Integrating a Biblical Theology of Work in the Life of the Church

I mean I'm thinking here obviously “liberty” is an important word and “freedom” and “choices” and that kind of thing. But there's danger in those concepts if they become strictly self focused. And a good theology of work connects you to the creation. It connects you to the Creator. It connects you to your responsibility to other people. So your description of steward is what made me think about this.

And in that connection with other people, and in that connection with the ideals of service and contributing, you set the framework for allowing work to speak positively into your life, whether it is making that widget that allows that brake to work, not only are cars safer, but lives can be saved.

Maybe it's another innovation that allows something as simple as a camera to work in a car so that when you back it up you don't run into the car behind you and do damage. There are all these little things that come with work, even a waiter or someone who is doing a service in the service industry. The way they deliver the food and the way they interact with the customers to make that a pleasant experience.

I was in a presentation recently by an executive of Chick-fil-A, in which they talk about how they go out of their way to make sure the people don't just come to have a meal, but there's an expression of appreciation for the fact that they've come to get chicken at Chick-fil-A, for which all the cows are grateful.

If you believe that the way to have a good and happy life is to satisfy your own desires, to gratify your own wishes, you will be at the mercy of those who can make that possible for you. And you will lose your freedom very quickly.

If you have an orientation towards serving, others not only will you be liberated from control by others, but also in the long run that creates the only possible cultural conditions in which people can be given personal liberties, including all the personal liberties like freedom of religion.

We evangelicals are absolutely militant about freedom of religion. And I think we need to see the interconnectedness of a culture of service to others with all of our freedoms including freedom of religion. That we are going to lose we're going to lose the cultural basis of freedom if we don't have a culture that helps people see the way to have a good and happy life is to serve other people.

Now obviously we can't disconnect that from God and the gospel, right?

Before we think about this and we think about what we generally see in the church and we've already alluded to this a little bit. We see this not being talked about very much or addressed directly and people being left to fend for themselves from Monday to Friday, that kind of thing.

What kinds of things does the Kern Family Foundation do to speak into that void and then what do you hope to see on the other end of it? If I were to paint a picture of what holistic discipleship would look like after having thought about this, what would you expect pastors to be doing on the other end?

On the other in the after picture, we want pastors to talk about what people do all day and all week long as something that is service to God, service to neighbor, and the place where the life that honors God is lived. And that's not to the exclusion of church activities, but the people that I've spoken to who have been spending decades sort of pounding the table for this message, they often report that the big anxiety pastors have is if we do this, how will we get people into the Wednesday night Bible study? And how will we get people to give money to the church? We're barely making ends meet.

But their experience has been that when churches actually change their thinking and describe all of life and all the callings that are present in their congregations as service to God, they find that actually engagement with church activities and giving and all that stuff goes up not down, because people begin to see the church as something that equips them for Christian life 24/7. And when the church steps into that role of equipping people for life 24/7, rather than “getting people into the box,” as one of my pastor friends puts it. "We got to get people inside the box…" The church comes across as self-serving when that is the emphasis.

Another example and these are just examples and some of these different churches have different ecclesiologies and they might not this might not fit your your mileage may vary. This might not fit your ecclesiology. But many churches are when they get interested in this will adopt the practice of commissioning the laity to their work. The way we commission missionaries to their work.

So one month it'll be health care workers. And another month it'll be commercial retail workers. And another month it'll be sort of safety services like police and fire and that kind of thing. And through the year they map it out and education. Through the year they map it out so that they've pretty much covered all the bases and nobody feels left out, because everybody has got one month of the year.

And what they do is they just ask everyone who works in that field to stand up, and the pastor just says, “We this congregation commission you to go do your work in this field to honor God and serve your neighbor” and talk a little about how that field serves people and glorifies God.

And then once that's the first Sunday of every month. And then the third Sunday of every month what we do is we have people come up with their birthdays and their anniversaries. And so if you celebrate a birthday this month or you're having an anniversary and we have them get up, and we get the women to confess how old they are. We have people say how long they've been married and that kind of thing. And what those little touches do is they take the service and they say, “This service is about life.” You aren't just coming here to hear a collection of ideas or be taught theology in the bible detached from life. It's very much connected to life.

And it strikes me that this is another possibility for that kind of time that can be very nicely integrated into a regular rotation of the service to make a point.

You know another idea that strikes me is that we often have personal testimonies about how people are engaged in this or that kind of ministry in the church as a way of encouraging people to participate. Well, what prevents you from taking that time and making it be about how people who have seen the integration of their faith at their work and make that the focus of the conversation.

They say, “We want you to view us as partners with you equipping you for your vocations.”

And one thing that I think is commendable about the churches you mentioned and some other churches that are doing this is that they are seeking to make that intentional, to integrate that with the whole life of the church so that it's not the lay people have their thing that's over in a corner and has nothing to do with what we do on Sunday morning.

Well, you can't get into the details of all those professions. It's not the pastor’s job to kind of understand the ins and outs of every profession. But the pastor does need to help people interpret the meaning of their lives. And that means interpreting the meaning of our work. And then the people who know that profession can kind of pick up the ball from there, and say, "Okay, we who know," whatever our profession is, "How do we then apply this more tangibly?"

They can come if they ask they have the mindset they can come to understand and try and develop an understanding of what it is that the people in their churches are going through, what they're living through. We'll do it with a sickness. We'll do it with a family issue.

So why can't we do it in the area of work? That's just a mindset problem in my mind.

So my own sense is that this is we train pastors at seminaries to do a whole lot of things and to think about a whole lot of areas, but if you don't have the category you're not going to go there. And so developing the sense of having the category and going there and thinking about going there, and in doing it with some intentionality that's how you kind of get over the hump.

So hopefully the after has these kinds of elements in it, sermons where we're talking about what goes on from 9:00 to 5:00. People who think about there's a subtle thing. There's another subtle thing I want to be sure we highlight in what's being said here. It's not just going to work to think about how can I minister the gospel to the person that I'm sitting next to, which is how most people think about being a Christian at their work is all about. It's about how I do my work Christianly.

Ethical integrity is important, and sharing the gospel with people when opportunity arises is important. But understanding the work itself as an activity that we're made for and an activity that we are being restored for in our redemption is much deeper than that and will also provide the context in which ethical behavior and sort of sharing the gospel with people becomes much easier and much more successful.

In the New Testament this word is used both referred to church stewardship and to refer to our activity in the workplace. So the website is called oikonomianetwork.org. And at that website the paper Theology that Works is there. And we have a number of other resources that people can check out.

So, Greg, I really appreciate your coming in to be a part of this today and to launch this initiative with us. We are thrilled about it and are looking forward to many more visits with one another. You probably won't always be here in Dallas. We'll probably have to do a little bit of Skype work since you're up there in Wisconsin.