The institution and the business of selling labour

David Clark's The Kingdom at Work Project has just published its 14th bulletin. In his introduction David writes:  Since the collapse of Christendom, the mission of the church within the world of work has been very confused and extremely tentative.  One reason for this failure is sociological.  Engagement with communities of place, on which the parish system was founded, has continued to dominate the use of the church’s human and economic resources.  However, after the industrial and, more recently, technological revolution, the world of work has spread well beyond parish boundaries with the church finding it extremely difficult to work out new forms of engagement. An even more important reason for the church’s inability to engage effectively with today’s world of work is theological.  The church seems unable to decide whether mission in this context is about individual salvation - making disciples; concerned with pastoral support - a ministry of care and counselling; or about institutional transformation - seeking the redemption of the workplace and those economic and social forces which impinge upon it. Thus Christian engagement with the world of work oscillates blindly between setting up work-related groups for prayer and nurture - with the focus on making disciples; putting more and more resources into chaplaincy - with an increasingly pastoral emphasis; or, by far the most neglected of these missiological approaches, equipping lay people to be kingdom community builders in the workplace - mission as communal transformation."  Download the bulletin here.