Faith, hope and business: institutions beat heroes

By Tim Thorlby | 3 min read

Millions of Christians work in the private sector – from waiters in cafes and couriers to middle managers in big companies to high-tech investors in the City.

But what does it mean to live a life of faith in such places?

The Jubilee Centre’s renewed vision is set out in our new ‘working agenda’ Beautiful Enterprise. It is a call to the Church in the UK to take the sprawling world of enterprise more seriously and to recognise that this is a core part of our mission to the world.

Our answer to this question – our approach - is based on three convictions:

1. Working in the marketplace is a vocation for many
   Whilst the church can be great at recognising vocations within the church, within public service and charity, it often fails to see that the same can apply to work in the marketplace. People with a lifelong calling to serve others through business can be left feeling that their work is not important, or that they must leave their faith at the door, robbing it of much of its relevance to their life. We need to support each other in identifying and following our vocations.

2. We need to know what ‘good’ enterprise looks like
   Applying our faith to work cannot just be a matter of individual ‘virtue’ or ‘character’, important though these are. Nor can it just mean being generous with profits. What makes a ‘good enterprise’ is not how it distributes its profits, but how it makes them in the first place. Doing ‘good’ through business therefore means wrestling with the realities of how those organisations are designed and how they operate, and what their impacts are. We cannot do this wrestling alone. We need to work together to envision what a ‘good business’ should look like, here and now. 

3. We need community to encourage each other
   Work can be a lonely business, especially for those with responsibility or in leadership. For those of faith, it be lonelier still – who can we discuss our ‘faith at work’ questions with? Who will encourage us? It is time to bring Christians in the marketplace together where they can find community and the space to wrestle with what ‘good’ looks like today.

Underlying these three convictions is one simple idea – that if the Church is to realise its potential for impact in the marketplace we will need healthy institutions to make it happen. We need our churches to take enterprise-based vocations seriously. We need our businesses to imagine afresh what their true purpose is. We need a national movement to make connections and pool ideas.

An individualistic approach is not enough – we need a social and relational response to this challenge and this great opportunity. The Jubilee Centre’s core mission then is to work with churches and businesses and others nationally to build these institutions and make this happen. Join us.

Tim Thorlby is the Director of the Jubilee Centre