Church @ Work – Not!

Do you go to church to discover how your faith affects your daily work? Do you get support, guidance, and encouragement in your work-life issues from church? Most people would say a resounding “no!”

Why on earth would this be? Surely, if we spend something like 40% of our waking hours at work (far more than we spend on any other activity), you would think our churches would place the highest importance on the workplace, particularly in teaching, discipleship, etc. Yet, with a few shining exceptions, we will rarely hear a work-related sermon, we don’t see teaching on our calling and role as Christians in the workplace, we have nowhere to go to raise work-related issues or celebrate God’s presence at work. Our worship services hardly ever even acknowledge the fact that we go to work. Even our small groups tend to be focused on more esoteric (or more social) activities, although here we can find far more diversity and there are groups in which people find some support for their daily work.

At different times, the church has tried to address this. I’m no church history expert, but I’m told that Luther, for example, was adamant about the absolute integrity of all of life under God, with daily work to be specifically integrated with the rest of Christian life including worship. Calvin felt similarly. The Second Vatican Council addressed this issue at length, and various Catholic organizations have tried to follow up. However, in most churches of all denominations, what we do Monday to Friday barely warrants a mention.

Some authors blame the clergy-laity distinction that arose in the early church, was fought to a degree by the Reformers, and rose again in the past couple of hundred years with the rise of the professional clergy. This caused several issues. It set “spiritual” calling above normal callings, so downgrading most of our occupations to something less important – hence questions about whether we’ve ever felt a call to “full-time Christian ministry” as though those of us in “normal” occupations weren’t already full-time ministers. It also, meant that those leading the church, those called to equip its members, often had limited experience themselves of the daily workplace, and were also barely prepared by their seminary education to overcome this limitation.

Other authors blame our ongoing cultural influence from Greco-Roman philosophies which impose a divide between sacred and profane, between spiritual and secular. The Bible has a much more holistic approach than this, but many interpreters of the Bible have nevertheless bought into the idea that daily work is a necessary evil, and that the world of the mind and spirit are much more important.

Whatever the reason, it seems to me it is time to start actively and intentionally raising this issue in our churches. I’m trying to think through what a holistic church-work relationship might look like for the average believer. This little series of posts will try to work some of it out. Comments welcomed!