Jesus isn’t just for Sundays! Christians are called to bring God’s Kingdom with them into their week – to workplaces, homes, streets and communities – impacting every area of life with the power of the Spirit. In this article, David explains how he started praying with others at his workplace out of a desire to bless the company and see God move, and how it’s grown over the last few years.
A number of Christians have gathered for many years to pray at Softcat plc, an IT Solutions provider with offices in major cities around the UK and Ireland, and globally. Softcat plc are a £1.64bn organisation with over 1600 staff.
I had started a Christian network within the company with a heart for this to be an official Softcat-endorsed group that was recognised to be working for the good of our company. Initially, there wasn’t a route forward for that, and so we started meeting unofficially, with people being added by word of mouth, simply to pray. After six or so years of praying together, we invited our Head of Diversity to a meeting which resulted in her petitioning to say that she felt we needed a separate Faith at Work community to go along with a number of other networks within the company! The head of D&I is not a Christian or religious, so we were grateful of the recognition of the need for the group and no doubt our prayers were being answered and God was moving.
I was invited to present to the Director Team on why Softcat should have a Faith Network – an amazing opportunity to give testimonies of how God had been at work! I was able to speak about how many people had been asking for prayer (both Christians and non Christians), how we had been able to offer to help support employees mental health during COVID, including pastoral support that wasn’t happening anywhere else in our business, and how it had led to me mentoring a number of colleagues. The Director team were pretty blown away by all we were doing, even unofficially!
Needless to say, our Faith At Work group was approved. It is early days, but as an organisation we now advertise faith at work on our website and we have launched internally (you can see that here). We continue to meet and pray internally and also are meeting to pray with other businesses in the technology sector, including a competitor. The response from Muslims at work has also been overwhelming, as this has opened up doors for them. The phrase we are using is to allow all employees to bring your ‘whole selves to work’. We have also seen Softcat support schools with laptops which was administered through churches including the Kings Arms in Bedford, but that’s another story in itself! God is good and is working in business! Keep praying!
Written by David Bennett from The Community Church, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
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