Ah yes, SAF, the good old LKH acronym for 'speaking about faith' which was 'apologetics' in lay-speak.

Tonight, in the absence of any other speaker being booked, it is me who becomes the tame face of Church for COMPASS and my theme is 'faith and the workplace.'  Not mega thrilling but the only non-Church thing I can offer since I don't play in a band, paint pictures, play football for England or anything else 'sexy.'

So, I think I have three strands to work with...

• Faith and choosing where to work
• Faith and behaving at work
• Faith and learning from the world of work

The first two are kind of ethical things, I guess. 

In the first one I want to open up the reality of complexity of selecting an employer/field in which to work.  Is there such a thing as 'truly ethical employment?' (no! not in my view).  How does a person of faith make a choice?  Can people of faith come to different conclusions? (yes!)

In the second I want to pick up the fact that you are paid to work - teach/clean/program/dispense/build/whatever not proselytise; you should be the best teacher/cleaner/etc you can be.  I want to stress that actions speak louder than words and that attitudes matter - the values we adopt at work should not differ from those we have in church (you'd be amazed how many of my deacons tell me they behave with different values at work.  Or perhaps you wouldn't, maybe I'm naive).  By stories of former colleagues, I want to suggest we should avoid legalism (the one I knew  who timed his staff's lunch breaks to the minute!) and laziness (the one who was saved so what he did now didn't matter!). Instead by being human, hardworking (but not workaholics) and humourous (a Roman Catholic colleague I really admired for this) we can be good witnesses.

Lastly I want to stress that we can bring into church things from the work place - good practices, new skills and ideas, openness to change and so on.  The sacred/secular divide is not helpful we should see the whole of life a just that, a whole.

In 20 mintues this will be a tall order but I'll give it a try.  Then I'll let you know how it goes...