I read an interesting interview with David Miller about the faith in the workplace movement this week. Miller is the Director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Yale and just released a book entitled God at Work which describes how faith and work are being integrated today. The interviewer asked Miller if he believed that faith at work was a bona fide movement, something that brings lasting cultural change.
I would have said yes myself a few weeks ago, however, I discovered that there was another vibrant faith at work emphasis going on during the first part of the last century that sadly ceased to be influential by the 50s. This emphasis had all the things going for it that we have today—great leaders, articulate spokespersons, good books, and a society seeking meaning and answers to life’s questions. What it lacked is the same ting we lack today: significant buy-in by local churches. While faithful business leaders focused on Monday to Saturday faith, all they were hearing from their pastors was Sunday faith. I believe that this lack of integration into the life of the church spelled decline.
Today, after investing half my ministry of 30-plus years in the local church and half outside; I believe the situation is even more critical. Though I am hopeful in what I see happening in the workplace, we face an uphill battle in refocusing church ministries off their internally focused programs and on equipping men and women to take their faith to work. While cautious, I am hopeful that this “missing element” for a workplace movement that changes culture is finally surfacing. Though virtually all workplace ministries have pitched their camp in the parachurch domain, one organization, His Church at Work, has set its focus on helping churches join the “movement.” In the past several of years, numerous influential churches have engaged His church at Work to help them invade the “unknown” territory of the workplace. If a faith in the workplace movement does bring a cultural shift, I am convinced that it will be because local church leaders wake up to the fact that they must equip men and women to be 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week followers of Jesus.
Learn more about my contribution to the cause at www.24sevenfaith.com
Read Miller’s interview at http://www.christianitytoday.com/workplace/articles/interviews/davidmiller.html
Learn more about His Church at Work at www.hischurchatwork.com
2 Comments »
- Bill – I agree with you. One question, though. If a church is “equipping the saints” effectively, do you believe that it has to explicitly support an “at work” movement to get the job done? Or will the equipped saints naturally live out their faith, including evangelism, in the workplace as an extension of their growth through the church and walk with Christ?Comment by Ed Weaver — March 2, 2007 @ 7:14 am
- Good question Ed. The question I would ask in return: Can the church leave this area of life unaddressed, or even lightly addressed, in it’s ministry and still stay that it is in fact equipping the saints? I would say that this is a major omission since most people working full-time jobs spend 60% of their waking hours either doing or thinking about their work. An equipping ministry that omits this huge a part of life cannot be effectively producing 24seven disciples. Of course a church doesn’t need to support a “movement” externally, but it sure needs to be part of a movement internally by explicitly addressing work as a critical part of its equipping process. Most Christians that I meet around the world have developed a secular/sacred worldview that mentally blocks their ability to apply what they learn spiritually to their work life. They believe that God’s world and their work world don’t connect well. And so they don’t naturally apply what they learn in church to their work world without significant help. That’s why they need serious help.Take another area of life for example and I think you will see the difficulty. Most people don’t have a problem seeing that the Bible says a lot about family life. And you would probably admit that to not explicitly address this area of life in a discipleship process would be a huge omission. But anyone who has worked with people knows that people need a lot of explicit help applying biblical truth to their family life. If people have trouble here, how much more help will they need with their work where they are not sure there is a spiritual connection to begin with.The best info on the secular/sacred divide in found on the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity site. Be sure to download “The Great Divide” PDF. The web address is:
http://www.licc.org.uk/imagine/about-imagine/sacred-secular-divide
