Called to Be in the Marketplace

by Patrice Tsague, NPIM

Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid from now on you will catch men." So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.
(Luke 5:10-11)

Too often we as Christians have two lives: our church life, where we do our so-called ministry, and our secular life, where we earn our living. If we feel called into what we consider to be full-time ministry, the immediate assumption is that we are called to be the traditional Pastor who must establish a local church. Many have even left their businesses or professions in the marketplace thinking that the only way to be in full-time ministry is to be a part of the local church staff or be involved in foreign missions, only to find themselves outside of the will of God. Ministry is bigger than the local church; ministry involves every aspect of our society.

There are three basic institutions that God has established where ministry must be carried out: the local church, the family, and the marketplace. Among those institutions, the marketplace is the one where we spend most of our time with the majority of unsaved people. Marketplace ministry challenges those of us who spend much of our time in the marketplace to accept our call into full time ministry. It challenges us to allow Jesus Christ to change us from fishermen to fishers of men. Several of us who have accepted Christ are still acting as fishermen. We spend most of our time and energy in the marketplace toiling and worrying about how much fish we can catch, not realizing that we are no longer fishermen but fishers of men. As fishers of men Jesus has now taken the responsibility to ensure that we catch enough fish to make our business profitable, our project successful, or that our campaign for office prevails. Are you a fisherman or a fisher of men?

I started my career as an entrepreneurship instructor, executive director and founder of a nonprofit youth organization. I was doing good works according to most standards: providing leadership training to young aspiring leaders and helping young people learn the skills of business so they could have an alternative to drugs. But in 1995, through a Christian businessman who was operating in his marketplace ministry, I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. That led to a personal transformation where I received my call to use entrepreneurship as a tool to empower the body of Christ and to seek and save the lost. That revelation then led me to develop an entrepreneurship training program called Biblical Entrepreneurship and to restructure the organization my wife and I founded into a service ministry called the Nehemiah Project International Ministries. This ministry helps people fulfill God's plan for their lives through business by working with businesses, churches, parachurch ministries, and Christian colleges and universities. At that moment I went from being a fisherman to being a fisher of men.

Your transition may not be as drastic; it may not even cause you to change what you are doing. You may only have to change the way you do things and your attitude towards doing it. By the grace of God, the Lord has blessed us to assist hundreds of individuals who are now fulfilling God's plan for their lives in the marketplace.