Dick Halverson

“It is an error to think that those who flee worldly affairs and engage in contemplation are leading an angelic life…We know that men were created to busy themselves with labor and that no sacrifice is more pleasing to God than when each one attends to his calling and studies well to live for the common good.” John Calvin

“In nothing has the church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in religion. But is it astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a relligion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of life? The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confiined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes on him is to make good tables.”

Dorothy Sayers

“Workplace ministry will be one of the core future innovations in church ministry.”

George Barna, Boiling Point, Regal Publishing

“If Christ is not Lord of my work, He will never be Lord of my family.”

Doug Sherman, author, Your Work Matters to God

“We have more Christians today per capita with less impact on the culture than ever before. We are big and we are weak.”

Land Cope, YWAM

“We reviewed 52 movements in the body of Christ. We narrowed it down to 28, then 12, then 4 to invest our resources in the coming years. The workplace is one of those because this is an area where we see God working.”

Chad Hammond, Director, New Ventures (division of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assoc.)

“Our surveys reveal that 90-97% of Christians have never heard a sermon relating biblical principles to their work life.”Doug Sherman, author, Your Work Matters to God

San Francisco radio station survey revealed an 80% dissatisfaction rate for a person’s work.

Wall Stree Journal survey reveal 50% dissatisfaction rate among executives and 80% dissatisfaction rate among general workplace population. 500 surveys among Christians reveal 50% dissatisfaction rate.

“Societal transformation is high on God’s agenda and the chief catalytic force to bring it about will be Christians ministering in the marketplace.”

C. Peter Wagner, Chancellor, Wagner Leadership Institute

“The church in the workplace is the purest form of the body of Christ today due to its diversity. Workplace believers are less prone to denominational differences because they have a common goal of representing Christ in their workplaces. The movement will break down denominational barriers that have been held in the past.”

Os Hillman, International Coalition of Workplace Ministries

“Themost common self-inflicted put-down is ‘I am not a pastor—I am just a layperson.’ This is all part of a clever satanic scheme to neutralize apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers along with the entire army of disciples, already positioned in the marketplace.”

Ed Silvoso, Anointed for Business, HarvestEvangelism

“Indeed, as with first-century Christianity, it all begins in the marketplace, where the disciples of Jesus daily rub shoulders with the lost.”

Bill McCartney, Promise Keepers, Anointed for Business, Regal Publishing

“In today’s global community, the greatest channel of distribution for ‘salt and light’ is the business community… the marketplace.”

Bill Pollard, Chairman, ServiceMaster

“There is truly is no division between sacred and secular except what we have created. And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and the cause of Christ. Holy people must stop going into “church work” as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.”

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of Discipline, pg 214

“Someone recently said that the “First” Reformation took the Word of God to the common man and woman; the “Second” Reformation is taking the work of God to the common man and woman. That time is now. The greatest potential ministry in the world today is the marketplace. Christ’s greatest labor force is those men and women already in that environment.”

Tom Phillips, VP of Training , Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

“Much of our culture has a distinctly Greek view of work: We work out of necessity. But, you see, we are made in the image of God, and as such we are made to work—to create, to shape, to bring order out of disorder.”

Chuck Colson, BreakPoint,
Sept 1, 2003

“The workplace is where a majority of a church congregation, spends a majority of their time, interacting with a majority of the

unchurched world. The Church on Monday is evidence that the Church on Sunday is real!”

Doug Spada, His Church at Work.org

“The last 12 to 24 months I have personally noticed a surge of interest. I see an openness from pastors that is very new that I have not seen before. I see a Kingdom mentality. I promise you we are within months of a major move of God.”

Kent Humprheys, President, Fellowship of Companies for Christ

“I believe pastors will be the last to really embrace this movement because it is such a new paradigm. However, ultimately, they will be the instruments God will use to make the greatest impact in the movement because of their influence in so many people’s lives.”

Os Hiillman, Director, International Coalition of Workplace Ministries

Media Coverage – Noteworthy Articles Published

July 2001, Fortune magazine - God and Business cover story

November 1999, BusinessWeek magazine – “Spirituality in the Workplace”

Jan/Feb 2003 New Man Magazine, Faith and Work Movement

January and March issues, 2003 Business Reform magazine, “God in the Workplace”

Read some of these articles in our Articles section.

Significant Recent Developments

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association co-hosted the His Presence in the Workplace conference with ICWM and other workplace ministries March 31-
April 3, 2003 in Asheville,
N.C. Read summary.

Read our article, What Is Workplace Ministry?

To view a list of workplace ministries click here. To view a complete list of workplace ministries click here.