TGC has posted my article on why pastors should visit people in their workplaces:

Pastors are constantly visiting people in homes, hospitals, prisons—almost anywhere except the places where we actually spend most of our waking hours. To be sure, those other kinds of visits are important. But on a typical day I spend six waking hours at home and nine in my workplace—and I’m one of the relatively fortunate people in that regard.

Jesus did it, because he clearly wanted his teaching contextualized to the workplace:

Theologian R. Paul Stevens reports in his book Work Matters that 122 out of 132 public appearances of Jesus were in the marketplace. And think about what Jesus was doing his whole life before he started his public ministry. For more than 15 years, he was working in an ordinary job, doing exactly the same kind of work his sheep do.

Jesus got to know the workplace by experience. That’s important because it allowed him to contextualize his teaching to the workplace. Out of 52 parables, 45 are set in the marketplace: fields, sheepfolds, vineyards, kitchens, palaces, courts, fisheries, and more.