The Marketplace is Ministry, How Fitness Improves Memory, Cupcakes!!
Business
The Marketplace is Ministry
I will be speaking at the quarterly CBMC Christian Business Leaders luncheon on June 13th. As soon as I have a link for the sign-up, I will post it in this newsletter.
My topic will be “How to Become the Brightest Light in Your Industry.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll be giving you a “preview” of the facts I’ll present on the 13th.
Let’s start with some stats. There are around 325 million people in the U.S. Seventy percent of us say we are Christians, but 75% of us don’t attend church regularly – which is around 250 million people. The Barna research group says that 100 million Americans are “unchurched” which means that they are not in any way connected to a church body.
Anyway you look at it, the harvest is plentiful in the marketplace.
Do you believe that the task of reaching the lost should be left to the “professionals”, the pastors and ministry leaders? There are a couple problems with that outlook. #1 – Fewer and fewer people are going to church. As we mentioned earlier, 75% of Americans do not attend church regularly. #2 – Only 2% of Christians will ever enter the ministry as a vocation. That is a very small percentage of us Christians and we were all called to go and make disciples.
That leaves reaching the lost who are not attending church up to the rest of us – the 98% of Christians who make their living in the marketplace. Yes, we can do this work in our free time, but how much free time do we really have? How much of it are we spending trying to reach the lost? Even if we are, how effective are are we at it?
Why not be lights to the world at work? That is where we spend 50-75% of our waking hours. Work is where we are our most authentic selves and where we develop relationships with the most people.
So why aren’t we introducing more people to Christ at work? They are a few reasons:
- We are scared.
- Scared that we aren’t “Christian enough” at work. Don’t be. The last thing a non-believer needs is to encounter a holier than though Christian. They want to know that you are real, that you struggle and that you have found an answer to your struggles.
- Scared that we’ll get into trouble for talking about God at work. We won’t. It is completely legal to talk about your faith at work. Just make sure you are giving your employer what they pay you for. We are not talking about a license to do all day Bible studies. We are talking about building real relationships where you can honestly share where your hope comes from.
- We are untrained. Myles Munroe found in all of his travels that less than 1% of marketplace Christians have been trained to express their faith at work. 90% of us have never heard a sermon on how to live out Christ’s calling in the marketplace.
- We don’t have or make the time.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss each of these barriers to marketplace ministry. We’ll also discuss a very popular management practice that will help you and your team perform better at work while building the relationships needed to earn the right to speak about your faith to those you work with.
Health
How Fitness Improves Memory
Past studies have shown a link between fitness and exercise, but researchers did not know why. Researchers at the University of Illinois appears to have uncovered the link.
We’ve known for a while that the hippocampus is involved in memory. The researchers at U of I were able to study the elasticity of the hippocampus using MRI scans and a vibrating pillow underneath the subject’s head. How they did it is a bit beyond my comprehension or concern.
The findings where that the subjects who did better on the fitness test did better on the memory tasks. The researchers also found that the fitter subjects had more elasticity in the hippocampus.
So… keep your hippocampus flexible with exercise! Check out the full article here.
Life, Fun, Whatever!
I feel what this dog feels…. Cupcakes!!! Click the image to watch.
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