"What a tragic waste of human potential."

Have you ever had a conversation with a stranger, and you just feel an instant connection?  You feel like they "get you"?  

That is how Discipling Marketplace Leaders feels about the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC).  After searching the world over for other practitioners taking Business as Mission through the local church, we found LICC in the UK speaking our language.  But this organization started speaking this language ten years ago and is so far ahead of DML in terms of content and resources for equipping the local church.  It's exciting!

I have the opportunity to join LICC for a two-day conference in London prior to flying to Asia in early June.  There I will have a chance to meet with Mark Greene, who speaks in the brief video below about the failure of the church to embrace the workplace.  I encourage you to watch this short clip and be encouraged.

Mark is addressing the Lausanne Movement, and says that there are two main strategies for reaching the world by the Global Church:

1. To recruit the people of God to use some of their leisure time to join the missionary initiatives of church-paid workers.
2. To equip the people of God for fruitful mission in all of their life.

Most people from most countries in the world said that #1 is the model of missions that their church uses.

He says that the result of using the #1 strategy is that the 98% of Christians who are not in church-paid work are not equipped for mission except for the two to ten hours per week that they might spend in church-related activities every week.  "98% of Christians are not equipped for mission for 95% of their waking life."

Workplace ministry is not some little thing on the side for the church, he says, but it goes right to the heart of the potential of the world evangelism movement.

"What a tragic waste of human potential." 

Can I get an amen?  

And if so, what can we do to do to take this from a great video to a great movement in the global church?

It's time.