Following on from pt.5
One day someone offers them a 'christian' job far away. It seems like a dream job, they get to serve God 'full time' and get paid for it! They move to the job's new location, which is often not on an estate.
I've gotta admit there's plenty of times I've seen ads for 'Christian' jobs that I've been tempted by. But here are my reservations about how common this pattern is:
1) It robs estates.
Estates are constantly looted by outsiders. People these days use estates cheap housing (even by christians who don't attend the local estate church), business opportunities (under the guise of helping the community), and organisations poaching streetwise Christian workers. People see a lad with a story, they're amazed they got saved, and they think, 'Wow, we could really use this person in our ministry!' What they're not realising though is that this person's estate really need them. It takes so much hard work to church plant and disciple on estates, why would anyone want to poach off these places?
Of course, you might reply, well what if the lad wants to go? I'd say, well then it needs a careful decision, but lets not assume going to that job is the best thing. After all, there was once a bloke who wanted to go and follow Jesus everywhere, but Jesus told him to go back to his own people and tell them about Jesus (Mark 5:19-20).
2) It prevents people growing their own streetwise converts
If organisations can poach, they won't bother to plant or make disciples on estates. If we have more planting and discipling happening on estates, maybe we'll eventually reach a point where we have more spare people to send out, but right now we might be cannibalising estate ministry.
3) It's a false notion of full-time Christian Ministry.
When we go to work, whether we're paid by a believer or a non-believer, we're doing Christian ministry. Whatever our job, we're to do it for Jesus (Eph 6:5-8).
4) It leads to pt.7.....
