Christians in business and the professions—the "marketplace ministers"—have a great opportunity to impact the world around them for Christ and to be the cutting edge in providing funds for the End Time expansion of God's kingdom. The marketplace is where business is done, and where great opportunities exist. But great opportunities are met with equally great threats.

Kingdom business professionals routinely meet and influence people from all walks of life, and like the Old Testament "kings," go out and bring back the "spoils" to the house of God. Most learn that the busier they are doing what they do, the more effective and wealthy they become. The risk factor in this equation comes when they become SO busy doing God's work that they no longer have time to fellowship and love the One they are supposedly working FOR! The means and ends become confused, and before they know it, many kingdom business professionals are just too busy to come together with other Christians to praise and worship the Lord.

The Bible tells us that we are all members of one body—the Body of Christ. We are only at our most effective when all members of that Body are working together in balance. When the legs are doing the walking, the neck is holding up the head, the lungs are doing the breathing, and so on (1 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 12:5).

What we see all too often is Christian business people who start out as dedicated local church members, involved in various ministry activities, but who progressively start to drop off their church attendance as their business becomes all-consuming. The priorities change. The people they spend their time with change, and very soon, the original lofty goals of serving God in business are overtaken by the raw lust for money and power in their own right.

The Bible is very clear on this issue. Hebrews 10:25 warns us explicitly against "forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." In more modern translations, the writer of Hebrews simply says: "Let us not hold aloof from our church meetings" (Phillips) and "not neglecting our own church meetings" (Berkeley).

Let us be clear at the outset that any Christian who is out there serving the Lord in the modern-day marketplace, and yet disdain the covering of a local church, is in a very dangerous place indeed. Remember, the devil, like a lion, is always out there prowling about, seeing whom he can devour. A lion doesn't ever run into the middle of the herd to grab its prey. It prowls around the outside of the herd, waiting for a straggler to wander away, and then it pounces.

Kingdom business professionals who are too "busy" to be a regularly attending, faithful member of a local church are just like that straggler on the outskirts of the herd. He or she is easy prey for the devil. To continue the picture of the Old Testament "kings" such as David, it is clear that they were always under the covering of a "priest" such as Samuel. In today's context, the "king" must be submitted to a pastor and leadership of a local church to have any chance whatsoever of surviving the pressures and temptations that abound.

The consistent picture in the early New Testament church was of Christians meeting regularly together to worship the Lord, and for fellowship and mutual support. The early church was constantly under attack, and they found that unity was essential to survival. Is that any less true today, even where the attacks are not always physical? We are constantly under siege by the powers of darkness, and the more effective we are in serving the Lord, the more vicious and insidious those attacks become.

Why should we think we are any less vulnerable to attack than the early church? Instead, we must learn from the accounts of how the early church overcame the attacks of the devil. This is how they handled it:

Notice Paul says in the above verse from 1 Corinthians, "when" you come together, not "if" you come together. It is undeniable that the early Christians regularly met together for what we would call today "church services."

Jesus Himself, while of course living by His Holy Spirit within each and every one of us, also told us: "... That if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in My name, there I am with them" (Matt. 18:19-20).

There is great power in unity. When the early believers in Acts 4 came together in one heart and mind, and prayed, "... the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly" (Acts 4:31).

Our faith and our unity today can shake the world, just as it did in the first century. Nothing has changed. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The exact same power is available for us right now, just as it was in the book of Acts: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Heb. 10:24-25).