Packing Up My Office | Blue Ridge Community Church

I started packing my office this week. My last day on staff here at Blue Ridge will be August 31.

The people of Blue Ridge have shown me so much love, compassion and grace. They have taken chances on me by giving me opportunities to do things that I wasn't qualified to do.

It has been an incredible seven and a half years, and that has made my decision to leave a tough one.

A year ago, I was at lunch with a friend, and I was telling him about how I was torn about leaving my position at Blue Ridge.

I love the people I work with, I love what I do, I love the mission of the Church. But I still felt pulled to leave.

He said, Tim, you need to read The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant.

I like to read. But I like to read informational and instructional books, not fiction. And by the title, it sounded like it was going to be a bad knockoff of "National Treasure" or something.

I downloaded the book to my Audible account and starting listening.

I like to listen to books while I do chores around the house. While I was working on laundry and folding some clothes, the book got my attention, and I couldn't stop listening (I got a lot of work done around the house that week!).

The book tells a fictional story about a boy who is raised by a monk and his decision to leave the monastery as a young man to become a merchant. It goes on to highlight 12 principles to successful living and business. His struggle in leaving the monastery spoke to me.

Whether it was real or imagined, I was feeling pressure to stay on staff at Blue Ridge, because I felt like working in the marketplace was less holy than working at a church.

The book helped me to see that you can be a minister in the marketplace, and it is not less than working in a Church.

God helped solidify this in me as we were going through the Jonah series.

An application to one of the messages was to write out a list of people in our lives who do not have a relationship with Jesus, and begin to pray for them.

I had started working nights and weekends doing some consulting work, and as I worked on my list, I realized that most of the names belonged to people I had met through the work I was doing outside of Blue Ridge.

God has called some of us to work in the church, and He has called others of us to work outside of the church.

It doesn't matter where we work. It matters who we are working for and what the ultimate goal is.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. – Colossians 3:24-25

If you are are interested in the topic of living your life on mission at work, we'd like to invite you to attend the Business on Mission Conference Blue Ridge is hosting this fall.