Bruce Stevens* is retired and attends a Wesleyan church in Michigan. For his entire career, he worked for an international manufacturing company. Just a few years before retiring, the company asked Bruce to move to their Southeast Asia plant.
“We moved into the 28th floor of a high-rise condo facing the ocean,” Bruce said during an interview for this article. “It was so very different than our house in Michigan.” Before long, Bruce and his wife, who had been Christians since their youth, discovered they had more than a job opportunity overseas. They had a mission opportunity — a call to a new place.
Bruce says, “We employed about 700 people, but there were only two Christians from that country in the entire factory, which makes sense because it is an unreached people group with less than 2% Christians in the whole country.” Bruce was encountering up close, for the first time, the 4 in 10 unreached people in the world today.
Perhaps God wants both our faith and our work.
For many of us, instead of quitting our work, that career might be what gives us access to a people without access to the gospel, to another place to serve. Even more, our jobs could provide the credibility, relationships and sustainability to help reach the most unreached. In Wesleyan circles, we call these kinds of people “global marketplace multipliers.”
It is not an easy way of life, but it is simple to understand. J.D. Greear said, “God made you good at something. Do it well for the glory of God, but do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.” [1] Perhaps God wants both our faith and our work.
Consider Erek*, who met with one of our team members this year in a tea shop in Istanbul. There are 37,000 international companies like Erek’s in just that one city. But Erek spoke of the loneliness of not knowing any other Christian entrepreneurs. He asked us if he could be introduced to any other Christian business owners so they could learn from and encourage one another. Unfortunately, none could be found in Istanbul. All this is unsurprising since there are only 10,000 Christian Turks in the entire country of Turkey. Erek asked for Christian businesspeople to move to his city so he could partner together with them in making disciples.
Eli and Belle Warsavage* work in jobs that help the economy of their country in East Asia prosper. They take seriously the passage in Jeremiah 29:7 that says, “And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you … Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” Because of the work they do there, they have shared the love of Jesus for more than a decade. One young woman we’ll call Ling* asked why they lived differently from others, even than other foreigners she knew. That opened the door to conversations, prayer and Bible reading, so Ling decided to follow Jesus during their study.
“I had an open platform whenever I wanted to talk about Jesus at work, as long as someone asked me about it,” Bruce, who we mentioned above, told us about their time in Southeast Asia. “It was the best opportunity we ever had to share our faith with those who had not heard it ever before or never had someone explain it. Almost everyone you’ll ever meet in the States knows about Christianity. But, over there, nobody knew or understood Jesus.”
Bruce said that his home church in the States considered their move a perfect opportunity to contribute to the mission without costing the church anything. “My company paid for it all, and we were able to contribute to what the missionaries and local Christian leaders were doing. My free time was my own — and what better thing to do with my free time there than spread the word of Christ? We even helped plant a church!”
We can all ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest field. But we can also ask the workers we know in the marketplace whether God might be calling them to go global. Bruce adds, “I would encourage every Christian who has the opportunity to try and work overseas.
*Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed.
[1] J.D. Greear, “Give Us Two Years, and We’ll Change the World,” https://jdgreear.com/give-us-two-years-change-world.
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