Every Person Missional in their Sphere of Influence

Bulletin 2005-11

In wider Melbourne there are around 1200 local churches. If we were to put the average church annual budget at say $85,000, then the Christian community is sowing over $100m into Melbourne annually! This conservative figure doesn't include mission organisations, Church property and assets!

Question: how can the church sow over $100 million annually into Melbourne and statistically go backwards? Why doesn't God sack us all as bad managers (Luke 19:12-27)?

Worse... how could we insult God more than to leave an impression in the eyes of the community that Christianity is boring, irrelevant, disconnected and untrustworthy? Is this to be the outcome of our combined efforts to implement the Kingdom of God on our watch?

Now this isn't just someone else's problem! This isn't just an issue for the institutional church. This is an issue for the Body of Christ!

What will we do about it?

Well AMC is one network of Christians in the marketplace who have a strategic plan to make a difference. Under the Holy Spirit we will network across churches and business to raise up 10% of church attending Christians to be great ambassadors for Christ and to be effectively missional in their daily occupations.

This vision will progressively unfold as God does a new thing in the marketplace. To this end you are invited to spend some time reviewing our web site: www.marketplaceconnections.com.

What does it mean for workplace believers to live for a cause greater than themselves in our day and time?

Jeremiah Lanphier was a businessman in New York City who asked God to do this in his life in 1857. In a small, darkened room, in the back of one of New York City's lesser churches, a man prayed alone. His request of God was simple, but earth-shattering: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" [John Woodbridge, ed., More Than Conquerors (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1992), 337]

He was a man approaching midlife without a wife or family, but he had financial means. He made a decision to reject the "success syndrome" that drove the city's businessmen and bankers. God used this businessman to turn New York City's commercial empire on its head. He began a businessmen's prayer meeting on September 23, 1857. The meetings began slowly, but within a few months 20 noonday meetings were convening daily throughout the city. The New York Tribune and the New York Herald issued articles of revival. It had become the city's biggest news. Now a full-fledged revival, it moved outside New York. By spring of 1858, 2,000 met daily in Chicago's Metropolitan Theatre, and in Philadelphia the meetings mushroomed into a four-month long tent meeting. Meetings were held in Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago, New Orleans, and Mobile. Thousands met to pray because one man stepped out. Annus Mirabilis, the year of national revival, had begun.

This was an extraordinary move of God through one man. It was unique because the movement was lead by businessmen, a group long considered the least prone to any form of evangelical fervour, and it had started on Wall Street, the most unlikely of all places to begin.

Could God do something extraordinary through you? Take a step. Ask God to do mighty things through you.

Source: www.crosswalk.com/faith/devotionals/marketplace