Let’s get practical: faith-at-work pointers for pastors and lay leaders

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 1:20 pm by Chris Armstrong

Let’s get practical: faith-at-work pointers for pastors and lay leaders 2014-12-30T13:30:49-05:00 Chris Armstrong

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We’re returning to our occasional series of posts on work and vocation (linked at the bottom of this post) in Christian history by Faith and Work Channel senior editor and Christian History magazine senior editor Chris Armstrong. Enjoy!

Will Messenger, executive editor of the Theology of Work Project, admits that many pastors will never be attuned enough to the concerns of business people to offer really deep advice on difficult workplace issues. For these, the best form of support may be to facilitate small groups of like-minded people — for example, workers in similar jobs — to read Scripture, pray, and discuss matters touching their work. David Miller, founding director of the Princeton Faith & Work Initiative, agrees and says that pastors who are most distant from work-related concerns can take steps to bridge the divide between themselves and the working people in their pews. Some ways they might do so:

Be present in the work sphere and listen carefully.
Become workplace literate (for example, by reading the Wall Street Journal).
Preach to work concerns.
Address workers’ sense of work-faith disjunction in adult education, small groups, and retreats.
Train laity in devotional disciplines linked to their work and daily lives.

This kind of engagement may not be possible if a pastor embodies anti-business biases. And researchers like Miller and Laura Nash of Harvard say that such biases are common — sometimes inherited from seminary professors. Messenger says that businesspeople tell him things like this:

“My pastor always talks about profit as if it were greed. Well, that shows they know nothing at all about how the business world works. So when the pastor preaches sermons on this, he always tells me to do things that are useless in terms of the value I provide to society. If I started doing the things my pastor suggests, it would ruin my business, and then I couldn’t provide jobs, good service for customers, and useful products, so the function I’m filling in society would cease to exist.”

Of course, it’s easy enough to point to prominent failures by business leaders over the past few decades. Human weakness is on display in the marketplace as in every other sphere, and that should make us wary of “sprinkling holy water over all of business,” to borrow Jeff Van Duzer’s words. So while he often pushes back on anti-business attitude among clergy, he also finds himself trying to rein in businesspeople who are inappropriately sanguine, even smug, about what they do. “I sometimes want to say: ‘You have bought into a world system which is in some ways antithetical to God, and I want you to rethink this.’”

There is potential for greed and corruption in any field, and thus clergy are rightly concerned not, for example, to become uncritical apologists for big business. But if they want to speak to marketplace workers with credibility, they also need to engage in the hard work of understanding the morally complex, socially engaged world of the marketplace. To minister to the work lives of their people, pastors need not themselves be executives or economists, any more than they need to be doctors to visit the sick in hospitals. But some learning must happen: the church, by failing to learn even the basics of the marketplace, marginalizes itself from the lives of most of its people.

Articulating a full and resilient theology of work

Looking around at how the conversation about work has tended to be addressed in the last few decades in church circles, it is no wonder clergy are flummoxed by discussions of business and economics. Most 20th- and 21st- century theological reflection on work has tended to focus on the problems of the marketplace, ignoring its constructive and creative dimensions, according to Miller. As we’ve seen, this represents a clear break from earlier periods of Christian theology — most notably during the Lutheran Reformation — when questions of work and vocation were actively studied in light of Scripture and tradition.

We can’t build an entire theological basis for understanding work right here and now. I sketched out some biblical bases and historical teachings earlier in this series of posts. In the next post, I’ll suggest a few things that could help us gain a healthier theological understanding of work in the marketplace.

This post originally appeared at Grateful to the Dead.

Previous posts in this series:

Image: Pixabay.

Previous Post

January 12, 2015

Pastors and lay leaders: I hate my job

Next Post

January 13, 2015 NEWS: The Faith and Work Channel has two new blogs!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Audio posts Bible and Work Book Review Books Budgeting Calling Common Good Community Development Conferences Discipleship Economics Entrepreneurship Ethics Faith and Family Faith and the Marketplace Faith and the Workplace faith and work History of Work and Vocation Leadership Local Church Meaning New Blogger News Prayer Relationships Seminaries Theology of Work Uncategorized Video posts Vocation Worship Resources

Select a Month April 2026 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 April 2025 January 2025 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 August 2023 July 2023 April 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 June 2021 May 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 January 2020 December 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was thrown into a den of lions?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Daniel Joseph David Jonah