The OTHER Invisible Church
No doubt you know the difference between the visible and invisible church. The people you see on Sunday make up part of the visible church. Are all of them really trusting Jesus? Hopefully. But for some, maybe not. On the other hand, all who have truly come to God through faith in Christ make up the invisible church. Those represent the classic definitions.
But another invisible church exists. When a local church dismisses its Sunday meeting, a great many of its members scatter on weekdays into the world’s workplaces. There, in offices, schools, shops, homes, fields, factories, hospitals, and so on, they seem to “disappear.” The visible crowd on Sunday disbands into what C. Peter Wagner has called “the church in the workplace.” The other invisible church.
This workplace church is not invisible to God. It’s just that those in the visible church lose sight of it. And yet the church in the workplace can be found exactly where Jesus sends it—into the world (Jn. 17:18). Because of that, the visible church should stay in touch with and support it. What makes it so difficult for the visible church to see the one in the work world? Three reasons come to mind.
1. The Unreal Gap Between Spiritual and Secular Work
True story. A woman who had served as a computer programmer for the U.S. Navy went to Thailand and then Laos as a missionary. After six years she returned to the U.S. and began working for the federal government. Nothing prepared her for the contrast in how Christians related to her while overseas versus when she was back home.
“Once I let Christians know I was headed for Bangkok,” she recalls, “I suddenly began receiving frequent invitations to speak. Now that I carried the label ‘missionary,’ they just assumed I had something worth listening to. People constantly asked how they could pray for me and my work.”
But when she returned to work in the States, the letter-writers stopped asking about her work. The prayer support ended. “I was still doing the same things here as I had been doing there,” she says. “But now I experienced mostly an absence of interest in my work. I felt demoted.”
Her work—which the visible church could see while she was overseas—became invisible once she returned to her homeland. Although she did the same sort of work in both places, one kind was considered “sacred” and the other “secular.”
2. The Absence of Workplace Reports on Sunday
The workplace church also becomes invisible when it is rarely if ever spoken of in the gathered church. On furlough, the missionary to Thailand and Laos was often asked to report back to supporting churches. But those serving on the front lines of the workplace church hardly ever get to tell their churches what God is doing in and through them there. Lesslie Newbigin, who returned to his home in England after decades as a missionary in India, noticed this silence in the gathered church. In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society he wrote:
“Churches have had almost nothing to say. Each man [in the workplace] has been largely left to find his own way. If you ask for books on how a Christian should conduct a Sunday School you will find plenty. But if you ask for guidance to a Christian banker, or a Christian lawyer, or a Christian farmer as to 'how a servant of Jesus Christ understands and exercises these jobs', you will find almost nothing. For all the vast and varied warfare of the Church in the world, she has left her members largely to fend for themselves.”
What did Newbigin say should be done? “The congregation has to be a place where its members are trained, supported, and nourished in the exercise of their parts of the priestly ministry in the world. The preaching and teaching of the local church has to be such that it enables members to think out the problems that face them in their secular work in light of their Christian faith.”
3. I Know Where You Live but Not Where You Work
Glance through your church directory. You’ll find names, family members, and home addresses. But it’s virtually certain you won’t find occupations or workplaces. In a paper entitled, “Lesslie Newbigin’s Approach to the Modern Workplace,” Matt Kaemingk writes: “Newbigin aptly observed that the modern Western church had chosen to make itself ‘local’ to where its congregants slept but not where they worked. This created a situation in which the institutional church was local and relevant to one part of life and quite distant and irrelevant to the other.”
Although not everyone agrees, many think the term “missionary” should describe every Christian. Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon, once said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” When you drive out of the parking lot in many churches, you will see a sign that says, “You are Now Entering the Mission Field.” So it would seem that Christians in the work world are serving as God’s missionaries—engaged in his mission—to that part of his creation. The paths of Christians most often intersect with those of non-Christians in job-related settings.
Traditional, overseas missionaries are supported. Christians know their addresses—so they are written to. Christians hear their reports—so they are prayed for. Yet workplace missionaries—those in this invisible church—seldom receive this kind of backing.
Why Must the Invisible Church Become Visible?
What makes it so important that the missionaries in the invisible church be recognized and supported? Another quotation from Lesslie Newbigin helps to clarify that:
“It is in the ordinary secular business of the world that the sacrifices of love and obedience are to be offered to God. It is in the context of secular affairs that the mighty power released into the world through the work of Christ is to be manifested. The Church gathers every Sunday . . . to renew its participation in Christ’s priesthood. But the exercise of this priesthood is not within the walls of the Church but in the daily business of the world.”
One of those invisible-church missionaries works in the UK. She tells her story in “The Sacred-Secular Divide,” a video narrated by Mark Greene:
“I teach Sunday school once a week for 45 minutes, and my church asks me to come up front so they can pray for me. For the rest of the week, I’m a full-time teacher, and yet as far as I can remember, no one has ever offered to pray for the work that I do in schools. It’s as if they want to support half my profession and not the other half. It’s difficult, because no one would say that teaching Sunday School is more important than the work I do the rest of the week. But that’s the unspoken message that I get. And if you look at it this way, I’ve got 45 minutes once a week with children who are generally open to the gospel and parents who are supportive of the faith, or 45 hours a week with kids who have very little knowledge of Christianity and parents who are either as ignorant or hostile to the faith.”
How is the visibility in your church?