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Transcript 222B — Witnessing in the Workplace
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening, Brother Camping. I'd like to share a situation with you and take any answers or suggestions you might have over the phone.
I'm an employee with a large multi-million dollar financial type institution, in a supervisory capacity. Consequently, I have twelve or fifteen people under me. And my question, basically, is this. How much should Christians proclaim the plan of salvation, their Christianity?
Specifically, I have abided by the policies of the particular corporation I work for, and have honored them. At the same time, I really feel rather miserable if I'm not totally given in to God. Incidentally, I have surrendered to the ministry and am going to Bible college at night. I do not seek out people, or preach to them, or tell them that certain lifestyles are wrong, and so on and so forth. I do pray, and have asked for opportunities to witness and to share my faith. People consequently have come to me, and I have explained the plan of salvation to them, and have told them what I felt they needed, which was simply Jesus Christ.
The reason I'm asking this is that I was approached by my supervisor, who told me (incidentally, he professes to be a Christian, at least a church member) that religion was not to be discussed or talked about. I would like to take your answer on the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you. Good night.
We have a very practical question: How can I conduct myself as a born again believer when I work in a very secular institution, a factory or a business, and am under the rules of the company?
First of all, during the hours when you are paid a salary, your first responsibility, of course, is to do the work of the company. And I'm sure our caller understands this entirely. If you would spend time witnessing to others during this time, when they should be working and you should be working, you are really stealing company time that doesn't belong to you. This is not time allocated for witnessing.
Now that's a very important factor. And many believers feel, "Well, we should witness any time." But when we are being paid for our services, we are not called upon to witness during that time. Now if you happen to work for a Christian employer, and he is willing to let us witness to others during the period that we are being paid, well, fine. He is actually paying us as we spend time witnessing. But if our employer does not include that in the company policy, then we should not do it.
There are two areas that we particularly have to be careful about as we are spending company time. First of all, we want to make sure that we are as obedient as possible to all of the rules that are laid down for us, as long as those rules do not conflict with God's rules. If our superior would ask us to lie, if our superior would ask us to steal (and these things are very possible in today's day and age), then we would have to say, "No, I'm sorry. I can't do that." Now we might risk losing our Job. But we would have to take that risk, because we must be faithful to God's rules.
Secondly, we want to show the fragrance of Christ as stress situations develop. One of the differences that show up in the life of the born again believer, from that of an unsaved person, is in times of stress. Some people show where they belong when things are going very well. And we can tell very quickly where they belong by the language they use, swearing and cursing. A born again believer, of course, would have nothing to do with that. Or, there are those who are always telling off-color jokes and dirty stories, and so on. A born again believer would have nothing to do with that.
But on the other hand, you could have an unsaved man in the company, who ordinarily doesn't swear and lives a clean, moral life. How am I different from him? I'm a born again believer. Well, it's in times of stress that it particularly shows up, when the pressure is on, when we've been ill-treated, when someone has really done a nasty thing to us. Now the differences begin to shine. If we're not saved, we're going to react like the world. We're going to lash back. We're going to murmur. We're going to complain. We didn't get the salary raise. We have terrible working conditions, and so on, and so on . . . murmur, murmur, murmur, complain. This is what the world does.
But as a born again believer, we are patient. We are the fragrance of Christ. When we are reviled, we revile not again. And it's in this place that we're really going to be witnesses with our lives, even though we're never saying anything. And incidentally, if you believe you're a Christian and someone working in the company with you does something dirty to you, and you feel that you have been offended, and you find that anger is right there and you're ready to lash out, and you do, and you complain to everybody who will listen, and this thing goes on and on, and you have bitterness in your heart, then you'd better start asking yourself, "How do I relate to Christ? Am I really born again? Maybe I'm not born again at all. Maybe I just thought I was, because how can I live this way? How can I react this way? There's something deadly wrong in my life."
Now more than that, as a born again believer working in this employ, you're going to be sensitive to the needs of others. And you may sense that there's another person over there who has a particular trouble. And maybe during the coffee break, or at lunchtime, you'll try to become acquainted, and see if you can't very quietly be of some help. Now at lunchtime, when you're on your own, when you're not employed at that particular moment, you are free to witness. You are free to invite someone to your home to witness to them. But during working hours, you have to keep your nose on the grindstone, so to speak. You have to be faithful to your employer, because he's paying you to do work for him, not to witness.
But even while you're working for him, you can be doing it in a way that shows the fragrance of Christ, as you react to stress, as you make sure that you are obedient to God rather than to your employer, if your employer is asking you to do something sinful.
Well, that's just a bare outline of a good subject. I hope it will help you a little bit.