“I’m going to be a missionary and single for the rest of my life!” Like many young Christians, I responded to my newfound life with fervor. I envisioned a precise order of how my life would go: graduate college, move to another continent, and share the gospel. And, like many others, instead I now somehow found myself working in a corporate office in a large metropolis.
Regardless of how different your path is compared to what you expected, the call to share the gospel remains central and urgent. And your coworkers in your everyday life are waiting to hear the gospel.
The Great Commission Includes Those Near to You
You may wonder if you should even share the gospel in a workplace setting. “Surely God cares about my coworkers, but is it really right for me to ambush them here at work?”
Is it really right for me to ambush them here at work?
While this can be a humble question, you can find confidence in your call to live on mission in the workplace when you remember that the scope of the Great Commission was defined when Jesus instructed his followers to “make disciples of all nations.”
While these two words hold much weight for how Christians fund, strategize, and labor for missions efforts across the globe, a possibly forgotten implication is that “all nations” includes your nation. It’s the people on the other side of your Zoom call and down the hall in your company’s sales marketing meeting.
Discipleship is Key
Being able to walk in confidence that God sees your workplace as a field in urgent need of laborers (Matthew 9:37), it follows that you should also know what the goal of your labors is in evangelizing the workplace. Again, the Great Commission’s answer is “make disciples.”
Inherent in this goal is the fact that as God’s people go out, there should be an expectation that their numbers will be multiplied and added to.
Your desire might be for your coworkers to come under the lordship of Jesus and receive His mercy expediently; however, this desire should be tempered with Paul’s own words that he “planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Therefore, you can be encouraged as you discern the spiritual state and needs of those around you, and then walk into the conversations and good works God has laid before you already (Ephesians 2:10). This often requires patience, time, and community effort.
How Can You Share the Gospel in Your Workplace?
Jesus’ final words in Matthew additionally give a sneak peek into his playbook for how this discipleship is to be done: “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
In this last portion of the Great Commission, Jesus references his example as the preferred method of discipleship, whether abroad or in your own workplace.
So, as you walk into your workplace:
- Pray for your coworkers like Jesus prayed for those who would one day know him (John 17:20–26). Do you see your coworkers as your future co-laborers in the harvest (Matthew 9:37–38)?
- Invite your coworkers into your life, like Jesus invited his disciples to come and see his life (John 1:39). This could be as simple as a quick lunch or coffee or as committal as watching a game together after work.
- Prepare just as Jesus also prepared for his ministry (Luke 2:52, 3:23; Matthew 4:1–11). Have a plan to share the gospel and your testimony for when the time comes.
- Be patient as Jesus was patient with discipleship efforts. It took three and a half years of teaching, explaining, and redirecting the disciples before Jesus gave them the Great Commission. It took them time to confess him as Lord, a few trial runs in ministry, and the Sermon on the Mount before they were sent out.
Perhaps, God hasn’t called you to plant the next church in South Asia, but is desiring to use you just as he used the Samaritan woman in John 4. Rather than telling her to tag along with him or sending her with Peter for future church planting efforts, Jesus instead let her go back to her Samaritan community to tell them that she had just met the Messiah. The results? Her community meets Jesus himself and “said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world. (John 4:42)”
He is the same Savior today to us as he was to the Samaritans then. Perhaps, he is simply calling you to share the gospel with those right in front of you as well.
Gavin Huse is an Associate at Novum Partners. He studied Finance at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He and his wife Georgie are members of Fort Worth Bible Church.
