If you ask any Christian leader how the embrace God’s mission everyday, you’ll likely hear their passion for engaging the community for real transformation, whether that’s through the Great Commission, the Lord’s Prayer, or the call to love our neighbour.
Paul Bartlett embodies this mission. He leads Mobilise, an organisation started this year after he spent twenty years helping churches in Australia and overseas become vital to their communities. He is also the author of Thank God It’s Monday and hosts a podcast.
Paul was previously the senior pastor of Lighthouse Church in Wollongong and the state leader of the Australian Christian Churches in NSW, where he helped 300 churches through many challenges. He also served as the chaplain for the Illawarra Hawks basketball team for 17 years.
God’s Mission in Community
Paul recently joined us on 20Twenty to remind us that as Christians, we can have a huge influence in our community, across our town or city, and throughout the nation. And it all starts with Monday’s.
‘Shouldn’t we be living the kind of life,’ says Paul, ‘where we go to work because we know God wants us to be there; that it’s our mission field? We should love it. And certainly, coming into the weekend we can look forward to it. But we need to be actually living seven days on purpose.’
Some people think that spiritual activities are just for Sunday’s, and they go back to their regular lives after attending church. They prefer to keep spiritual things confined to Sunday’s.
‘When I stand in front of congregations,’ says Paul, ‘I’m often a bit tongue in cheek. I say I want to apologise because as pastor’s, we’ve accidentally made you feel like Sunday is spiritual and Monday is not. We’ve unintentionally created a culture called dualism where certain things are spiritual and certain things are not.’
God’s Mission at Work
Paul believes every day and every job is important to God. There are no spiritual jobs, because it’s not about what we do, but Who we do it for. People can experience God in their everyday work and see it as spiritual, even on a Monday.
Paul says that God’s presence is seamless and can be experienced differently outside of Sunday services. For example, a tradesman on a building site doesn’t need worship music to feel God’s presence and embrace His mission everyday.
The Bible says to pray continually, which means having a conversation with God throughout the day. As a carpenter, Paul would talk to God while working, asking for help, thanking Him, and staying connected. ‘I practised how to experience God every day of the week.’
‘Your job tomorrow when you wake up and go to work,’ says Paul, ‘is to say, God I open my eyes to the good things you’ve already prepared for me to do this week. It’s a shift of perspective when it comes to the way we think about God and work.’
Do you desire an even deeper connection with God?
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Listen to Paul’s full interview below:
