Getting Connected

In my former life as a banker, I had a coworker who talked about his church a lot, but rarely talked about his faith. When he discussed his church, the topic was either the church volleyball and softball teams or a fellow church member upon whom he could call for prospective business. "The church is a great place to make business connections," he always said. In my typical non-confrontational manner, I never told him how ridiculous that statement was. But I wanted to reply, "That's hardly why it exists."

So you can imagine my surprise when some of the staff here at Trinity proposed that we find a way to get Trinity members connected to one another professionally- and that I was appointed to head it up. At first, I was a little unsure about it-we don't want church members to treat the church like the Rotary Club. But, my colleague Dave Barnhart pointed me to the words of our Methodist godfather (I don't like to use the term "founder", because founding a new denomination was not his intent) John Wesley. In The General Rules, Wesley wrote that we ought to "[do] good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning so to be; employing them preferably to others, buying one of another, helping each other in business, and so much the more because the world will love its own and them only." (For you UMC geeks, that's paragraph 103, page 73-74 of the 2008 Book of Discipline).

And I think Wesley was on to something here. If the church is supposed to be the visible manifestation of the body of Christ, why not extend our unity to our livelihoods? Of course, there is always the danger of treating the church solely for business purposes (as I think Wesley was aware), but I think that if the membership of the online community and the church itself are carefully monitored, this is a ministry that can truly produce some fruits for the community of faith.

The final product of these deliberations is the Trinity Business Directory- an online community where Trinity members can promote their businesses, post their resumes, and seek the employment of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Feel free to peruse it and even offer some suggestions to the website administrator (yours truly). Who knows? Maybe you'll be able to find that babysitter you've been looking for, support a fellow disciple of Jesus in his or her profession, and get to connected a little deeper into the body of Christ.