candles2.jpgThe purpose of the formation of these communities, initiated by Jesus with his disciples and continued by the apostles, was not to create enclaves of the pure and the righteous who lived in legalistically defined isolation from their polluted environments. These communities were to demonstrate before the world the nature of the love and healing that God had made real for all in Christ in the way that they lived and related.

Their work, beginning with how they earned their bread, to how their families lived, to the character of their called communities, to their interactions with their neighbors, was defined as their witness. It seems to me to be clear that the necessary outcome of the basic assumptions and insights of the current missional church discussion must be a strong focus upon the work of witness, which means, I believe, that the lay apostolate merits our full attention. As we see more and more evidence of the “end of Christendom,” especially in our public and cultural life, the issues of ministry in daily life become more urgent.

The constant question of the earnest Christian in the workplace is, “How shall we then witness?” The answers are by no means easy. To assume that North American society is still, in its core, Christian, is both dangerous and illusory. But the response is not to retreat to “fortress ecclesia.” Rather, it is to take the fundamentally missional character of the gathered church so seriously that we begin to ask, “How shall we prepare one another for our work as witness when we are gathered for worship, nurture, and fellowship?”

Darrell Guder from “Worthy Living: Work and Witness from the Perspective of Missional Church Theology” in Word & World, Fall 2005

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