ON UN-CHURCH WORK

This goes back a while. Seven-Up conducted an ad campaign designating itself as the Un-Cola. It was still a pop (or soda), but it was different. Cola was not a bad thing; the un-cola was a different thing.

Many Christians, at least functionally, consider “church work” to be connected with maintaining the local congregation. Make no mistake that is indeed crucially important work. We need elders and teachers and ushers and choir members and so on. But there is more to “church work” than maintaining the local congregation. There is more to pop than cola.

Let’s call it un-church work: how we intentionally serve Jesus outside of the context of the local congregation. It is important for members of a congregation to be deployed into the community. And it is important for them to conceive of such deployment as serving the Kingdom in an un-church sort of way, for the Church but outside the organization of the local congregation.

Here are examples:

• Coaching a little league team
• Visiting elderly people in a senior center
• Mentoring a child in the neighborhood
• Assisting a recent immigrant
• Serving on a community board or council
• Volunteering to fix up a local park

This is different from vocational church work. Vocational church work focuses on living out your vocations as spouse, parent, neighbor, employee. Un-church work is similar but not the same. Un-church work consists of intentionally moving out of your normal daily activities and outside of your congregation’s structure to serve God in your community.

God calls Christians to work, serve or do ministry in three ways:

• Vocational Work: according to the various life callings you have
• Church Work: serve the local congregation
• Un-Church Work: intentionally engage in ministry separate from vocations or congregation

Spend some time praying about where God might lead you to engage in un-church work.  Or perhaps you are already involved in such work.  How can you do that work more intentionally as a servant of Jesus?

Understanding that we serve God with all that we are where ever we are, in our vocations, in our congregation and in un-church activities in the community, will help us on the path toward significance.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.  Galatians 6:9