An all-too-ordinary experience 

After university, I worked in the marketing team of a London business coaching firm. It wasn’t a very friendly place. Three girls in my team had an ongoing IM chat. Frequent peals of laughter would break out from their desks, leaving the rest of us out of the joke and none the wiser. I wasn’t in the ‘in group’ and spent my lunch times exploring the Thames and local area alone. 

So, when two new women joined the team a few weeks after me, I was determined they would have a better experience. So I went for lunch with them. Got to know them. Enjoyed their company. We worked together to make each other’s jobs smoother. We became the team I wished we’d been welcomed into. I knew God had sent me into that office to love and welcome those women. But looking back, whilst it felt right – it felt like the way Jesus would have been in the workplace – I wouldn’t have been able to articulate how this was part of my discipleship. 

An extraordinary perspective shift  

A few years later, and long before I worked at LICC, my church ran the Fruitfulness on the Frontline small group series. And I saw what had been happening in that office with a new perspective: I’d had a God-given opportunity to mould culture, to make it a place where people were welcomed, accepted, and supported. I hadn’t done it from a position of power, as I was easily the most junior person in the room, but rather out of a desire to make the office more like heaven and in God’s strength. 

Fruitfulness on the Frontline offers us a beautiful opportunity to reimagine the call we have to live as God’s people in the world: to be people who recognise Jesus’ transforming work in our lives and to help others to see that transformation is possible for them, too.  

When I first did this course, it was with a small group of young professionals and students, crammed into the living room of my flat. The questions got us thinking. What does the Bible have to say about my life? What does it look like to be a fruitful theatre student, or physio, or teacher? How can my work be part of God’s good design for creation? How can I impact the place I’m in everyday to make it better for everyone? 

As we explored these questions together and shared stories from our everyday lives, our friendships deepened and we learned to love Jesus more. 

An empowering invitation  

If you’ve never done Fruitfulness on the Frontline, I’d 100% recommend you give it a go. The book and small group studies will help you have confidence in what God is doing in and through you and help you to see life and work in a fresh way. Over six weeks, you’ll delve into what it looks like to live as someone who: 

• Models godly character; 
• Makes good work; 
• Minsters grace and love; 
• Moulds culture; 
• Is a Mouthpiece for truth and justice; and 
• Is a Messenger for the gospel. 

These 6Ms offer us snapshots of what life can be like lived in the footsteps of Jesus, sparking our imagination for how God’s working in the relationships and spaces he’s placed us in. God gives us strength to be some of these Ms every day and invites us to join him in building a world that’s more like heaven, where everyone can flourish.

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Revd Jo Trickey
Church Advocate, LICC