Building: A Global Team With Global Relevance by Kimberly Deckel
The city will be renewed not by five church planters and five nonprofit leaders; it will be renewed by the complex callings and careers of the 500 other people sitting in the pews.” That’s what authors Cory B. Willson and Kaemingk Matthew write in their book, Work and Worship. That line inspires the thirteen faith and work catalysts who gathered in Manhattan in September of 2023.
These leaders came from New York City, Austin, a city in South Asia, Hong Kong, Taipei, Bordeaux, London, Montreal, Argentina and Accra. For three days, they focused solely on the topic of faith and work.
Never before have there been this many faith and work catalysts in the CTC ecosystem. And never before have they gathered in person. Kimberly Deckel, pastor and priest at Church of the Cross Austin and director of the faith, work, mercy and justice initiative for CTC North America, found it encouraging and sobering. “There were a lot of things about the time together that were really significant,” Kimberly says. “But I think one of the most notable things was that this was the first time that we’d all been together in a room, physically present with each other.” In any ministry space, practitioners often feel isolated. They feel the weight of the need and the opportunity. It’s important to gather with other leaders who work toward the same “North Star” and have space to share struggles.
The catalyst from Hong Kong, Alistair, shared how he’s working with a small group of people in the business sector who are pushing back against their 80+ hour work weeks and helping people think differently about life-work balance. But Hong Kong is an expensive place to live. So it’s not as simple as someone just committing to work less. It’s about what is necessary to survive versus what is potentially excessive. The leaders from France focus on the fashion industry and the arts, but they’re interacting with Christians who are asking if it’s even possible to be a faithful Christian and work in those spaces. Those conversations are very different from conversations about overworking and productivity.
These catalysts all want to see more Christians inspired and equipped to think about their work as a primary place God wants to use them to bring gospel impact. One approach is to train pastors to then envision and train their congregations. “There is just a real need for faith and work to be fully integrated into churches, into what pastors are doing, not just an add-on but for it to be a part of all of what the church does and how the pastor is thinking and operating and discipling and forming their people,” Kimberly says. “We spent time asking, ‘How do we do that creatively? How do we think about it differently?’ We want to help equip pastors for this, but we also want to equip everyday people, the parishioners, to see this connection.”
The CTC affiliates and partners these catalysts represent are in various stages of development and maturity with faith and work. With no hesitation, leaders share whatever maturity, experience and resources they have in their toolbox. Marcelo from Argentina has adopted and adapted some of South Asia’s robust training material to use in his context. Some of it only needed subtitles while other material will need more editing to contextualize it for his context. Nilza from Miami has material prepared for her Spanish-speaking context that Marcelo may use, and vice versa. “It’s totally about sharing and, ‘Take it. Please use it,’” Kimberly says. “And so a piece of our time together was sharing resources and brainstorming about how we can support one another. It’s one thing to look at each other’s websites or even materials. It’s another thing to have the people who are using those things present and then to be able to ask questions.”
For learning and inspiration, the team interfaced with entrepreneurs and artists who are using their positions and businesses to seek renewal in New York City. They attended a reading of a new play and heard from the playwright how she connects her calling to her faith. The leaders from South Asia were able to adapt this material for a show in their region. They visited a not-for-profit Manhattan restaurant that hires formerly incarcerated men and women, providing not only jobs but the all-important resumé and references required to move forward into other fields of work. This experience resonated with Kimberly who is in communication with her church about the homeless population right outside their doors and how they might provide similar employment opportunities.
The three days were packed with honest discussions, hard questions and looking forward. “We’re asking, ‘What does it look like to have a real kind of mutuality and connectedness, a sharing of knowledge, a back and forth, an asking of questions and helping problem solve and troubleshoot together?’” Kimberly says. “We want to keep this momentum going, so we discussed meeting three times a year on Zoom for updates and to pick each other’s brains and to have regular rhythms of gathering in person because it can be easy to feel on your own doing this work when you’re spread out from the other catalysts.”
Even with the challenges, and perhaps in light of the challenges, Kimberly is encouraged. “This gathering with this number of leaders reflects the maturity of the movement. It’s evidence that faith and work is a relevant conversation around the world. This connectedness ushers in such richness and potential for kingdom work that is not just impacting our individual cities or regions or countries, but really the whole world. It is long hard work, but there’s such beauty and potential for great fruit as we connect and work together as this global body.”
“This connectedness ushers in such richness and potential for kingdom work that is not just impacting our individual cities or regions or countries, but really the whole world.”