Why Faith In The Marketplace Is So Important
Unfortunately today’s churches are empty. More than any other time in history your employees are spending an increased amount of time commuting to and from work, working in their workplaces, working in the evenings and on the weekends, disengaged from their families and communities. These increased hours have resulted in employees spending more waking hours at work than they are spending time at home with their families, with friends or volunteering in their communities. Because of this, we have an opportunity and a mission; a mission to reach those who need saved. This is America’s untapped harvest, a field of opportunity. And as God proclaims, we need more workers into his fields.
Matthew 9: 35-38 says, “ Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
According to Pew’s 2014 Religious Landscape Survey, those who say they go to church or another house of worship at least once a week fell from 39 percent in 2007 to 35 percent in 2014. This number is probably misleading because many people may have embellished their attendance a bit out of a sense of guilt or obligation! However, assuming it is accurate that would leave a whopping 65% of U.S. residents not attending any religious services each week. This is a concern, because it clearly proves that, statistically speaking, your employees are probably not spiritually grounded.
That is where Christian business owners and executives should step in to help God fill the void.
As a human resources professional with 20 years of experience in both public and private companies, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the lack of faith in our workplace affects every aspect of the workplace. Employees’ lack of time to focus on their own spiritual needs will undoubtedly affect productivity, quality and safety. Harder to measure but just as important, it affects their and their coworker’s morale. Employees lacking in faith will bring far more problems to the workplace than those who are Christ followers. What most companies need are solid christian ethics in the workplace. Having biblical ethics and principles built into all you do from an HR perspective will make you stand out, in a very positive way. Most consumers want to do buiness with companies that they know have christian ethics in the workplace.
Therefore, those of us that are hesitant to embrace Christianity in the workplace must really look at it not only from a spiritual perspective, but from a business perspective as well. Far from being self-serving, this shows the attitude of a responsible business owner, attempting to prosper their business for the financial security and future of their employees and employees’ families. Ans as an owner, sometimes you might feel like your the only christian in the workplace. Often times these feelings are not necessarily accurate. They are real feelings, but we find many organizations have faithful Christians working along each other, they just are not aware of it because of the fear of talking about faith at work. We are not in the business of creating “religious companies”, on the contrary we are in the business of helping to create “Kingdom Minded Companies”. There is a big difference.
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In His Name HR helps organizations build high performance Human Resources programs. Visit them at In HIS Name HR or e-mail them here.
Mark A. Griffin is the founder and chief consultant of In His Name HR LLC. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.
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