While addressing a large Christian business conference recently, I asked a couple of very loaded questions. First I asked everyone in "full time ministry" to put their hands up. Half a dozen hands went up. Then I asked those in "secular work" to put their hands up. Several hundred hands shot up!

"Gotcha!" I cried with a big grin. And indeed I had caught them. I had caught them living out one of the most insidious and all-pervading lies the devil—that great deceiver—has perpetrated on the Body of Christ.

The lie is that there are two classes of Christians: the first class being the minority called into "sacred" full time clerical ministry, and the vast majority comprising the second class, working in "secular" jobs out in the world, the "laity."

Myron Rush, in his "Lord of the Marketplace," says: "Satan has deceived Christians into believing that we have a spiritual or religious life, and a secular or non-religious life. This is not a Biblical concept: it is of satanic origin. Nowhere does Scripture refer to a 'spiritual' life and a 'secular' life."

God Instituted Work for Man

Try as you might, you will not find this sacred/secular dichotomy in the Bible. On the contrary, we are called to be both "kings" AND "priests" to serve our God and Father (Rev. 1:6).

God made the whole world, including men and women created in His image, and called the whole creation "very good" (Gen. 1:31). God created work for mankind to do, both before and after the fall. Before the fall, Adam worked in the Garden to classify and name all the living creatures God had created (Gen. 2:19, 20). After the fall, God still expected Adam (and through him, all mankind) to continue working "by the sweat of your brow" (Gen. 3:19).

The idea that some work is sacred, and some work is secular, is mainly the result of Greek dualistic thinking, which held that there were two realms: a higher or sacred one pertaining to the spiritual and eternal, and the lower or secular realm pertaining to the physical and temporal.

In the Greek view, business and manual labor belong to the lower realm, while in the Biblical worldview, all things are good when they fit in with God's purpose and plan. Larry Peabody in his book, "Secular Work is Full-Time Service," points out that in the New Testament, God does not separate the Christian life into sacred and secular parts.

He says: "Rather, He shows it as a unified life, one of wholeness (integrity), in which we may single-mindedly serve Him, even in our everyday work ... In Christ, that which was once secular has become sacred. The wall between them has been removed. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer" (1 Tim. 4: 4, 5).

Indeed, the truth is that no Christian, no matter what kind of work he or she does, should ever refer to work as "secular". The word "secular", according to the Elwell Evangelical Dictionary, means, "A way of life and thought that is pursued without relevance to God or religion ... denial or exclusion of transcendent, other-worldly realities ... A worldview oriented to the profane rather than the sacred, the natural realm rather than the supernatural."

For a committed Christian, no matter what his or her kind of work, only the sacred and sinful are real and meaningful, "secular" does not exist! We can be obeying God and working for Him, or we can be disobeying God and working against him, but there is no neutral, secular middle-ground for us!

Sacred or Secular?

Dr. Walt Larimore, writing in the Focus on the Family magazine, puts it this way: "The Biblical worldview leaves no room for secular-sacred, dualistic thinking. Unlike the aloof gods of ancient thought, the God of the Bible is actively involved in His world ... no matter what your job may be, God can and will use you when you do it with honor and integrity."

As created, all the world was sacred; with the fall, sin entered, and duality entered—but not a duality of sacred and secular, as in the Greek sense, but a duality of sacred and sinful. If we are in Christ, and working for Him, then everything we do is sacred. If we are not in Christ, then everything we do is by definition sinful, as hard a truth as that is to accept for many.

Jesus Himself says: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned" (John 15:5, 6). In Mark 16:15 He says: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Our work as Christians, no matter what it is, matters very much to God. It has dignity and destiny—secular work does not exist for the marketplace minister. As Christians, we are all in full time ministry, whether it is preaching at the pulpit, leading worship, washing a floor or running an airline—as long as we do it "as unto God".

The work model Jesus gives us is to serve others, as He served us (Luke 22:25, 26). In "The Myth of Secular Work," Eddie Hall and Gary Morsch, say: "Ministering through our work means ministering to people's needs by the very work we do ... Is it possible to minister by the act of baking bread? By the act of typing a letter? By the act of changing a diaper or washing dishes? ... Driving a truck? ... Building a house?

"If we understand that ministry isn't restricted to meeting spiritual needs, but includes responding in Christian love to any kind of need, the answer is yes. You may have been ministering through your work for many years, even if you haven't known to call it that.

"For a job to be Christian ministry, though, it is not enough that it meets a need—it must also be motivated by servanthood ... a servant spirit can transform any useful job into a ministry ... Remembering who it is you are serving can turn ordinary tasks into ministry. No Christian should do 'secular' work—work that is not sacred. Whether paid or unpaid, performed at home or at the office or factory, any legitimate work can glorify God and serve other people."

Marketplace Ministry

According to a survey carried out in the US by the Wall Street journal, more than 80 percent of people interviewed said they did not like their job. According to Doug Sherman of Impact Ministries, similar surveys carried out with Christians came up with similar results.

Interestingly enough, I tried the same question with the group referred to above—and sure enough, around 80 percent of the Christians there put up their hands when I asked, "Who doesn't like their job, and would change it if you could?"

But if God has called us into marketplace ministry, no matter at what level, then the job He has given us is our place of ministry. In fact, if we are where God has called us to be, we should not try to change our circumstances, but rather our attitude.

If we really and truly believe that we are serving other people as we carry out our daily tasks, that we are there to be servants, what a great change this would make to our attitudes in our workplaces! We would get up in the morning excited about the people we can serve and minister to, instead of punching the alarm clock and stuffing a pillow over our heads and wishing the day away.

We would no longer join the sad chant, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go" —believing that we only work to pay our bills. We will be responding to a sacred call, and we will go off to work full of excitement and expectancy!

Paul teaches us how to change our attitudes when he tells slaves (the lowest order of manual workers in first-century Roman society): "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, do it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men ... it is the Lord Christ you are serving (Col. 3:22-25).

In Ephesians 6:5-9, Paul says more along the same lines, enjoining the slaves to "serve wholeheartedly." And if a Roman slave can "serve wholeheartedly," how much more can we in our modern, convenient workplaces! We are, after all, not very likely to be whipped or starved, or even killed by our "masters."

"Worshiping" God at Work

Work is our worship to God, as every other part of our lives should be an act of worship to God. As Rick Warren says in his "Purpose Driven Life"—"Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God, and perform it with an awareness of His presence." Tommy Tenney says: "Worship Him—you are wearing the robe of a priest and the crown of a king."

Ken Blanchard, co-author of the well-known "One-Minute" series, talks of his own struggle in seeing work as a holy and sacred call. He writes: "When I was writing The Power of Ethical Management with the legendary positive-thinking ministry Norman Vincent Peale, I asked him if I should quit my business ... and go back to divinity school. He was quick to reply, 'Absolutely not! You have an important congregation in the marketplace and we just don't have enough good preachers there'."

Os Hillman in an article entitled "Sacred Versus Secular Work" reminds us that Jesus Himself was a businessman: "When Jesus came to earth, how did He come? As a carpenter. A man given to work with His hands and to provide an honest service to His fellow man. He did not come as a priest, although he was both a King and a Priest (Rev. 1:6). When it came time to recruit those for whom the church would be founded, He chose 12 men from the marketplace ... none of His disciples were priests in the Jewish church, a natural place to recruit from if you were going to start a religious movement. Jesus called them from the marketplace of life."

Christopher A. Crane and Mike Hamel in "Executive Influence" make the same point: "Most Christians are called to the marketplace as their sphere of service to God. Even in Jesus' day, only a few disciples left their jobs to devote themselves exclusively to the gospel. The vast majority of believers, then and now, dispense salt in daily doses while earning a living in the world.

"What a high and holy calling," says University of Southern California philosophy professor Dallas Willard: 'Possession and direction of the forces of wealth are as legitimate an expression of the redemptive rule of God in human life as is Bible teaching or a prayer meeting ... There is truly no division between sacred and secular except what we have created. And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and to the cause of Christ'."

We must understand that our place of work—whether inside the church or in the wider marketplace—is our place of destiny, and the place where God has called us into "full time ministry." Let us pray a prayer right now, originally set out by Ed Silvoso in his book "Anointed for Business"—one that I personally have prayed many times:

Father God, I bless my job in the Name of the Lord Jesus. I repent of all negative thoughts, words spoken and actions taken by me against my work. From now on, I will consider my work my ministry, and ministry my work, and I will do everything unto the glory of God so that my labor will constitute an act of worship ... Let my place of work be the place of Your habitation. May Your presence fill every aspect of it, and may Your eternal purposes be carried out in every detail and at every level, so that the Kingdom of God will be in evidence in my work.