As someone who has been forced to work remotely since March 2020, I’ve had to figure out what ministry in the workplace looks like. You’re not in the office anymore and may not have many “water cooler” type of moments where you chat about life with some others as you’re taking a small break from work. You’re not able to go to lunch with co-workers to get to know them on a more personal level. These are some of the things that I’ve missed while being a remote worker. But now that everyone is working from home due to the global pandemic, Christians may be wondering what it might look like to engage co-workers in a remote setting.
But there are a lot of challenges to this. Depending on your meeting schedules and workload, your meetings may need to be extremely efficient to get stuff done while you have other people on the call. Maybe you (or your co-workers) have to home-school your kids throughout chunks of the day and your schedule just looks different than a standard nine-to-five. There seems to be limited to no opportunity to have the casual banter amongst one another, where we lower our guards and barriers and build deep and meaningful friendships.
We sometimes wish there was a silver bullet. But there isn’t. Ministry was never meant to be easy and engaging our co-workers may have been hard enough already. So where do we start?
It starts with prayer. That may be the easy and obvious answer, but sometimes it’s the one that we forget the most about. Start praying for your co-workers, for opportunities, for boldness. Prayer is fundamental, and we must entrust our coworkers to God and recognize that He is the only one who has the power to save.
Second, don’t reinvent ministry because of the virtual context. What do I mean? Fundamentally ministry requires in any context that we look, listen, and respond in genuineness. This applies to in-person or virtual ministry. So, before we jump into action to share the gospel or to initiate spiritual conversation, we must notice the people around us and genuinely care for them because they too are made in the image of God. Slow down from the hustle and bustle of remote work and take notice of how people are doing. They may need and appreciate your prayers. They may just need someone to rant to and blow off some steam. Be an advocate for them and be someone on whom they can rely upon, not just for work things, but as a friend.
But how do we do this remotely? Look at the people in your video meetings, see how people respond in status updates, set up times where you maybe just have catch-up conversations. Sometimes it takes creativity and outside-the-box thinking, but there are plenty of opportunities to love our co-workers for the sake of the gospel.
That’s what I’ve learned so far in the past year. I’m still looking for other things that I can do to grow in remote ministry, but I trust that God is faithful and loves my co-workers more than I can and ever will.