Rowan Callick
8 November 2024
Angus Monro is championing mission in the workplace. He has pioneered this calling himself, as a workplace deacon mixing business expertise with supporting other believers in ministry and outreach at ANZ’s massive headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands.
Now he has left ANZ in order to broaden the scope of this, equipping others to pursue this fresh mission field that starts where they already are.
Some may consider following Reverend Monro’s footsteps into ordination, in roles equivalent to St Paul who remained a tentmaker as well as the great evangelist of early Christianity.
Working from home both makes this more challenging and creates new opportunities for white-collar workers, Mr Monro says, depending on the employer’s culture – with mission perhaps taking on a hybrid, offline/online shape.
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He says an online element can make networking easier – enabling connections between Christians in other workplace locations not only within Melbourne, or within Australia, but in some cases with colleagues internationally.
Mr Monro, for instance, hosted a virtual Good Friday service spanning Australia, India, the Philippines and New Zealand – even before COVID pushed everyone online.
He had already reached out to identify, and draw together, other believers – from many denominations – at ANZ HQ, involving more than 100 people, before sensing a call to ordination as a deacon. His commitment to collaborative and accountable ministry helped clarify that call.
He became an honorary curate at St Mark’s Camberwell, and remains in that role as a team member, while forging a new path as a freelance enabler of workplace mission, having left after 14 years his well-remunerated position within ANZ, where his role was “starting to feel stale.”
Mr Monro grew up in Brisbane. He graduated in both electronic engineering and maths at Queensland University, moved to Canberra undertaking optical fibre research for BHP among other positions, and shifted to Melbourne for Bible College – where he met his wife Michelle studying Greek together – while also doing software development.
He holds a Master of Divinity and was distinctively ordained deacon in 2021.
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He had discovered, as he began networking 13 years ago, other believers at ANZ, two especially strong collaborators – a Roman Catholic woman and a Baptist man. Some others wished at first to meet offsite, but these two “had the courage to meet at our workplace.”
“We ask what it looks like to be, for example, a Christian banker, and the Christian’s role in fathoming how their trade or profession or sector contributes to a flourishing society,” Mr Monro said. “We see questions such as these as foundational to our mission.”
A key to gaining support from ANZ management, was to become accepted “as a diversity piece” by working with Muslims and others to develop a statement of purpose among faiths.
The core leaders of this in-house, global Christian network have naturally changed over time, but the principle of never being a solo leader has not. When Monro left ANZ, there was a handing-over ceremony to the current two other co-leaders, who are now seeking a third member for their leadership team.
“I continue to support them diaconally, but not from inside anymore,” he said.
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He is now pursuing, on a broader front, key questions including: How can we help Christians find each other at work? Who are the women and men in the workforces across the diocese who are taking up the responsibility for drawing fellow Christians together? How can we identify them, commission them, support them? And have they considered that God might be calling them to become ordained as a deacon while staying in their job?
Christian professional groups – for instance, in the medical and legal fields – have already existed for a long time, as has the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship in Canberra.
Mr Monro, applauding their work, said “we need to build Christian ‘guilds’ across others’ sectors, professions or trades too, and to work out how Christians can find each other within their work contexts.”
He said the impetus of earlier waves of workplace chaplaincy faded as companies outsourced that role along with others not viewed any more as “core business.”
“Now, we need new models for workplace ministry and mission.”
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Mr Monro recently participated in the Lausanne Congress, part of the movement to “mobilise individuals and organisations to accelerate global mission together.”
He comments: “We are seeing a movement of God’s Spirit for reaching the world through workplaces and everyday discipleship, and there are many exciting initiatives – the English Methodist Church’s ‘Chaplaincy Everywhere’, the Church of England’s ‘Setting God’s People Free’, the programs of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church and so on.”
“People can’t necessarily be committed to playing leading roles in their church communities as well as in their workplaces,” Mr Monro explained.
“Churches need to accept not only that they can be released from one of those roles, but also need to be affirmed and prayerfully supported in their daily work as their primary ministry and mission.”
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Mr Monro recently convened an all-day event in Melbourne focused on these issues, with financial support from the Melbourne Anglican Foundation.
It included workshops on areas including risk and faith in a world of uncertainty, burnout, and bi-vocationality in the workplace. Fifty people participated.
Sydney-based author Kara Martin spoke on bringing work to worship, and bringing worship to work. Baptist pastor, the Reverend Scott Morrison presented the outcomes of a cross-denominational pilot program for helping churches press into missionally activating their laity in their everyday walks of life.
Mr Monro said at the conference, “We asked how we become missional in our daily lives.”
The mission also aims to help provide a sense of value and inclusion for those who find their work a chore, with which they have become disenchanted.
A quarter of the participants were non-Anglican, and Mr Monro says that the resulting workplace networks will naturally need to be ecumenical.
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“We rarely live and work and worship in the same area,” he said. “That means learning to work across parish boundaries, in order to collaborate better for effective workplace ministry and mission. That throws up a cultural challenge, since we tend to think and operate parochially.”
Mr Monro is available to speak to parishes about workplace discipleship and becoming more deliberative in discipling people for daily work. Raised in a high church setting, and now embedded in a low church context, he believes this program has relevance across all churchmanships.
To contact Mr Monro about speaking at your parish, email him at angusm@stmarkscamberwell.org.au.
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