by Os Hillman
Chuck Ripka lives in Elk River, Minnesota, a community of about 20,000 people 40 miles outside of Minneapolis. Chuck and some business leaders opened a bank in 2003 with the intent to use the bank as a place of ministry. Within the first 18 months of the bank’s opening, Chuck and his staff saw more than 70 people accept salvation inside the bank, and there were numerous physical healings. The bank employees offer prayer for their customers in the boardroom and often pray for those who come to the teller windows. There is excitement in the bank each day about what God is going to do.
I often receive requests from the media for interviews about the Faith at Work movement. One day, the New York Times Magazine called. After several subsequent conversations, the reporter said, “I believe I have a good understanding of this Faith at Work movement, but can you point me to someone who can demonstrate what this looks like in a daily workplace?” I told the writer to give Chuck Ripka a call.
Chuck immediately began praying for the writer after I told him the reporter would be calling him. A few days later, Chuck called me and said the Lord was going to use this article not only for the workplace movement, but also for this writer’s life. He even had the boldness to tell the writer that when he called.
The writer visited Chuck and the bank for two days. He went with Chuck everywhere—he had dinner in Chuck’s home, attended community meetings, interviewed all the employees of the bank, and watched Chuck pray for many people at the bank. The writer was impressed that this was the real deal.
At the end of the reporter’s visit, Chuck and his friend Larry Ihle asked if they could pray for God’s blessing on him. He agreed, and they prayed for God’s blessing on his writing skills and for the New York Times. They prayed that God would help him write the article. The writer was touched by this. Afterward, Chuck asked him about his own relationship with God, which led to him praying to receive Christ. Two weeks later, photographers came to take pictures for the article, and they too prayed to receive Christ.
When the article came out October 31, 2004, it was one of the best and most extensive articles on the Faith at Work movement that has been written from a secular viewpoint. Chuck has stayed in contact with the writer, and the two have become good friends. God has opened many doors as a result, and the secular media has taken note of this growing movement. Since then, Chuck has had interviews with the London Times, a broadcast network from France and Germany, a Hong Kong newspaper and many city newspapers across the United States.
Excellence, ethics and integrity, extravagant love and service, and signs and wonders—these are the attributes of the worker that God is using in dramatic ways. May the Lord allow you to make these four qualities part of the makeup of your own workplace.
How About You?
1. List each of the four attributes discussed in this chapter. Rank yourself in each attribute on a scale of 1-10.
2. Name one thing you can do better in each area that will make you a more effective Christian worker.
CHAPTER 5
FOUR TYPES OF CHRISTIANS
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
GALATIANS 5:18
Think for a moment about Christians who have made the most significant impact on the world for Jesus in the past 100 years. Make a mental list of four or five people who immediately come to mind.
How many of those were full-time vocational ministry workers and how many were workplace Christians? My guess is that your list is made up mostly of vocational ministry workers—people like Billy Graham, Rees Howells, George Mueller, Bill Bright, D. L. Moody or even Mother Teresa.
My point is this: Where are the men and women of faith from the workplace? Why aren’t we seeing them on the list? Absent are men like Jeremiah Lanphier, a New York businessman whose prayer efforts sparked a nationwide revival; R. G. LeTourneau, an American construction company owner who influenced many for Christ; William Wilberforce, an English statesman who dedicated his life to abolishing slavery; Arthur Guinness, an entrepreneur and founder of Guinness Beer, whose work had a major effect on society in Ireland and England; or Brigid, a fifth-century Irish woman who helped an estimated 13,000 people escape from poverty and slavery into Christian service and industry.
George Barna says that 40 percent of the American population claims to be born-again.1 If your company had such a high percentage of the market share of your industry, don’t you think it would have a lot of influence? Coca-Cola has a 40 percent market share in the soft drink industry. Do they carry a lot of clout and influence? You bet they do.
The reason Christians are not at the top of the list of those who make an impact on the world around them is because most believers are not embracing their workplace calling. In his book Anointed for Business, Ed Silvoso provides a thoughtful look at the four types of Christians in the workplace. The following four categories provide an excellent tool for self-assessment:
1. The Christian who is simply trying to survive.
2. The Christian who is living by Christian principles.
3. The Christian who is living by the power of the Holy Spirit.
4. The Christian who is transforming his or her workplace for Christ.2
I had studied these four types of Christians for many years without grouping them into these four categories, as Silvoso has done. Allow me to expand upon each category.
Category #1: The Christian Who Is Simply Trying to Survive
Christians who are simply trying to survive have no purpose or zeal for integrating their faith at work. They have not seen the power or presence of God in their work lives. Solomon describes such people: “So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun…. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless” (Eccles. 2:20, 22-23).
Such Christians segment their faith life from their work life. They lack purpose and meaning and they have little direction. Most likely, their work is reduced to collecting a paycheck at the end of the week. They have never heard the voice of God, especially not at work, and they would never consider praying at work or for a workplace-related issue. Even though they go to church, they see it as an obligation to do something for God. In the final analysis, these individuals are defeated Christians who are simply trying to survive. The world is full of these surviving Christians who are waiting for the lifeboat of salvation to take them off this “evil” planet.
Category #2: The Christian Who Is Living by Christian Principles
The second type of Christians in the workplace includes those who are living by Christian principles. Americans love programs and systems to do things. We participate in 12-step programs and read books with guaranteed formulas to help us lose weight or improve our marriages. This programmed teaching can be beneficial. It gives people a track to run on. Let’s face it, if the whole world lived on Christian principles, we would definitely have a better world. However, it is important to recognize that the root of this type of teaching comes largely from a Greek-based system for attaining knowledge, as compared to the Early Church Hebraic model of experiential learning.
The Hebrews preferred to learn wisdom through obedience, not through reason and analysis. Teachers taught their students more by modeling life experience than by conveying information, and the students had a process-oriented way of learning that appealed to the heart and resulted in the active participation of the disciple. The Hebraic style relied on the personal touch of a leader as a facilitator. It enabled believers in the Early Church to become doers of the Word, not hearers or learners only. The end result of the Early-Church instruction was an active, mature love that motivated the believers to serve others.
In the second and third centuries, as more and more Greek scholars came into the faith, they influenced the Early Church with teaching methodologies that focused on reason, logic and oratory skills. The Greek way of learning tended to be
program-based and often took place in large, impersonal groups. The Greeks emphasized do’s and don’ts and logical principles, and they expected students to accumulate a repository of data.3
One of the primary reasons that many of us don’t have much of an impact on our world is because so many of us are byproducts of this Greek system of education. In the Church, this approach eliminates the supernatural because it depends so heavily on logic and reason rather than living by the power of the Holy Spirit and being led by God. Paul warned against the Greek influence in his letter to the Corinthians, where he stated, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4-5).
Christians who are living by principles tend to be ethical people who want to do the right thing. However, if we only live by ethics, we will never experience the power of God. (On the other hand, if we fail the ethics test, we will be disqualified from power encounters with God and fail to be a witness to the world.) In order to experience the freedom and power of God in the Holy Spirit, Christians must move beyond the “milk” of programmed Christianity to an intimate relationship with Jesus. That is where they will experience the power of God.
Category #3: The Christian Who Is Living by the Power of the Holy Spirit
Christians who are living by the power of the Holy Spirit have a heart toward God and seek Him about every aspect of their lives. They understand the importance of developing a heart toward God through prayer, study of the Word of God and obedience. They realize that these are the three core ingredients to experiencing the power of God in their lives.
To illustrate these types of Christians, let me tell you about Doug, one of our close friends and board members. One busy day, Doug went to the airport, barely made his flight and found his assigned seat in economy class. As the doors shut, he suddenly heard his name called out. He was being upgraded to first class. Because he had never flown with the airline before, he wondered how in the world he got upgraded.
He ended up sitting next to a well-dressed man who was apparently successful and wealthy, but who seemed to be very irritated. As Doug pondered what God might do with this situation (which seemed to have been divinely orchestrated), he quietly prayed, “Lord, tell me something about this man so that he would know that You know him.” Immediately the words “finance” and “financial services” popped into his mind.
Doug now had to decide whether this was God answering his prayer or just his own thoughts. Though he was not used to doing things like this, he decided to take a risk, assume it was God and go for it. Turning to the man he said, “I understand you are in financial services.”
The man looked at him and said, “Yes I am. But how in the world would you know that?”
Doug was just as amazed as the man was. “Do you really want to know how I know that?” he asked.
“Yes, I would,” the man replied.
Doug explained that when he sat down, he had prayed and asked God to tell him something about him. “God told me specifically that you were in financial services,” he said.
The man, startled and not sure what to make of this, began a conversation with Doug. It turns out he was the CEO of one of the largest financial services companies in the United States—a 32 billion dollar company with global influence. Doug spent the rest of the flight talking with the man about the integration of faith with work and business.
The man did not accept Christ, but he experienced a touch of God in a very personal way that may be a stepping-stone for him to come into the Kingdom in the future. It was a supernatural seed-planting encounter that encouraged Doug to be open to the Holy Spirit at a greater level.
Another illustration comes from an experience in my own life. When I published my first TGIF devotional book, part of the publishing agreement was that I would purchase 1,000 of the copies myself. I figured I could quickly resell the books, but after six months we had sold only a few books a week. We had no real distribution system in place, and I was concerned. Then I felt the Lord prompting me to do something in faith.
In Mark 11:22-24, Jesus states, “Have faith in God … I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.” I told Angie I felt we needed to put Mark 11 into practice and speak to the books to leave our basement. So we laid hands on the boxes of books and told them to leave! We told our mountain of books to get into the hands of people where they could make a difference. Believe me, we felt very foolish. However, we did it out of obedience.
A few hours later, I received a phone call from a ministry in Dallas, Texas, which ordered 300 books from us. The amazing thing was that it was a Saturday! We sold more books in one transaction than we had in six months. The Lord built our faith through this experience.
Sometimes, God wants us to exercise the authority that He has given us in the spiritual realm. This does not mean that God is our genie and we can simply command Him to do things at our whim. God must lead us into these actions. But many of us never even think outside the box enough to give God this opportunity because we don’t know that this power is available to us.
Paul understood that it was not knowledge that would change the world but the power of God working through believers. You and I need to move at this dimension if we are going to transform the workplace. Everything we do should be led by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Category #4: The Christian Who Is Transforming His or Her Workplace for Christ
A wonderful byproduct of living by the power of the Holy Spirit is that you can transform your workplace for God. Christians who passionately seek the manifestation of God’s kingdom here on Earth will be able to realize this transformation in their workplaces. Jesus talked about the kingdom of God 70 times in the New Testament—more often than he mentioned salvation. While salvation is part of bringing the kingdom of God on Earth, it includes much more. When the kingdom of God is demonstrated on Earth, it can transform the workplace and society.
As a young believer at the turn of the century, Arthur Guinness walked the streets of Ireland and despaired over the alcoholism in his country. Hard liquor was the choice of drink in his day. Arthur cried out to God for a solution. “God, you must do something about the drunkenness on the streets of Ireland!” At that moment, he sensed that God gave him an answer—an answer that surprised him. The thought that came to his mind was make a drink that men will drink that will be good for them.
So Arthur created a dark, stout beer called Guinness. It was indeed a drink “that men will drink that will be good for them,” for it was so full of minerals and natural trace elements that even pregnant women could benefit from its high iron content. It was also nearly impossible for people to get drunk on Guinness beer because it was so heavy that it was difficult to drink more than a couple of pints. In addition, it had a fairly low alcohol level at the time. (The recipe has changed recently and it now has a slightly higher alcohol content.)
The answer to Arthur’s prayer became the national drink in Ireland. Arthur was elevated to the House of Lords because of his philanthropy and wealth, and he used his success to fund an orphanage in Ireland and to change the judicial system in Great Britain. Arthur Guinness is a great example of a working Christian who helped transform his nation.4
On January 23, 2005, Victor Yushenko was sworn in as the president of Ukraine. Following his inauguration, Yushenko invited all Ukrainian Christian denominations to join him in public prayer and blessing for the nation. “This is a totally new thing for our nation,” said Sunday Adelaja, pastor of the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations, in Kiev, the largest church in Europe. “Remember, Ukraine is a former Communist society.”
Yushenko then selected Yulia Timoshenko, a born-again and Spirit-filled believer, as prime minister. At the Oath
of Office for the new prime minister on February 3, 2005, President Yushenko again shocked the nation by taking a clear and unprecedented stand against corruption. In his address, Yushenko stated that his government would not steal from the public, would not give or receive bribes and would never use money to shift lobby votes. He promised that he would take full responsibility for the actions of his government and demanded that the principles of openness, transparency and uprightness filter throughout every department and cabinet. “No decision should be taken in secret,” Yushenko said. “Everything must be done openly and in public view.”
In her address, Prime Minister Timoshenko made one simple point: “Our government has come to the conclusion that Ukraine can never rise on her feet until she bows her knees before the Almighty God.” Shortly thereafter, Timoshenko surprised the members of Parliament by outlining a new program of reform for the nation based upon the following biblical concepts of national transformation:
• Faith (in God, the nation and individual citizens)
• Justice (to build an upright society)
• Harmony (between citizens and leaders)
• Security (of individual people, national interests and properties)
• Life (abundant life in every sphere through social programs)
