Faith in the Agora
A Layperson’s View on Workplace Ministry
By Dr. Julia Lee, physician and adjunct lecturer at the Termerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Canada.
I am a layperson, or, as I like to say, I have never been a “professional Christian.” I am not ordained. I do not work for any kind of church or para-church ministry. I do not research or write about theology or Scripture. I do not work for any Christian institution or organization. Instead, I went to medical school, became a physician, and currently work as a clinician and a medical educator. My occupation, in several ways, represents many Christians who dutifully attend church every week, give as generously as they can, serve as they might, and learn as they would.
Participating as a Canadian delegate in both the Lausanne 2010 and 2024 Congresses has made me wonder about multiple dimensions of the “professional Christian” world. Don’t get me wrong: I was deeply delighted and replenished by spending time with many “professional Christian” friends from around the world. But it made me wonder how detached “professional Christians” are from the lived experience of most of the people sitting around them in the pews. It made me wonder how “professional Christians,” going from Christian conferences to Christian conferences with each other, find the time to develop friendships among the non-Christians in their midst. And it made me wonder how, then, the Academy, the Assembly, and the Agency will be able to speak convincingly to the Agora to carry most of the burden of being salt and light to the places where the others do not ever go. Is this one of the reasons workplace ministry is suddenly considered one of the hot topics in evangelism and mission, because no one else has the time or experience to do it?
As a side note, the 4As framework is a Canadian paradigm that understands the different sectors of the Church that are needed to participate in God’s kingdom work. The Academy points to seminaries and other Christian educational institutions. The Assembly points to clergy and church ministers within congregations and denominations. The Agency points to mission agencies and Christian charitable organizations. And finally, the Agora points to the majority of us who do not work within any Christian umbrella at all.1
Theoretically, I was one of the secular workplace people that the Lausanne 2024 Congress touted as making up over a third of the delegates attending. When we were asked to stand up in the assembly hall to demonstrate how many of us were workplace people, far, far fewer than that were apparent in the hall. It was rather disappointing to see how sparse we were, despite the heavy applause given to all of us for our supposed diligent toil out in the secular world. This also reinforced my sense, both before and during the Congress, that there weren’t many people like me. Yes, I met “marketplace” people who worked in non-theological fields (like engineering or education) but worked at Christian universities. I met people who founded secular businesses (like management consulting or retail businesses) that were founded, run, and managed by Christians. I met people who worked in secular jobs (like accountants or therapists) but only to service Christians or Christian organizations. I met people who were not working for money but working exclusively in Christian spaces (like housewives or retirees volunteering their working skills for Christian organizations). I met people working in workplace ministries who encouraged others to be in the workplace, but I was hard-pressed to find people who spent their working days solely in diverse, inclusive, secular workplaces. It appeared to me that most of the “workplace ministry” people tended to be people who either never actually had ever worked in the secular world or had done so for but a season, only to move onto a similar role for the rest of their working life within the Christian sphere.
So, I met many people at L4 who were adjacent to and in parallel to the Agora, but not fully in it. And yet, these were the ones perceived to be the leaders in workplace ministry. This was very confusing to me. This also made it difficult to find the few workplace people at L4 to whom I could relate. My world involves Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and ‘nones’ working together for excellent patient care and then having coffee and laughing together whenever we get time to have a break. My world involves deconstructing colonialism and talking about anti-black and anti-indigenous racism in the classroom. My world involves teaching medical students about applying a social criticism lens to health issues. My world involves caring for patients who are dealing with circumstances that would likely make a lot of Christians clutch their pearls in horror. Talking about DEI, or power dynamics, indigeneity, and cultural appropriation outside of the context of the Church, was often met with incomprehension as to how that all worked in the “real world.”
One pastor argued that many of the challenges that Christians face in the secular workplace are very similar to those who are “professional Christians”: there is still infighting, politics, power plays, and gossip. Of that, I have no doubt. However, I would argue that there is at least an appeal to a common value system and belief that should bind Christian organizations together, even if applied imperfectly. Christian organizations can at least always remind themselves of Scriptural principles, even if they don’t obey them. Or they can remind each other of the desire to see God glorified in their work, even if they haven’t done so for a while. Or they can pray for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit within individuals and communities, despite the real human failures. However, no such appeal or unifying principles exist within the secular workforce, except for tolerance of secularity or the HR department. There is no higher call or virtue than this.
And so, when I hear Christians tell me what they think about abortion, or euthanasia, or transgenderism—the stereotypical evangelical medical ethics talking points—it often gives me pause as a physician. Not that I do not agree, in principle, with most modern evangelical positions on these issues. However, my objections are two-fold; firstly, having worked in contexts that deal directly with all three of those areas of medicine over my career, there are a lot of clinical subtleties that make the practical working out of a simple black-and-white paradigm much more challenging than one may think. There are real people dealing with real circumstances that impact them in real ways that go far beyond the talking-head theories or polarized debates. Secondly, I have also never heard of any of the same Christians tell me with equal passion and vehemence about inequitable healthcare access, healthcare affordability, and why in some countries and contexts, people’s ability to live well or die depends solely on their income level and not their level of medical need. The latter are also all issues directly impacting my work and witness. Yet, to some Christians who do not understand my work, it may appear that I’m leaning into the secular value of tolerance. It would oddly appear to some that I am betraying the cause of Christ in the name of “the left” or “wokeness.” This is not what is helpful to those of us trying to discern what might be best to help bind up a broken and fallen world. Rigidly holding onto ideologies that perhaps might marginally work within a Christian empire, when this is not the reality where most of us live, does not help those trying to help coax out visible seeds in the kingdom of God.
Others have been surprised to learn that I was sent as a Canadian delegate to both the 2010 and 2024 Lausanne Congresses despite having no discernable “professional Christian” credentials. Particularly since I have not been a global leader in writing, researching, or speaking at further conferences, workshops, and webinars about the global church. It does seem to be a rather chicken-and-egg problem. I really don’t have the skill set and credentials required for these specific roles in the Church, so I am not asked to participate in those ways. On the other hand, participating in those ways would reduce my ability to do what I am skilled at doing and be present in the regular day-to-day world of work. In combination with all the pre-Lausanne consultation engagements and the post-Lausanne consultations, one could have easily spent 14 days straight simply in L4-related conferences. Combining this with the post-Lausanne Amplify conference for North American delegates at the end of October 2024, with the associated travel, one could easily have spent 20 days over that month-long span simply attending Lausanne-related conferences alone. Where on earth would someone like me be able to justify spending that much time at non-medical-related conferences? How could I participate in my career meaningfully if I spent that much time on religious gatherings and meetings? How would that help me in my relationships with colleagues and friends?
As much as I am grateful that the “professional Christian” evangelical world is starting to recognize that the vast majority of the Church actually exists out in the Agora, I wonder how well that bridge can be crossed after the two worlds are so fundamentally different from each other for so long. How do the Academy, Assembly, and Agency, staffed by so many loving, faithful, and wonderful people, speak comprehensibly to the Agora when most may have minimal to no experience in the secular world? Those of us in the Agora who do love God and the Church as whole-heartedly as we can often struggle to find the link between our personal and corporate worship of the Lord on Sundays and how it relates to the other six days. It should not: Genesis 1 and 2 give us a glimpse of the holistic way they relate together.
However, when it appears that the Academy, Assembly, and Agency easily live their whole week within the sphere of Christian professionalism, as the Garden of Eden ideal, it does make it more challenging for the rest of us to figure out how that works itself out. Most of the time, it feels like the Agora is cast out into the wilderness every week and told we must figure out how to make the deserts bloom abundantly for Jesus’ sake. This question is larger than simply slapping a “workplace ministry” sticker on a working group of professional Christians. This is also a question that most lay people don’t—and can’t—think about. They’re busy mixing drinks, educating children, cleaning toilets, or preparing spreadsheets. So, the challenge is how to genuinely include fully immersed Agora laypeople, not just those adjacent to it, but those in it daily. I believe that is a big challenge for the future of workplace ministry.
Only by genuinely including voices from the Agora can the Church fully embody its mission to be salt and light in all areas of society.
Dr. Julia Lee is a physician, and adjunct lecturer at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Canada. She has earned her MD and MPH degrees at the University of Toronto and is currently pursuing her MDiv at Wycliffe College. She has served in various medical capacities in remote areas of Canada, in West Africa, the MENA region, and in the Caribbean. She joyfully lives and serves alongside her beloved husband, Ben.
The original 3As are broadly attributed to the late Bob Morris, Canadian missions leader, evangelical statesman and beloved friend to many. The fourth A, of the Agora, was brought about at the FutureFit 2018 conference in Toronto, Canada, to recognize the importance of the marketplace.