GYC 2009: unASHAMED

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

John Chung, Chelsy Jourdan, and Sebastien Braxton: Cubicles and Christ

Sebastien Braxton

Agents of Change

Alright, so this is just a general outline of what we're going to cover.

We'll talk about an introduction to just this whole concept of God in the workplace.

We'll look at the origin of this dichotomy, when did this dichotomy emerge, in terms of work is separate from your spirituality, your spiritual life, your relationship with God.

After we go through that, we'll start talking about integration.

We'll look at a quote from Mark Green, kind of an evangelical theologian.

We'll look at some quotes from different authors.

We'll have a biblical discussion and we'll just jump into principle, our first principle being that of being.

So that's just a general outline of what we're going to be dealing with.

So First and foremost, let's have a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we'd like to thank you for the gift of life.

We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to be a part of an army of youth that we believe God is doing everything in his power to make it rightly trained.

This seminar, Lord, is our contribution to that.

We pray, Lord, that you would bless every aspect.

We pray, Lord, that you would remove the mountains that get in the way of us being successful witnesses in the workplace and also Lord that you would challenge us this morning on some of the most fundamental principles and ways by which we can impact the secular workplace as Seventh-day Adventist Christians and as Christians who are desiring to hasten the second coming of Jesus.

We love you and we thank you for hearing and answering this prayer and we trust that we will learn more about Jesus and how we can follow his example in our lives.

Alright, so let's look at our first session being agents of change.

Says this, why would we want to look for God in our work, asks BEEJ co-founder Gregory F.A.

Pierce, a publishing executive and the author of a new book called Spirituality at Work.

The simple answer is most of us spend so much time working, it would be a shame if we couldn't find God there.

A more complex answer is that there is a creative energy in work that is somehow tied to God's creative energy.

If we can understand that connection, perhaps we can use it to transform the workplace into something Remarkable.

We spend so much time working It would be a shame right that we can't bring something that's so fundamental To our very nature and being and finding meaning in life But it's like I'm gonna spend 8 to sometimes 10 to 12 hours a day doing that which creates and contributes no purpose to my existence.

It's just a necessary evil and that is essentially how work is viewed.

The concept of God and work, faith in the workplace, however you want to term it, This is actually not a new concept.

For a very long time, probably back in 1930, there was an organization called the Christian Businessmen's Committee.

And what they did was they got together in the 1930s, and they're like, you know what, we need to bring God into the workplace.

So they created this organization, now it's an international organization.

You go to, I think if you type CBMC online or something like that in Google, it brings up their website.

And these particular people are now building an international training center for faith in the workplace.

So they're trying to build this place that they're saying from all over the world, internationally, we're gonna bring people to train them how to impact their business.

A training center, they're saying they're actually gonna do the groundbreaking happened I think back in August, and they're actually going to start in January 2010 to actually build this place, have it ready for 2011.

So these are men from all over the world going back to the 1930s.

Now in the 1950s we had an organization called Full Gospel Businessmen's Association.

These individuals got together in the 1950s continuing to build on CBMC's kind of the hysteria, so to speak, that they created about this concept of God in the workplace.

And so they're saying, look, we're going to take this full gospel concept.

Now, we need to be careful because although we may agree on about 98 to 99 of the points and reasons and nuts and bolts of integrating faith into the workplace with our evangelical brethren, there's also some very slight differences.

They view work in terms of this concept that they call the anointing that is on your life.

You may never have heard this before, but some of you that may have, maybe you've crossed the Pentecostal movement or the Baptist movement.

It's spreading around, even into Catholicism in different denominations.

But anyway, there's this concept that they believe in the fact that in Ephesians chapter 4, actually let's turn there, just to set the stage and then we'll continue on this introduction.

Ephesians chapter 4, when you're there say amen.

If you need mercy it's okay, but you know come Sunday there'll be no mercy.

Okay, we use this text to talk about the validity of the gift of prophecy in the last days.

This is 1 of the texts that we use as a supportive concept in the New Testament for the prophetic gift continuing until the coming of Christ and the consummation of all things.

It says, Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.

So the way that the evangelicals will interpret this text, they'll say when Jesus left to go up into heaven, this is what this text is talking about, the ascension, but it doesn't mention it so much in the book of Acts.

So Paul is saying, hey, back when Jesus was ascending to go forth up into heaven, he says he led captivity captive and he gave givesome to men, verse 9, now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth.

He that descended is from the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he gave some apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So what we find here is that they say, okay, when Jesus went up, he gave gifts unto men.

So you know how we do that with the spirit of prophecy.

We say, we see, is Christianity coming to the unity of the faith?

We still argue about whether you should be keeping the Sabbath.

The millennium, are you pre-millennial, amillennial, whatever the case may be.

So as Christendom, we have not achieved a unity in the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

People who reject the sanctuary message cannot fully understand Jesus and how salvation comes through him.

So when we talk about people coming in even from evangelical movements, they did not have a full understanding of the gospel.

The sanctuary was representational of how Jesus deals with sin.

So when we talk about our understanding with our evangelical brethren and they look at this text, they use this text to show that apostleship is still a necessity as a gift in the church until we all come into the unity of the faith.

The question is how do we validate that a person actually has the gift of apostleship?

So what they will say is, and I'm gonna bring some books in the third session that I've been reading, they're probably the best I would recommend to you in terms of looking at reaching Christ, I mean sharing Christ in the workplace, but I'll share those in the third session so you can take a look at them, you know, order them on Amazon.

Most of them are really cheap, $10 or less, but it's good quality material.

But they'll say, you know, apostles in the workplace.

There is an anointing on your life, you have authority as an apostle.

This is part of the issue, this is part of the foundation of the concept of an apostle.

Paul teaches things and so they don't necessarily come to things by studying, they come to them by revelation.

God will reveal to them, as an apostle, this is what you should be teaching the church.

So we continue in the book of Acts, it says, in the apostles' doctrine.

So here they'll say, you're an apostle in the workplace, and so you have authority in the workplace.

So now if you're not too familiar with that, you may want to pop out at some point in time to Dr.

Pippam's seminar to kind of deal with this whole prayer walks and all this other stuff and how these people believe you have authority.

So you start claiming like zip codes and area codes, Lord we're going to pray this zip code.

And you come to church and say, did you pray your zip code?

Now you need to pray that zip code because God gave you that zip code and you have authority.

So you walk through the streets claiming your authority, driving the devil out, et cetera, et cetera.

Well they take that same concept and they actually bring it into the workplace.

Now, do you see how that could be a little dangerous?

Reaching Here by Going There

Heavenly Father, once again, we invite your spirit to guide our discussion.

Manifest your wisdom, Lord, so that we can be agents of change.

And teach us, Lord, how we can reach here by going there.

This is our prayer, and we ask that you'll help this to be our experience.

All right, so let's look at, just wanna go over some quick quotations about this concept of integration.

So now what that means is, we've dealt with the dichotomy, we've dealt with the attitude, work is separate from spirituality.

We've talked about the fact, and Katie did a great summary of that, is that work is worship to God.

And we find that God says if you're going to bring a lamb, it has to be without spot and blemish.

Priests, if you're going to come into my temple, your garments cannot be ripped, you'll be struck down.

Nadab and Abihu, you can't just use any kind of fire.

You bring strange fire before the Lord, He strikes you down.

So you have in this sense, God is very particular.

So if work is worship, then we can imagine that God is also very particular about our work.

So just brushing through these, as truly as every plant has a root, So does a principle hide under every manifestation of life.

These principles are interconnected and have their common root in a fundamental principle.

And from the latter is developed logically and systematically the whole complex of ruling ideas and conceptions that go to make up our life and worldview.

If this dichotomy is your fundamentally, we view the world as a duality, then at this sense, it's going to work out logically, systematically into the rest of our lives.

So in this sense, you're like, the fundamental principle of duality spills off into everything else.

And some things are higher, some things are lower.

And we saw how that came in through the church, through Aquinas and Augustine.

1 of the greatest hindrances to the Christian's internal peace is the common habit of dividing our lives into 2 areas, the sacred and the secular.

But this state of affairs is wholly unnecessary.

We have gotten ourselves on the horns of a dilemma, but the dilemma is not real.

The sacred-secular antithesis has no foundation in the New Testament.

We put ourselves in a dilemma when we divide our lives into sacred and secular.

And he says this is 1 of the greatest hindrances to the Christians internal peace.

You come to GYC, you go to church, you go to evangelistic meetings, and all of it is like man, can't wait to get those days off so I can go on a mission trip.

When I was in boot camp in the Marine Corps, I remember everything was Making it to the next meal.

So you'd be like, man, it's 4am, I just have to make it to breakfast, man.

It's like life was just like, tension, tension, tension, ah, get to sit down and eat.

Alright, meal's over, just gotta make it to lunch.

And for a lot of us, that's how we're looking.

Just gotta make it to the next evangelistic series.

And what's happening is we're separating.

We're creating this, this is sacred, this is secular.

And it's as if we're like, Lord, we know, you know, you told me to be in the world, but not of the world, and this is gonna be my test.

So we're like, God put me here, and he has a purpose, and I need to grow, we wanna be humble Christians.

And we wonder why we can't impact our coworkers.

If you are 2 different people, if you are 2 different people, there's a 9 to 5 you, and there's a 5 to 8 you.

We're at work and we're this and this and this and I always reminisce about this.

So you have this concept that if we live this schizophrenic perspective of life, I am this from 9 to 5, I am this from 5 to 8 the next morning.

What happens is we come to church and we're like, man, I can let my hair down, you know, just kind of relax and talk about the great controversy and what tree are you going to be eating under, you know, and when we get to heaven, then you come to work and it's just like, man, people, Christians believe in this tree of life and blah, blah, blah, and Jesus is coming back.

Obviously, the world has been here for thousands and millions of years.

And you're just like, man, can I just get some resonation somewhere?

And so we end up internalizing ourselves.

And we're living what we call a duplicitous life.

The same kindness you see in Galilee, you can believe it was in the carpenter's shop.

And in fact, the spirit of prophecy tells us, the spirit of prophecy tells us that as perfect as Jesus was in his character is as perfect as he was in the carpenter shop.

Now you have to chew on that 1 for a little bit.

He was as perfect in the carpenter shop as he was in his character.

Jesus did not look at his work as a carpenter and say, man, this ain't saving the world.

We go to work, I'm a graphic designer, man, they just wanna design this stupid stuff for this stupid conference, you know, whatever, whatever.

These people call me up, they don't get back to me, they don't respond to my emails, but it's like, hey, I'm designing this for GYC.

We're quiet because many of us are convicted.

So the whole thing is that For many of us, that mindset was not the mind of Christ.

Jesus, by becoming a carpenter, restores dignity to the common laborer.

You don't even understand that 1 of the most powerful people in your town could be the carpenter.

But there at the carpenter's bench was the Son of God.

And you can imagine how many people shiested Jesus.

Using Your Profession to Change the World

Heavenly Father, we'd like to thank you for the privilege again to gather about the feet of Jesus.

We've come not to listen to the words of a man, but we've come to hear from God.

We ask that you would teach us, Lord, according to your will.

That you would provide the wisdom by the power of your Holy Spirit that is needed to teach the things that are true, that are right, and that can help show us how to impact the world with our professions.

This is our prayer and we ask it in Jesus' name.

Okay, so we left off with this biblical worldview.

I think this is, yeah, that was our last slide.

And so, just by recap, because I don't believe all of you were here for the first 2 sessions.

So just by recap, this is pretty much where we built from.

We saw that there was an increasing interest ever since the 1930s in merging God with the workplace.

Then we saw that this dichotomy, that God was separate from the work, and that work all of a sudden became this word we call secular, was a Greek concept going back to dualism and duality.

This started off with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thales, and Homer.

We saw that that now in the 5th century was transferred over through Augustine.

He wanted to merge Greek thought in a Christian framework.

So he created this concept of dualism, which is where we get the concept of this immortality of the soul, anthropological dualism, etc.

So your soul is different from your body, that you are not your body.

And so that there was this disintegration of these components that make up a human being.

Now that was further developed by Thomas Aquinas.

And Thomas Aquinas, he took it to another level And he said he calls it grace and nature and that the things that are higher are grace and the things that are nature Are things that are lower there there they're considered base and he said nature are things that require no revelation to engage in and So he said that you know as naturally as like a bird flies, it doesn't require any like revelation.

But we saw that work doesn't fit that profile, yes?

Because we saw that God actually has a specific work for us to do.

And He expects us to put all of our hearts into that work, yes?

So as a result of that, this whole concept that work requires no revelation, it doesn't work.

And so we looked at this concept of integration and the fact that work is worship to God and the Hebrew word in the Old Testament for work is avodah.

And we saw that in avodah, this word for work and worship in the Old Testament, and that God views work as worship.

So now we had to begin to change our thinking about what we consider our work to be in the eyes of God.

So when you go to work and sit at your cubicle, it is actually worship to God.

And based upon how you conduct your work, this is the kind of offering you're leaving at the altar.

So we concluded, right, with Cain and Abel, we looked at that Cain's offering was excellent, right?

So the question that lingers in your or My mind is when we go to work, what is God asking for?

Because many of us may walk away like Cain and we're like, Lord, how come my job doesn't have all this meaning?

How come my job isn't filled with all this sense of purpose and I'm impacting the world around me.

And God may look at you and say, if you do not well shall you not be accepted.

As he asked Cain, why is your countenance falling?

Are we doing the things that We know God expects and requires of us.

So now beginning from there, we launched off into something different.

He said, now how does this integration take place?

And we saw that this destroys the Christian's inner peace, that they're secular, and then they're sacred work.

And I'll just kind of briefly go back to 1 of these statements.

We looked at a thing so we saw 1 of the greatest hindrances to the Christians internal peace is the common habit of dividing our lives into 2 areas the sacred and the secular But this state of affairs is wholly unnecessary.

Because we misunderstand that Work is worship.

You are always in worship as a Christian.

And listen to me carefully with this, friends.

The church's ultimate purpose is worship.

Missions is not the ultimate purpose of the church.

The ultimate purpose of the Church is worship.

Because people are not worshiping God, that's why we go out and spread The message.

So because if everyone, you go up to Africa, you go to Papua New Guinea, you show up in New York on the streets and people out there having Bible studies and breaking down the 2300 day prophecy, do you feel like you need to execute a mission over there?

When you get on the subway and everyone turns to each other and says, hey, have you heard about Jesus?

Like, I was just about to ask you the same question.

Yeah, man, I go to the 7th, oh you go to 7th and 8th?

But when you show up in certain countries and in certain cultures, You find people committing circumcisions on young girls.

You find people offering up their children or virgins to appease gods.

You find people walking up thousands of steps on the cathedral to pay for their sins.

You find people walking through the streets of Manila with needles stuck into their flesh and every time they walk, every needle comes in at the same time to maximize the pain.

So because true worship does not exist, This is why missions exist.

And once all the world is separated from that, right?

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Series

John Chung, Chelsy Jourdan, and Sebastien Braxton: Cubicles and Christ

Practicals, Testimonies, Questions, and Answers

Transcript

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Sponsor

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