Don't curse the culture. Bless the culture.

Ten minutes before his interview, Jim Moon was sitting in a shared workspace, listening to a woman pour out her heart about a marriage that had quietly been breaking for nearly three decades.

He hadn't planned it. There was no program, no altar call, no announcement in a church bulletin. But by the time the conversation ended — with prayer, with tears, with a woman saying she might look back on that Thursday as one of the best days of the year — something sacred had happened in the middle of a common area next to a coffee station.

That, Jim Moon will tell you, is exactly what church is supposed to look like.

A Pastor Without a Pulpit

Jim Moon has spent 25 years serving brick-and-mortar congregations. He carries a grandfather's legacy of pastoral ministry, a great-grandfather who launched his ministry in Minnesota in 1897, and a wife, Pastor Ingrid, who now shepherds three churches across the state while Jim cheers her on from what he half-jokingly calls the role of "Ingrid's secretary."

But these days, Jim's church doesn't have a street address. He's in the process of earning his professional coaching certification through the International Coaching Federation, and he describes himself as a "community pastor at large" — a phrase that sounds informal until you hear the theology behind it.

"Like John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, famously said, 'The world is my parish.' I just consider wherever God brings people into my path that I get to be a pastoral influence in their life — for the glory of God and to try and bless them."

It's not a retreat from ministry. It's an expansion of it.

The Armor That Doesn't Fit

Jim's path to pastoral ministry began at thirteen, when a speaker at his Christian school stirred something in him that never quite settled back down. He thought he wanted to be a therapist — until he realized that only God could truly solve human problems. That realization pointed him toward seminary, though he spent eight years collecting confirmation along the way before he walked through those doors with certainty.

That same unhurried, earned kind of self-awareness shapes how Jim thinks about leadership today. He doesn't fit neatly into the archetype of the decisive, hard-charging executive-pastor that fills leadership conference stages. And he's made peace with that.

"You know the story of David and Goliath — Saul says, 'If you're going to slay this giant, you need my armor.' David puts it on. It doesn't fit. And he goes, 'Actually, I've got this sling. I slayed a lion and a bear. I'm just going to stick with my sling.' Part of leadership is: who are we? What are our gifts? How are we wired? And then how do we lead in our own armor?"

Jim's armor is relational. He leads by listening. He asks questions that give people room to find their own answers. He calls it coming alongside — and it turns out that style is less a personality quirk and more a theological conviction about human dignity and agency.

It's also, not coincidentally, exactly what his wife asked of him when she stepped into her first pastoral assignment. "Don't give me advice unless I ask for it," she told him. Jim laughs about it now, but the lesson landed. Learning to hold his experience loosely enough to let someone else find their footing is some of the best leadership formation he's received.

Tent Makers and Persons of Peace

Jim has spent meaningful time developing curriculum around what he calls tent making — a model drawn from Acts 18, where the Apostle Paul arrives in Corinth, meets a Jewish couple named Aquila and Priscilla who share his trade, and moves in with them. They make tents together. They stitch canvas. And somewhere in those long working hours, God stitches their hearts together too.

Aquila and Priscilla eventually travel with Paul, land in Ephesus, and mentor a gifted but incomplete teacher named Apollos — who goes on to become a powerful voice for the Christian faith. The whole chain of impact started with shared work.

"Their shared work opened the opportunity for shared conversation that led to shared mission. So how are ways that God might have us collaborate professionally with people in our community — where those shared moments of workplace engagement open opportunities for mission engagement?"

Jim is careful not to make this formula only for Christians working alongside Christians. He draws on Jesus's instruction to the disciples in Luke 10 — go out, look for the person of peace, the one who welcomes you — and suggests that "persons of peace" aren't always found in the pew.

"I've heard people say they know atheists who are more like Jesus than some Christians they know," he says without apology. "Maybe they're pre-believers. But if they welcome you, they welcome what you carry."

Don't Call Unclean What God Has Declared Clean

One of Jim's most pointed challenges to Christian professionals comes wrapped in the story of Peter's vision in Acts 10 — the sheet full of animals descending from heaven, and God's startling command: take and eat. When Peter protests that he's never allowed anything unclean to pass his lips, God's answer reframes everything: Don't call unclean what I have declared to be clean.

Jim reads that not as dietary instruction, but as an attitude adjustment. God was preparing Peter to walk into the home of Cornelius — a Roman soldier, a Gentile, someone Peter's entire formation had taught him to consider spiritually off-limits — and discover that the Holy Spirit had already been at work there.

For Jim, the application is direct: Christian leaders in the marketplace can slip into a posture of judgment toward their surrounding culture, viewing clients, competitors, and colleagues as spiritually contaminated rather than as beloved children of a God who is actively seeking them.

"Don't curse the culture — bless the culture. You don't have to agree with everything. You don't have to endorse everything. But where can you bless people? Where can your love and kindness and the way you do business be countercultural in such a way that people experience the character of a loving God through the loving steward and workplace minister that you are?"

He anchors this in the familiar words of Matthew 5 — that God sends rain on the just and the unjust, causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good — and concludes that the business of being a Christian in the workplace is simply the business of being that kind of indiscriminate, generous blessing.

Your Vocation Is Your Cover

Jim Moon doesn't separate his coaching practice from his pastoral calling. He doesn't divide his faith life from his professional life. In his framework, the division was always artificial.

"Whatever your trade, whatever your occupation, whatever your business," he says, "you're a steward of the manifold grace of God."

He leaves Christian professionals with a simple but penetrating aspiration: become known, in every professional circle you inhabit, as the person who listens and the person who prays.

"May you make disciples through prayer, and may you witness through your listening ears. Witnessing begins with listening. Whatever your vocation — it's simply your cover to do ministry for the kingdom of God."

Somewhere in a shared workspace in Minnesota, a woman who came in to run a seminar left with something she hadn't expected — someone who stayed at the table long enough to hear her real story, and offered to bring it before God.

Church was wherever Jim Moon's feet landed that day. It can be wherever yours land, too.

Jim Moon is a pastoral coach and community pastor at large based in Minnesota. He is currently pursuing certification with the International Coaching Federation and is developing discipleship curriculum focused on workplace ministry and tent-making.