Chris Wright on faith in the marketplace
Last week, Dr. Chris Wright was in town for a couple of events, one of which was a gathering put together by the Surge Network, where he spoke on the topic, “Saints in the Marketplace: The Mission of God in the Public Arena.” Wright is the international director of Langham Partnership, an organization started by the late John Stott, which serves churches and pastors all over the world.
In his talk he began by defining “marketplace” in broad terms, suggesting that it basically means all that happens in society. It could also simply be called the public square, or, to use Old Testament language, “the gate.” His fundamental premise, which he made clear from the start, is that God is interested in what happens in the marketplace. This seems obvious, but too many Christians seem to live with a suspicion that the things we need to spend most of our time doing are things that don’t really matter to God. That belief is dead wrong.
He gave his talk in three sections, at least according to my notes. First, he spoke on why the marketplace matters to God. Second, how Christians are called to act in the marketplace. And third, the church’s dual task in relationship to it. Since it was all such wonderful stuff, I thought I’d more or less reproduce the talk here, to the best of my memory, with little commentary by me. I’ve included Scripture references (a lot of them), and when possible, great questions Wright left with us on the basis of these principles.
THE MARKETPLACE MATTERS TO GOD
1. God created work (Genesis 1, 2). The Fall corrupted it, but it’s still something God made good. We need to understand that work is not some necessary evil; rather, it’s a means of glorifying God. For the pastors and teachers among us, do we teach the importance of work the way the Bible does?
2. God audits it (Psalm 33:13-15; Amos 5:12-15, 8:4-7; Jeremiah 7:9-11; I Samuel 12:1-5). God is the auditor of the marketplace, at both a personal and a corporate level. According to Scripture, God requires justice in the public square just as much as he requires worship in the Temple (or, in our case, the church). He hears what’s said and sees what’s done in the marketplace, and he even examines the attitudes in our hearts. He is the independent scrutineer of all that happens in the marketplace. How and when do you submit to God’s audit of your daily work? How does accountability to God affect the way you work?
3. God governs it (Joseph in Genesis 50:19-20; Isaiah 19:1-15; Daniel 4). We tend to speak of the marketplace as if it is autonomous, but the truth is that events are the product of human actions, and we’re therefore responsible for what we do. But God is sovereign, and his sovereignty doesn’t stop short of the marketplace. How and where do you discern the governance of God in the marketplace? What does it mean to “seek first the kingdom and his justice” Monday through Friday?
4. God redeems it (Isaiah 65:17-25; Colossians 1:16-20; Romans 8:19-21; II Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:24-27). Our eschatology and our understanding of the story of the Bible affect how we view the marketplace. If we believe everything in the world is all going to be zapped someday, why would we care what happens in the marketplace? The truth is that God loves everything he’s made; it’s all twisted and we’re all twisted, but the Bible teaches that God will redeem creation, not obliterate it. God will create a new heaven and a new earth. All things are created by Christ, sustained by Christ, and redeemed by Christ. Because of the resurrection of Christ, all we do under the sun is not vanity! We don’t know precisely how everything will turn out, but we believe in the resurrection. How is our daily work transformed by the knowledge that it contributes to the new creation, redeemed by God?
WE’RE CALLED TO ENGAGEMENT AND DISTINCTIVENESS
1. Engagement. This can happen through serving the state (i.e., Joseph & Daniel); through prayer and “seeking the welfare of the city” - not just Jerusalem, but Babylon too (Jeremiah 29:7; I Timothy 2:1-4; Erastus in Acts 19:22; Romans 16:23); through ordinary, honest daily work - it’s instructive to look up the number of times in the New Testament Paul refers to doing good (I Thessalonians 4:11-12, 5:14; II Thessalonians 3:6-13); through encouraging fellow Christians in the true value of the marketplace.
2. Distinctiveness. We’re called to be saints who are holy, different, salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16; Daniel 6:3; I Chronicles 29:17; Genesis 18:19; Colossians 3:22-23). If Christians are to be salt and light, the assumption is that there are dull and dark places in the world, and we’re to actually change things in those places - like salt, we get rubbed into the meat; like light, we break the darkness. Whatever we do, we are to do it as unto the Lord - in other words, as if the other person is Christ himself. Worldview distinctiveness - we live by a different story (biblical narrative rather than British imperialism or the American Dream, for example). When we follow Christ, we enter the biblical story, and we’re to build that story into our lives. As we do so, it’ll challenge ourselves and others - it cuts through all peoples and cultures.
THE CHURCH’S PROPHETIC AND PASTORAL TASK
1. The prophetic task. Pastors and Christian leaders must speak out in the midst of a synchetized and idolatrous culture with a voice of evaluation and critique. It requires, at times, speaking truth to power. We can’t just bless everything society does, or bless church members who willingly go along with corruptions of God’s good design for the marketplace. The prophetic task can be costly, a rough road to travel, as all the biblical prophets knew.
2. The pastoral task. Pastors and Christian leaders must support those who work in the marketplace, meaning those who participate in all spheres of society every week. God didn’t create the church to support the clergy; rather, the pastor comes every Sunday to support the church as it then goes out into the world to be salt and light in the marketplace, knowing that their work matters to God.
As you can tell, he gave us plenty to chew on. If we were to summarize his main points, though, we could say this: The marketplace matters to God. It can go terribly wrong, but work was created by God, is audited and governed by him, and will ultimately be redeemed by him. Christians are called to engage in the marketplace with distinctiveness. And, finally, the church is to challenge distortions in the marketplace as well as to equip its members to help it flourish as it should.
If you’d like to see and hear Dr. Wright for yourself, here he is in the five-minute video speaking on the importance of confronting idols and making disciples - which in fact has everything to do with faithfulness in the marketplace (thanks to Jake Belder for sharing it).
Confronting Idols & Making Disciples from Medri Kinnon Productions on Vimeo.
What are your reactions to this basis for Christian engagement in the marketplace? How does it challenge your understanding of the relationship between faith and work?
Until Justice & Peace Embrace (Part 3/3)
In the first part of this series, I introduced Wolterstorff's ideas about world-formative Christianity and the vision of shalom. In part two, we looked at his ideas about how responding to poverty is a matter of rights not generosity, and how unchecked nationalism destroys shalom. Here now are some final thoughts from Until Justice and Peace Embrace.
Shalom in the city
Shalom is about having and enjoying right relationships, and nowhere is the need for this seen more clearly than in our cities. Wolterstorff writes that this extends beyond the considerations we might normally consider:
It is customary to view the city simply as a large collection of buildings in close proximity to one another, each more or less self-contained and possessed of its own degree of architectural distinction. I propose... to break away from that sort of atomistic way of thinking, however, and view the city instead as an integral entity in which the individual buildings are abstracted parts. Adopting the holistic perspective, we see the city as a unit orchestrating paths and partitions to establish gathering places for human beings on a given amount of the earth's surface.
The city both expresses and shapes the lifestyles of its residents, for better or worse. Architecture and aesthetics, in other words, aren't neutral -- not if shalom has to do with delight. "Could it be," he muses, "that living in a city devoid of sensory delight is itself a form of poverty?"
Justice and liturgy
"Amidst its intense activism," Wolterstorff writes, "the Western world is starved for contemplation." He continues:
I want to explore the possibility that a rhythmic alternation of work and worship, labor and liturgy is one of the significant distinguishing features of the Christian's way of being-in-the-world.
Work and worship are connected, he says, and they both spring from grateful hearts, in step with the six-plus-one rhythm set into motion by our Creator:
This rhythm was given to be practiced as a remembrance, as a memorial of the pattern of God's creative activity and of the pattern of Israel's liberating experience: the very rhythm of everyday life was to be a liturgical practice.
Activists of all kinds would do well to practice this kind of liturgy.
Theory & praxis
Wolterstorff concludes, not surprisingly given his original audience, with a challenge to academics and scholars that applies just as well to each of us:
My call here is not for theorizing that emphasizes the theme of justice; it is for theorizing that places itself in the service of the cause of struggling for justice... The goal is not to describe the world but to change it.
Wolterstorff concludes with the book's single most poignant sentence:
By listening to the cries of the oppressed and deprived we are enabled genuinely to hear the word of the prophets -- and of him who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped at, but took the form of a servant, walking the path of humble obedience to the point of accepting execution as a despised criminal: the Prince of Shalom.
Justice and peace, you might say, find their embrace in Jesus.
What do you think of Wolterstorff's ideas of justice and shalom? Does his understanding resonate with yours? Where do you part ways?
Calling, vocation and a Guinness
In Christian circles, it’s not that uncommon to hear people talking about their calling -- of whether they’re called to do this or that, to go there or stay here, and so on. There’s merit to this sort of thing, I think, but I don’t always get the impression that people have given very much thought to how calling is discerned or what the pitfalls surrounding it might be. And I don’t know that I’ve given all of it enough disciplined thought either, to be honest.
My favorite quote about calling is from pastor-novelist Frederick Buechner, who wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” That, in a nutshell, has provided me with a framework over the past few years for thinking and praying and acting my way through the process of discerning my calling(s).
Calling and vocation are closely related, but these days, the words have become confused. Vocation comes from the Latin word vocare, which means “to call.” So one’s vocation is what he or she has been called to. But it’s not uncommon to hear people reduce vocation to a 9-to-5-that-pays-the-bills without giving any thought to the idea that there might be a Caller and that one’s calling might have significance beyond a paycheck.
I just finished reading “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life” by Os Guinness, a crazy smart author and social critic who is also part of the famous Guinness family of Ireland (to whom I say "cheers"). The whole way through the book he navigates through parallel errors, taking a nuanced path. Citing ancient philosophers and World War II generals, Mother Teresa and many from Scripture, he seeks to set out what it means for each of us, and all of us, to answer the Caller’s calls. Importantly, he writes, there are two levels of calling:
Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or outer Mongolia). Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practice of law or to art history. But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling. They are ‘callings’ rather than the ‘calling.’ They are our personal answer to God’s address, our response to God’s summons. Secondary callings matter, but only because the primary calling matters most.
That alone could go a long way in clearing up a lot of the fuzziness in the way we speak of callings. There’s neither time nor space to go through all of the different polarities he seeks to navigate; for that you just really need to read the book. But I do want to share one more quote, about the relationship between work, leisure and worship. We’re called to all three, but seldom are we sure how to make sense of them all:
Today we tend to talk of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ as opposites. Work is serious, leisure is play, it is said. Work is drudgery, leisure is fun. Work is for pay, leisure is free. Work is what we do for someone else, leisure is for ourselves -- and so on. But a moment’s thought shows this is not so. Far closer to the mark is the observation that the modern world has scrambled things so badly that today we worship our work, we work at our play, and we play at our worship.
It is precisely this scrambling that Guinness seeks to unscramble, to sort out. Every Christian will need to think and pray these things out for themselves, in their own unique contexts, in the company of other believers, and that way to begin the process of discerning ways to act with humility and courage and joy for the common good. This book is clearly not an end-all, then; but I think it does provide a few important tools for getting started.
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