Prepping Parents to Disciple their Children

How can side effects of the COVID-19 lockdown help establish our kids in the faith?

Andrew Kirk, who directs a non-profit devoted to reconnecting generations, names one positive offshoot of the isolation: “For years, we have spoken to church leaders about empowering parents to be the primary disciplers of their children and to move away from churches taking that role.  While in many nations [churches and cell groups] have been in lockdown, this ‘crisis’ provided a great opportunity for churches to empower parents at home . . . Momentum gained—not lost.”

Parents—not churches—as the “primary disciplers” of children? Is this an absurd, out-of-touch idea? Or a biblical one practiced by our spiritual foreparents?

How God Sees the Parental Role

Early on God set into motion the ministry of parents taking the lead role in discipling their children. When God describes why he singled out Abraham, he says: “I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just” (Gen. 18:19). Commenting on this verse, Calvin writes: “Wherefore, it is the duty of parents to apply themselves diligently to the work of communicating what they have learned from the Lord to their children.”

Fast-forward a few hundred years to Moses, as he explains why God told him to teach his commands to the Israelites: “so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you” (Deut. 6:2). In that same chapter, Moses says: “Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night” (Deut. 6:6-8, MSG).

The Psalmist echoes all this by recalling that when God “decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel . . . he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children” (Ps. 78:5-6). We see the same expectation in the New Testament, when Paul tells fathers to “bring them [children] up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

Clearly, God assigns to parents—not to church leaders—the principal responsibility for seeing that their children grow up knowing him. Today, though, the spiritual nurture of young people has too often been handed off to Sunday School teachers and youth pastors. Parents who should themselves be maturing through the shouldering of child-training responsibilities are deprived of that means for their own growth.

“Let the Church Train the Kids”

An older Barna study revealed that 85 percent of parents recognize their primary responsibility for discipling their children. But too often acknowledging the assignment does not translate into carrying it out. According to Barna, “The survey data indicate that parents generally rely upon their church to do all of the religious training their children will receive. Parents are not so much unwilling to provide more substantive training to their children as they are ill-equipped to do such work.”

What does “ill-equipped” look like? The Barna research found that parents . . .

• typically have no plan for the spiritual development of their children;

• do not consider it a priority;

• have little or no training in how to nurture a child’s faith;

• have no related standards or goals that they are seeking to satisfy; and

• experience no accountability for their efforts.

The Unexpected Shutdown Benefit

The current COVID-19 lockdown has forced a shift in focus for both parents and churches. For parents, the pandemic often means they and their children are spending more hours with each other every week. For churches, restrictions on gatherings have resulted in canceled or sharply curtailed programs, including youth events. But inside this minus lies a plus—an opportunity for churches to hit the pause button and do a reset. What if this makeover were to take the following two forms?

First, coaching parents. Suppose church leaders were immediately to step in—even if online—with training and tools that will equip parents to use their added time together to disciple their children. Plenty of resources are easily available. The Focus on the Family website includes a whole section on parenting (click here).

Jana MacGruder, Director of Kids Ministry for LifeWay Christian Resources, has created Settle for Nothing Less: Workshop for Parents Leader Kit. Her book and this kit grew out of a study of 2,000 churchgoing adults with kids ranging from ages 18-30 who have remained in the faith. (To read Ed Stetzer’s interview with MacGruder, click here.)

Second, remodeling church meetings. What if—when in-person meetings resume—pastors and church leaders were to reshape weekly gatherings to access the wealth of parenting wisdom hidden in the congregation? Imagine a new Sunday meeting format that retains sound biblical teaching but provides more room for participation by members of the body. The typical church will include young parents as well as those who have navigated the currents and rapids of parenthood. As those new to parenting voice their dilemmas and questions, seasoned moms and dads can respond. Such sharing will also foster connections that bear fruit outside the gathered church.

Unleashing Untapped Resources

The participatory format will release the full priesthood of all believers for ministry to each other. After listing the five kinds of church leaders, Paul says, “Their job is to give God’s people the equipment they need for their work of service, and so build up the body of Christ.” Just four verses later the text calls for “each member doing its own proper work. Then the body builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:12, 16, TKNT).  

In what major arenas do Christian serve in through the week? Neighborhood. Workplace. Family/parenting. What equipment do believers need to do their serving work? One tool they need is a meeting structure that permits the body to build itself up in love. Leaders should not do all the building-up work themselves. Their task should include creating a setting, a meeting framework, that lets members to do their building-up work. This is shared church—much like the meeting Paul instructed the Christians in Corinth to engage in. How does this relate to the raising of children who will continue to follow Christ? A shared-church agenda can tap into the hard-won wisdom of older parents. How? By providing openings in church gatherings in which they may share their experience with younger moms and dads.

Much of the sharing will come through five-minute stories in which older parents tell what they have gone through. Stories, for example, like these:

• How we learned to discipline our child.

• What we discovered in teaching our children to know the Bible.

• The response when I confessed my sin to my family.

• Things I wish I had known as a new mother.

• How we addressed LGBTQ issues with our children.

• How we taught our kids to pray.

• Our struggles following the death of our daughter.

You can be sure stories like this will have the younger parents (and everyone else) leaning forward to listen. And after the meeting, they will seek out those who told the stories for more.

A Parent Looks Back

The importance of parental discipling came home to me just days ago. In a Zoom adult Bible study class, I read what a mother typed into the chat box. Recalling her husband’s and her parenting experience, she wrote: “We felt the ‘experts’ (church/youth leaders) would do a better job of teaching our daughter about Christ.”  Later, when I asked this mother to explain, she said, “We thought that maybe we didn’t know so much. Those in ministry were much more equipped to preach the gospel than we were. We felt too inadequate—bound to screw things up.” With this mindset, they handed off their responsibility.

And the result in the life of their daughter? “She is 25 now and creating her own truth.”

God and Violence

“Where Can God Be Found in Our World of Violence?”

Those words headlined a recent blog. Put differently, is God doing anything about all the mayhem? Are you as a Christian, asking that question? What can you tell your ten-year-old when she asks? If a neighbor raises the issue, what will you say?

In today’s world, violence is breaking out everywhere. Riots are erupting, homicide rates are rising, businesses are being looted and burned. Cities like Portland, Minneapolis, and Kenosha are getting far more media attention than ever before. In this moment, the blogger’s question begs for a biblical answer. Although the article offered helpful insights, it said nothing about a key piece of the God’s-response-to-violence puzzle.

Photo by Oscar Chan from Pexels

Does God Care About Violence?

Long ago, God took a strong anti-violence stance. Back in the days of Noah, says the Bible, ”the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence” (Gen. 6:11). Violence then meant what it does to us now—cruel, destructive, unjust actions. Notice two things here about violence. First, the words violence and corrupt show up in the same sentence. Just as fever is a symptom of the measles, violence is a symptom of corruption. Second, the violence did not escape God’s notice.

The Genesis story goes on to say that God took tough action against this violent infection that had gone global. As The Message paraphrase puts it, “God said to Noah, "It's all over. It's the end of the human race. The violence is everywhere; I'm making a clean sweep” (Gen. 6:13). The flood came—God’s severe response to wipe out the violence corrupting his earth.

After the Flood, Does God Still Oppose Violence?

God promised not to repeat the worldwide flood. But after floodwaters receded, violence cropped up again. Take the case of the Edomites as an example. They came from the line of Esau, Jacob’s brother. At one point, Esau wanted to kill Jacob. The bad blood between their descendants went on generation after generation. God said to the Edomites: “Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame; you will be destroyed forever. . . . As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head” (Obadiah 10 and 15).

How, without the flood option, would God deal with Edom’s violence? Later, through the prophet Ezekiel, God said: “I will take vengeance on Edom by the hand of my people Israel, [emphasis added] and they will deal with Edom in accordance with my anger and my wrath; they will know my vengeance” (Ezekiel 25:14). In other words, God acted (i.e., “I will take vengeance”), but he did so through human beings, the people of Israel, as his deputies to punish Edom for its violence.

God working through human beings should not surprise us. Why? Because at creation, God put people—those created in his image—in charge of his earth. The earth belonged to God, but people made of its dust were to rule it for him. In How God Became King, N. T. Wright, says: “Judaism always assumed that the creator God wanted the world to be ordered and ruled by his image-bearing creatures.” Through human beings, God can carry out even his vengeance-work.

Does God Overlook Violence Now?

“Wait,” someone may object, “Obadiah and Ezekiel—that’s Old Testament stuff. Today we know God as the God of love. Now that Jesus has come and lovingly died for our sins, God doesn’t deal harshly anymore.” You may have sung the old children’s hymn as a prayer to Jesus: “Thou art gentle, meek, and mild,” and “loving Jesus, gentle Lamb.” Yes, Jesus is the Lamb of God. But the New Testament also speaks of him as a Lion. Further, it pictures him like this: “ Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (Rev. 19:15).

Ask yourself: Would it be loving for God to simply let violence go unchecked? We are living between Christ’s first coming and the setting-up of his eternal kingdom. God will never again wipe out the world’s population with a flood. But is he willing to let violence run rampant while we wait for his kingdom-yet-to-come? How would such a just-go-along-with-it response to evil demonstrate his love?

But Where Can God Be Found in Our World of Violence?

We’ve already seen pieces of the answer to the original question. First, God fiercely opposes violence. Second, he has used people [e.g., Israel] as his tools for opposing it. Paul brings those pieces together in Romans 13. He tells us that God has put human rulers, government authorities, into positions of power. Their assignment? A major part of it is to curb evil in the world. Government rulers, Paul says, “do not bear the sword for nothing. They are God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4).

Government authorities are agents of God’s wrath. An agent carries out work for someone else. Wrath is God’s anger aimed at sin. Wrath-agents of God must be hard-nosed—tough but fair. They “bear the sword.” Swords are potentially lethal weapons. God has given human rulers authority to use force—if necessary even to the point of injury or death to counteract violent wrongdoers. So where can God be found in our world of violence? While he is not physically present in person, he is opposing violence through the work of his representatives, the “agents of wrath” who have the training, know-how, and weapons to stand against it.

Does God Really Do His Work Through People?

How does God feed you? Through the work of farmers, truck drivers, and grocers. How does God clothe you? Through the work of those who weave and sew fabrics. How does God shelter you? Through the work of architects carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. How does God protect you from violent criminals who rape, maim, and kill? Through the work of lawmakers, police officers, judges, jailers, soldiers, and the like.

Abraham Kuyper, the theologian who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, recognized in Scripture what he called “sphere sovereignty.” In other words, God—in doing his work through human beings—parcels out one circle of authority to the family, another to the Church, another to government, and so on. Each sphere has delegated supremacy within the limits of its own field. Only government, God’s “agent of wrath,” has his commission to “bear the sword.”

But What About Police Brutality?

In our day of cell-phone videos and instant news, we too-often see and hear about police brutality. Sadly, even though God gives those in the government sphere their authority, they can and do become corrupt. That was true even back in Bible times. Queen Jezebel killed off God’s prophets. Coworkers conspired to send Daniel to the lions. And King Herod ordered the slaughter of babies. All were government agents who veered out of bounds into violent actions.

Of course, hurtful leaders appear in non-government spheres as well. Sadly, some pastors fall into sexual sin. Some fathers abandon their families. And some police officers use excessive force on those they detain. Detestable as they are, these failures do not erase the truth that God has delegated his authority to and carries out his work through upright people in the Church, in the family, and in the government.

God’s “agents of wrath” in government cannot eliminate violence. They can, however, connect it with consequences. A simple illustration: imagine you are driving on a freeway at 15 miles per hour over the posted limit. Then, off in the distance, you spot a trooper’s car. What will you instinctively do? Yes . . . me too! In a similar way, the presence of enforcement officers puts the brakes on violence. Without lawmakers, police, courts, and prisons, the world would suffer immeasurably more brutality than currently plagues it.

Our World Needs God’s Peace-Preservers

Since the early 1700s, those in the police force have been called “peace officers.” Their job: to preserve the peace of communities. Human government—in this waiting-period for the full establishment of God’s Kingdom on the new earth—is a stopgap provision of God’s common grace. This grace is called “common” because God provides it both for those who follow Jesus and those who don’t. To keep lawlessness from doing its worst in the interim, God has graciously given human rulers the authority to “bear the sword.”

In these disrupted times, when many are saying “abolish the police,” the biblical perspective on the role of government will help us think straight. Should we support the reform of out-of-line police practices? Absolutely! But at the same time, we should back legitimate law enforcement as one of God’s good gifts to the world. As Paul puts it, “the authorities are God's servants” (Rom. 13:6).

An orderly, tranquil environment reflects God’s will for people on his earth. Paul urged Timothy to train Christians to pray “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (I Tim. 2:2). These words lead me to ask myself some serious questions:

• How faithfully am I praying for “those in authority”?

• What am I asking God to provide for them and to do through them?

• How shall I answer when others ask, “Where is God in our violent world”?
  
  

The COVID Curriculum

Work! COVID-19 has thrust this four-letter word front and center onto the global stage. A Google search  on “unemployment” returned 161 million results; “employment” more than 2 billion. Jobs—or the lack of them—have caught everyone’s attention.

Will this global pause upgrade how we think and talk about work? Could all the pain steer us to a new way of looking at how we normally spend the bulk of our waking hours? If so, what lessons might the curriculum offer?  

Work is God’s Good Gift

God programmed work into the DNA of life on earth. He himself worked (Gen. 2:2-3). So you and I, made in his likeness, also work. When God stated his reason for creating us, he said he made us for the work of ruling—serving as property managers over his earthly real estate (Gen. 1:26).

The Fall dealt work a crippling blow. The thorns and thistles of Genesis 3 have metastasized into new but still-painful forms in today’s workplaces. Before the pandemic, many saw work as an unwelcome interruption to life. Gallup polls say just over one-third of U.S. employees are engaged with their work. That leaves nearly two-thirds not engaged or actively disengaged. Some have seen work as an insult. The last panel of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip captures this work-averse attitude, when Calvin says, “Why should I have to work for everything? It’s like saying I don’t deserve it!”

Yet working itself—rooted in the action of the good God—remains as one of his major ways of blessing us. Will being locked out of our shops and offices during the crisis remind us of the honor and dignity of working?

Work Sustains Life on God’s Earth

Shortages—from toilet paper to Tylenol—remind us how much we all depend on the work of those made in God’s image. “Work,” writes Lester DeKoster, “is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.” DeKoster served as the  Director of the Calvin College and Seminary Library. The pandemic has demonstrated that usefulness in many ways:

• Since the shutdown, many have generously come to the rescue of those unable to feed themselves and their families. Where do those free sacks of food come from? From the work of farmers, food processors, truckers, and bag-manufacturers.

• To cushion the financial blow created by the crisis, the U. S. government has sent checks to the nation’s households. But where does that money come from? From the salaries and wages of people who work and pay taxes.

• Those infected with the virus have put an extra-heavy burden on hospital workers and first responders. Where do their masks, gloves, gowns, goggles, vaccines, swabs, ventilators, and so forth come from? From the skills and efforts of those whose work produces them.

After the coronavirus crisis no longer dominates the news, will we recall how God, through human work, makes it possible for plant, animal, and human life to flourish here on his earth?

Unworking Destroys Lives

Yes, the coronavirus is deadly. But its presence confronts us with the fact that unworking is also deadly. Writing in Psychology Today, Glenn Sullivan says, “Unemployment is a well-established risk factor for suicide. In fact, 1 in 3 people who die by suicide are unemployed at the time of their deaths. For every one-point increase in the unemployment rate, the suicide rate tends to increase .78 points. One of the silent drivers of our current suicide crisis is the high percentage of working-age men not participating in the labor force.”

In his 2015 book, Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis, Nicholas Eberstadt reports that, “By 2015, the number of prime-age inactive men was over 7 million—6.5 times higher than it had been a half-century earlier.” Eberstadt calls this species of male, “The un-working American man.” And all this work-shirking was taking place well before the coronavirus crisis struck the planet.

As I write this, the official unemployment rate listed by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is 14.7 percent. No one knows how much COVID-19-related joblessness may contribute to depression, divorce, bankruptcy, or suicide. But after the current crisis subsides, will we better appreciate why Paul worked at making tents to provide “a model” for the Thessalonian Christians to follow (II Thess. 3:9)? And will we more fully understand why he wrote “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (v. 10)?

Work Maintains the World’s Economy

Coronavirus headlines warn of how the pandemic has created economic chaos. For many Christians, the economy may seem completely unrelated to anything spiritual. But as Darrow L. Miller reminds us in Lifework: What You Do Every Day, “The passages on business and economics” in the Bible are “far more numerous than those on spiritual salvation.” Salvation, he says, “is fundamental to everything else.” But “God is interested in economics and has given us first principles to help us steward creation and promote healthy economic activity.”

When we steward the earth, we multiply the value of the raw materials God packed into it for the benefit of those who live in it. Such activity is oikonomia, a Greek word in the New Testament that speaks of responsibilities relating to managing and organizing. From oikonomia  we get our English term, “economy.” Darrow continues, “Economics, therefore, could be said to be the wise management of God’s household (the world) with moral imagination, or to put it another way, the stewardship of resources within the boundaries of God’s laws.”

As the world recovers financially from the current crisis, will we have learned the lesson that concern for the economy honors God?

Work Should Not Divide Us

During the shutdown we’ve been hearing the adjective “essential” used to modify “work.” I spoke this week to a physical therapist whose hospital, during the shutdown, reassigned her to work in its supply chain, where she “did a lot of counting.” Previously she had seen her job as ministry. Now, though, she sees that “the invisible people who support those of us who work in direct care are also in a ministry. . . . It is true that all jobs in the hospital are essential. It's sometimes easy to lose sight of that.” 

The idea that only some are “essential workers” signals that the work of others must be “non-essential.” How easily the careless use of vocabulary about work can divide us. Long before anyone heard of COVID-19, we used other divisive terms about work. Blue collar jobs versus white collar careers (with the implication that the one out-ranked the other). Manual work versus mental work (suggesting that you can work with your hands without using your head).

But the world’s culture is not the only source of work-related divisiveness. Church traditions, too, have long split Christians into two camps. Those who do “spiritual” or “sacred” work include pastors, missionaries, worship leaders, and the like. Those in “secular” work repair cars, write software, design buildings, and so on. This encourages people in “lower-tier” work to simply mark time until retirement when they can finally devote their hours to doing something they see as spiritually significant.

Jesus and Paul, his hand-picked representative, both saw division as unthinkable among Christians. After this crisis, will we who follow Jesus stop using divisive word-wedges that lift some up and put others down on the basis of the work they do?

COVID’s course was not an elective.  But an open heart and mind can learn from even the harshest instructor. After we graduate, how many lessons will we remember and put into practice?

Coping with These Fear-Filled Days

If we could see it, fear might look a lot like smog. As the coronavirus spreads through air, the fear it arouses also replicates as people everywhere inhale the anxiety-saturated atmosphere. Both our dread of catching the virus and our cold feet about an uncertain future bring on our worry-sickness. Like actual smog, fear makes it difficult to breathe freely and to see well. Politicians and the media often pollute the airwaves with panic.

Without question, COVID-19 does pose a serious threat. Especially since medical science has not yet produced a vaccine to fight it. To make light of such a hazard would be mindless. But for those serious about following Jesus, it would be faithless to cave in to the toxic fear it whips up.

Fear Dogs Us All

If Jesus had said, “Let the one without fear cast the first stone,” I could throw no rocks. Just as sin crouched outside Cain’s door, fear hunkers down just outside mine. Demanding entry, it projects disabling images of the future. The troubling shadows darken as I get older and time takes its toll from my body. For instance, as peripheral neuropathy intensifies the pain in my feet, fear shouts, “If it’s this bad today, what will it feel like a year from now?” And with an MRI showing the need for surgery to correct severe cervical stenosis, I hear, “What if surgery makes things worse?”

But a couple of mornings ago, in that silent interval between waking up and getting up, a Scripture verse drifted into my mind: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (I Pet. 5:7). The Lord must have known how much I needed that reminder right then. I noticed that this verse has no “if” in it; the words realistically assume we all have anxieties.

Right away, I recognized that this brief instruction related not only to the fears springing from my own elderly aches and pains but also to our panic arising from the pandemic. So, I began to reflect on the verse and do a bit of word-sleuthing.  

The Frightful Effect of Fear

First, what did Peter understand by “anxieties”? In the NIV, that term translates a Greek word with a root that means to disunite, divide, or distract from. It’s the same word Jesus uses in his parable of the four soils when he warns us about the effect of the “cares” of the world and of life” (Matt. 13:22; Mk. 4:19; Lk. 8:14). In the context of that parable, these cares—like thorns in a farmer’s field—“choke” the seed of the word. How? By crowding around the newly rooted seedling, diverting water and soil nutrients away, and thus squelching maturity and fruit.

Fear works like that in us. It unravels us, diverting us from the Lord’s fruit-producing word. So the more I allow distress over reports of the coronavirus to distract me, the less I’ll be able to focus on letting God’s word release its power in my life. By fretting over how the pains in my aging body may intensify tomorrow, I permit that care to split me away from God’s word-work in me. No wonder Jesus tells us not to “worry” (Matt. 6:31)—derived from the same “anxiety” word Peter used.

But if you’re like I am, hearing and agreeing with “don’t worry” is one thing and doing it is another. Right? So in 5:7, Peter shows us the only way to do that and practice it as a way of life.

Turning Fear into a Throwaway

He says we are to “cast” all that fear-laced anxiety on God. Casting comes close to being a violent word, much like throwing or hurling a live hand grenade to get rid of it. Prayer becomes the catapult we use for lobbing our fears upward and onto God. As Paul puts it, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6). One lexicon says Peter’s term “cast” means to “make him [God] responsible for all your worries.” When we fling our fears onto God, we toss over to him the responsibility for dealing with them.

Doing so will not change the circumstances. I still have an aging body—with all its aches and pains. That won’t change until Resurrection equips me with a renovated body. The coronavirus pandemic still rages on around the world. But I am no longer responsible to carry around the weight of the fear it generates.

We retain the responsibility for doing those things God has called us to do. During this coronavirus crisis, that may mean sheltering in place, wearing a mask, washing our hands often, and so on. For me, as I grow older, it involves healthful eating, adequate rest, proper exercise, and getting good medical care. But as for our always-prowling fears, we are invited—yes, even instructed—to pitch the responsibility for them onto the only One who can effectively deal with them.

Paraphrasing Peter

I’ve searched for a word Peter might have used—instead of “cast”—had he lived in our century. The best candidate, I think, might be “upload.” If I create a video and want to make it widely available for others, I will upload it to YouTube. That video-sharing platform then takes responsibility for all the techy stuff far above my pay grade.  

So, here’s my paraphrase of I Peter 5:7—“Upload all your fears and worries to God, because he cares enough for you to take responsibility for them.”  

God-Sightings During Shutdown

Where Is God in a Coronavirus World? That’s the title of a small, just-published book by John C. Lennox, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford. In a time when all of us have seen our lives upended, Lennox raises a timely question.

Where is God during this shutdown? Those without faith can throw the question at Christians. We who follow Christ may not know exactly how to respond. Even on our own, some of us may inwardly wonder how God fits into a world of face masks and social distancing.

Sighting Whales

I live in the State of Washington near Puget Sound. Whale-watching is a popular activity here in our area. Best time to spot minke, humpback and orcas: from May to October. Gray whales head north in March and April. We even have a whale-sighting network. One dictionary defines “sighting” as, “an occasion on which something is seen, especially something rare or something that people are hoping to see.”

What kind of God-sightings are taking place during this COVID-19 shutdown? Even though we can’t physically “see” God, he does ask us to look for him. As he told the ancient Israelites, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). Might we be missing glimpses of God because he is showing up in ways that don’t fit our categories? As one whale-watching blogger puts it, “If you’ve never seen a whale before, it can be hard to know what to look for.”

Luther on Seeing Under the Surface

What should we God-watchers be looking for in these unprecedented days? It will help us, I think, to recall some words Martin Luther wrote in his “Exposition of Psalm 147.” He suggests that to see what God is doing, we should expect him to show up in disguise:

“God could easily give you grain and fruit without your plowing and planting. But He does not want to do so. . . . What else is all our work to God—whether in the fields, in the garden, in the city, in the house, in war, or in government—but just such a child’s performance, by which He wants to give His gifts in the fields, at home, and everywhere else? These are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed and do all things.”

In other words, Luther is saying, behind the “masks” of the work being done by ordinary human beings, God is actively meeting our needs. Yes, it’s painfully true: the pandemic has sidelined millions of workers, forcing them to rely on unemployment benefits. But in spite of that costly loss, God continues—through the work of countless others—to provide for us.

The Work Goes On . . .

On Tuesday, sitting in front of the computer in my office, I heard the clank-and-bang of the waste-collection trucks. One emptied our regular garbage tub with its food scraps and empty cans. A second took away the flattened cardboard boxes in our recycling bin. And a third hauled off the grass clippings and other yard debris. Can you imagine what would happen if all the rubbish in the world simply piled up and rotted in our neighborhoods week after week? All three of our garbage-truck drivers had human faces. Yet, there behind his masks, God was at work enabling life in our cul-de-sac to go on.

As I turned from my office window back to the computer, I experienced another God-sighting. In spite of the worldwide shutdown, the Dell desktop still hummed and the monitor stayed bright. How? By drawing on electrical current. Of course, that power doesn’t just automatically remain available on its own. It flows into my office thanks to the ongoing work of electrical engineers, power plant operators, power-line installers and repairers, and so on. Even as I type these words on my keyboard, I am aware that God is at work behind another set of his masks.

We have now been in lockdown mode for more than a month. Yet every time we turn on a tap at the sink, fill a bathtub, take a shower, or flush a toilet, we release a generous stream of water. Yes, after years of irrigating the lawn, washing clothes, and power-washing the driveway, it’s easy to take all that water for granted. Yet it would not continue to flow for us without the work of certified facility operator and repair people, sampling and treatment experts, government overseers, and those who process our payments—to say nothing about those whose work ensures that the wastewater gets carried safely away. Are you beginning to see God’s involvement again, just behind those disguises?

. . . and On and On

I could, of course, go on to talk about how we have continued sending and receiving letters all through this pandemic. Or how we have enjoyed uninterrupted access to groceries and gasoline. This supply continues only through the hard work of postal workers, farmers, truck drivers, checkout clerks, and so many others. Even those now dependent on unemployment checks are counting on the work of government employees. Midway through my writing of this blog, an eye-doctor—through the wonder of telemedicine—assessed my need for an in-person exam. Through his work, this physician was simply reflecting the work of the Great Physician.

A good friend of mine owns and operates a gear-manufacturing company in Edgerton, Wisconsin. Several days ago, I called him to see how he, his family, and his employees were doing during these trying days. “Are you sheltering in place,” I asked him. “Have you closed the shop down?” Much to my surprise, he told me a flood of orders were keeping him and his machinists busier than ever.

“How so?” I wanted to know. Well, he said, just about everything from food-processors to farm tractors to truck engines depends on gears to keep functioning. Moody Press has just published my friend Dave Hataj’s book, Good Work: How Blue Collar Business Can Change Lives, Communities, and the World. Seattle Pacific University’s Faith&Co recently produced a 10-minute video on what God is doing through this gear shop in Edgerton. To watch, click here.

No Virus Can Shut Down God’s Working

During what we call “normal” times, it’s easy for us Christians to get the impression that God works mainly on Sundays when we gather in church buildings. But in this pandemic, face-to-face church meetings—along with restaurants, barbershops, and schools—have been shut down. Perhaps during this pause, taking our cue from Martin Luther, we can rediscover that the “God of all the earth” (Is. 54:5) is still actively at work, even if doing so behind the scenes.

Where is God in a coronavirus world? Watch carefully and expectantly. Look under his masks—the everyday work being done by countless people made in his image. Get set for some unexpected God-sightings. And for giving thanks.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Nine)

Links to previous articles in this series: (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven) (Part Eight)

In light of the current coronavirus crisis, I debated whether to post this blog at a moment when we cannot gather in our churches or, for many, even go to work. But perhaps sheltering in place will provide us with extra time to reflect on how—when we can—to prepare our young people spiritually for the opportunities and challenges they will face in their lifetimes of working.

Equipping Young People for the Work World

Each young person in your church will soon face a crucial question: “What kind of work should I look for?”

Who is equipping these young people to make that decision? Who is training them to step into their jobs as representatives of Christ and his Kingdom?

Over the past eight years of teaching the theology of work, I have asked my graduate students to conduct surveys among Christians in non-church work. Responses now total nearly a thousand. One of the survey questions asks: “Before you entered your life’s work, had you received any biblical instruction on how to go about choosing it?” Nearly three-quarters of those responding have said they received none—no scriptural insight into deciding where they will invest perhaps a hundred-thousand God-given hours of their lives.

Will Young People Become Workplace-Ready Disciples?

At or near the same ages young people leave home, many of them head off into a war zone. Before they enter harm’s way, our military branches work hard to prepare them for what they will encounter. A U.S. Army website, says: “Basic Combat Training (BCT) is a training course that transforms civilians into Soldiers.” The Army spends a lot of time and money to make recruits battle-ready. Contrast this with what churches have typically done to make young people workplace-ready, prepared for the spiritual warfare they’ll encounter there.

How might the young people in your church respond to these vital questions?

• What criteria will you use in choosing how to invest the hours and years of your life?

• Do you know how to discover how God has “wired” you so you may discern his calling?

• Will you pursue work that will offer you the most security?

• Will you look for jobs that pay the most money?

• Do you understand God’s purposes for so-called “secular” work?

• Do you even want to work?

Suppose your church wants to equip its children, youth, and young adults to enter the work world to represent Christ and his Kingdom there? How might the church do that? Making workplace-ready disciples of young people calls for a multi-faceted approach.

1. Prepare Parents to Equip Their Children

Your church could make certain parents receive a thorough grounding in the theology of work. The major responsibility for bringing up children in the “training and instruction of the Lord” belongs to parents (Eph. 6:4). So they should be equipped to teach their children what God has to say about the work they will do over a lifetime. Such home-provided instruction, by word and by example, surely ought to include what God’s Word says about an activity that takes more than half our waking hours.

Parents might find either or both of the following books useful in helping their children discover their giftings and callings. In The Person Called You, Bill Hendricks addresses God-bestowed giftedness, explaining, “why you’re here,” “why you matter,” and “what you should do with your life.” The appendix includes a step-by-step guide parents can use to help their young people discover their giftedness. Ralph T. Mattson and Arthur F. Miller, Jr., in Finding a Job You Can Love, ask: “How would Christian education be viewed if it actually provided young people with an understanding of their specific gifts and equipped them accordingly?”

2. Include Workplace Material in Youth Groups and Classes

Your church should make it a priority to include in its Sunday school classes and youth groups material that will prepare children and young people to live for Christ in the work world. The curricula could include a great variety of subject matter. It might provide instruction from the lives of biblical characters who served God in the work world. For example, how did Joseph, Nehemiah, and Daniel all integrate their faith with their everyday work?

3. Hold a Jobs Fair

Why not schedule what you might call a “jobs fair”? The goal: to introduce young people to Christians who are serving God in all kinds of so-called “secular” work. I recently conducted an Occupational Survey in our church. The 108 who responded made it clear that our congregation includes those serving in a wide variety of work roles. A financial advisor. A legislative assistant in state government. A real estate agent. A psychologist. A fiscal analyst. A reading intervention teacher. A music teacher. A dental assistant. And a great many more.

Most likely, those in your congregation also represent great occupational diversity. Chances are that many young people will not even be aware that such ways of serving Christ even exist for serious Christians. Adults could be seated at tables, each with a sign describing his or her role in the work world: computer programmer, grocery clerk, homemaker, attorney, welder, counselor, and so on. Young people could circulate, stopping to engage the adults in conversations about the opportunities and challenges for Christians in that field.

4. Schedule Sunday Panels of Working Adults

Consider occasionally incorporating into the Sunday meeting panels of adult Christians who have learned how to turn their daily work into worship of the Lord and service to people. Each panel might be made up of those in similar lines of work. They could invite questions from the congregation, especially welcoming questions from young people.

5. Organize Job-Shadowing Partnerships

Or perhaps your church could arrange job-shadowing partnerships for teenagers. Find out what kind of work interests them, then pair them with adults who are currently working in that field. Each adult could invite the young person to lunch, followed by a tour of the workplace. In this way, the young people could see the work being done and ask questions along the way.

The evidence today suggests young people are increasingly disconnecting from the gathered church. As BreakPoint’s John Stonestreet and Shane Morris say, “We really are losing a generation of young churchgoers, and they’re probably not coming back—at least not if we stay the current course.” Might the church’s perceived indifference to work—one of the major concerns of forward-looking young people—help explain that trend? In her essay, “Why Work?” Dorothy Sayers asks: “How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?”

A Young Man Wonders . . .

A Focus on the Family website includes a question raised by a parent: “How can I help my adolescent son settle on a vocation and make wise plans for the future? He seems to be thinking more seriously about career choices and wondering what God wants him to do with his life.”

Imagine that this young man is part of your church, perhaps senior-high or college-age. When he thinks about life, since most of it for him still lies ahead, he thinks mainly in the future tense. Questions about what is yet to come churn in his mind. Although not yet in the workforce, he soon will be. So he is extremely interested in what will become his life’s work.

Is his church just as interested as he is in preparing him to choose his life’s work and then to do it as an offering to the Lord?

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Eight)

Help Believers Find and Serve Other Christians on the Job

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Eight describes the need for churches to help believers network with other Christians in their work circles. Links to previous articles in this series: (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven)

Look at the boss’s face. To call him unhappy is putting it far too mildly. Agitated comes closer. So, naturally, he has to spread the misery around. He calls in his top people and lays out what’s troubling him. Not only that, he demands that they unscramble what they know is an impossible enigma. When these, his best and brightest, try to explain that what the boss is asking for can’t be done, he accuses them of stalling, trying to buy time. The experts say it again—no one on planet earth could do what he asks. So the boss resorts to threats. “Do it, or heads will roll!”

Sound Familiar?

That situation is essentially what Daniel faces while working in the godless government of Babylon. Thoroughly shaken after waking up from a bad dream, the King calls in his top bureaucratic brass and commands them to do two things: first, tell him his dream and, second, explain what it means. They can’t. So he presses harder. When that doesn’t work, he threatens to execute all of them—including Daniel.

Talk about workplace stress! What does Daniel do? Well, he does not do what an old song urges Christians to do: “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone.” Daniel does not stand alone. Yes, he stands, but he stands together. He meets with three coworkers in his faith-family. They, too, have come under the death sentence pronounced by the angry King.

Faced with a crisis in their workplace, these four God-fearing young men, circle the wagons in prayer. God answers this unified group of believers, revealing to Daniel not only the dream itself but also what it means. Daniel and his friends put into practice words written hundreds of years earlier: “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccl. 4:12). The strength of teaming up still holds true today. Especially for Christians representing King Jesus in the work world. In fact, life on the job in the 21st century may pose a far greater need to form faith-linkages than in any other era.

Contemporary Work Separates Christ-Followers.

Working believers in Old and New Testament times knew nothing of the modern forces that isolate those in today’s workplaces. The automobile and freeways now make it possible to live 50 miles or more from where we work. So those we meet with on Sundays are—during most weekdays—scattered and out of reach.

Specialization and technology separate us in other ways. Many jobs today did not exist even a decade ago. If you explain to me what you do Monday through Friday, your words—if I work in another field—may as well be Yiddish. “Neural forest. ” “Amygdala.” “Wireframe.” Such terms, clear to insiders, mean nothing to anyone else. The upshot of all this: Christians in the workplace are hard-pressed to connect with other believers who understand the lingo, dilemmas, and opportunities they face during the bulk of their waking hours.

Hundreds of miles separated Daniel and his friends from those back home who also worshiped the true God. These young men all worked for a pagan government and reported to officials who worshiped false gods. Far from home, Temple, priests, and any other faith-friendly backing, they banded together in a workplace support group that saw them through many puzzling employment challenges.

Ethical Dilemmas Call for Shared Wisdom

Let’s say you’re a young lawyer. You’ve just begun working for a law firm that encourages its attorneys to secretly gather information from social network profiles. As a believer, you’re not sure how to deal with your reservations about this practice. Or you’re a nurse who—just two hours ago—helped a patient, at his insistence, sign a do-not-resuscitate order. As he lapsed into unconsciousness, his wife screamed at you to “Do something!” You refused. But now you keep wondering, should you have listened to her? Or you’re a quality control engineer in a company contracted to develop the programming for an experimental fighter plane. Even though the program has met all the specs, you know it needs far more extensive and time-consuming testing. When you say so, your bosses warn that the company will fold if it does not deliver the product right now. What should you do?

No pastor or church leader can possibly grasp all the nuances of what Christ-followers face in their various roles in the work world. Public school teachers, pharmacists, and flight attendants all deal with different spiritual challenges on the job. In Center Church, Tim Keller writes, “Urban Christians are confronted with ethical and theological issues every day in the workplace. Preaching and ministry in urban churches must therefore help congregants to form networks of believers within their vocational field and assist them in working through the theological, ethical, and practical issues they face in their work.”

Your Church Can Equip Working Christians to Network

Daniel found three fellow believers near him on the job. But what are the chances today’s Christ-follower can find other believers at work? A few years ago I surveyed 60 working Christians. They came from urban, suburban, and rural churches. One survey question asked: “How many other believers are you aware of among those you interact with at work (coworkers, clients, customers, students, etc.)?” Ninety-seven percent knew of other Christians in their work circles. Nearly half could identify six or more.

Most jobs put Christians into contact with at least a few other believers. So, as part of its mission to make disciples, any church can urge its working members to find and serve other Christ-followers in their on-the-job networks. The first part of this teaching task will be to convince working Christians of the need to discover others on the job. This beyond-traditional teaching will emphasize the need to reach across denominational lines. Click here for an article on “How to Find Other Christians in Your Workplace.”

Question: After spotting fellow believers on the job, how can a Christian serve them? Answer: In all the ways the New Testament instructs us to practice one-anothering. Christians encountered on workdays are, after all, just much a part of Christ’s body as the church people we gather with on Sundays. One-anothering passages tell us to pray for, serve, spur on, accept, forgive, bear with, instruct, warn, and so on. Serving other Christ-followers can take place before and after clock-in time, on coffee breaks, over lunch hours, and on weekends. Teaching in the gathered church needs to make it clear that such non-programmed caring is real ministry and that Jesus expects it of his people who serve him out in the world’s workplaces.

The church of today, through visionary teaching, can counter the forces that isolate Christians in the work world. Doing so will equip those in the gathered church for whole-life discipleship. Then they will be able to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” and to “encourage one another” (Heb. 10:24-25).

Daniel did.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Seven)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Seven points to the need to include those with workplace experience on the teaching team. Links to previous articles in this series: (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six)

Who do you see as the three greatest teachers in the New Testament? Would Jesus be your first choice? How about Paul—would he come in second? And would Peter make your list? In terms of life-shaping background, what do these three preacher-teachers all have in common? Each spent years toiling in ordinary workplaces. Some think Jesus probably put in a couple of decades as a builder or craftsman. Paul earned his way by making tents. Peter grew up working in the family fishing business.

Each of these great teachers—Jesus, Paul, Peter—had been molded by years in so-called “secular” work. Is such on-the-job experience spiritually significant? “I’m prepared to contend,” wrote Eugene Peterson, “that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.” Notice that Peterson did not name the work world as a primary location but as the primary location for spiritual formation. If true, should we take workplace experience into account as we select church leaders today?

The Pastor Who Became a Carpenter

One pastor decided to do something about his lack of experience in the work world. Paul Stevens, after serving 25 years in the pastoral role, took a job as a carpenter. Why? He explains why in his book, Liberating the Laity: “What gripped my conscience,” he says, “were the areas that I had not yet applied to myself. One such area was that I had never supported myself in ministry by the work of my own hands or mind. . . . This plunge into the lay world was for me the only way I could gain the experiential base for a larger equipping ministry.”

After his years in the construction business, Stevens—like Jesus, Paul, and Peter—had “won his spurs” in non-church work. All of which raises a question in my mind: Should we twenty-first century Christ-followers intentionally include among our teaching leaders those whose spiritual formation includes substantial workplace experience?

Insight from Church History

Church history seems to support such a practice. Non-ecclesiastical work occupied many early church leaders. In Liberating the Laity, Stevens gives several examples of leaders engaging in so-called “secular” work. In a fourth century letter, Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote: “Although our clergy do seem very numerous, . . . the majority of them [work at] sedentary crafts whereby they get their daily bread.” And a decree from the Fourth Council of Carthage says, “Let a cleric however learned in the word of God get his livelihood by a craft.”

One New Testament Benchmark for Church Leadership

These two and many other early-church examples line up with New Testament teaching. When he counseled Timothy on selecting a church overseer, Paul said the candidate was to have—in addition to the ability to teach— “a good reputation with outsiders” (I Tim. 3:1-7). Two observations here.

First, the teaching. Paul seems to take it for granted that overseers will form strong relationships with people outside the church—strong enough that non-Christians say good things about them. I once took part in a meeting of church leaders in which the speaker challenged us to pray in pairs for non-Christian acquaintances. The pastor-friend seated next to me said, “I don’t know any unbelievers.” Spending all his time in and attention on the gathered church, he had no standing with outsiders. But what better way to build a solid reputation with unbelievers than to have regular and frequent contact with them on the job? The workplace generously supplies opportunities to nurture relationships with “outsiders.” Jesus, Paul, and Peter certainly had built reputations with their coworkers and customers.

Second, the practices. Paul, Peter, and Luke (in Acts) all reflect a pattern of plural church leadership. Having multiple overseers/elders/shepherds opens the door not only to a diversity of giftedness but also to a wealth of occupational experiences. A shepherding team that includes several from the work world can offer teaching with fresh-from-the-front-lines illustrations of the challenges and opportunities other believers face in that arena.

The Teaching-Preaching Team in Westview Bible Church

For years, Westview Bible Church in Pierrefonds, Quebec, has heard from a teaching team with firsthand workplace knowledge. Nita Kotiuga, one of the pastors says, “It is crucial that the people who are preaching have common experience with the congregation. So our preaching-teaching team has included a teacher, a professor, a dentist, an engineer, retirees, and a stay-at-home mom.”

That workplace connection, Kotiuga says, is vital. “Every Sunday there are people who come up to the preacher and say, ‘I want to share something that happened to me this week at work.’ But if you’re a pastor with no track record in the workplace, what experience do you have working for a dysfunctional boss? Sure, you report to the Elders’ Board, and they function as your boss. But at Westview, this board is made up of really nice people who want to think the best of their employees. When our preacher-teachers pray with people who’ve walked through similar difficulties it means so much more.”

Westview Bible plans to hire a lead pastor who will speak about 60 percent of the time. This should bring in the indisputable benefits of excellent theological training. But those from the various occupations will still be bringing the other 40 percent of the messages. So the preaching-teaching team will continue to include those with the workplace perspective.

The Pastoral Task: Equipping

Looking back on his years as a carpenter, Paul Stevens writes, “Unless we equip the laity to live all of life for God, Christianity will degenerate into mere religion. I had to learn that true spirituality is hammering nails for God and praying before a precise saw cut.” He adds, “Equipping is in the end a pastoral task. . . . Equipping starts with the equipper getting equipped. . . . The weakest link in the gathered services of the church surely is in the preparation for re-entry into the world.”

In what way is that link weakened if all the sermons come only from those whose salary comes from the church? To ask the question in another way, what does a congregation miss if no teaching leader works in a day job?

Why Did Paul Work at Making Tents?

Paul himself provides the answer: “For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow” (II Thess. 3:7-9).

Had Paul not worked making tents, the Thessalonian believers would have missed his model, his pattern, for them to follow. Even before the days of kindergarten with its show and tell, Paul knew not only how to tell the gospel but also how to show how it works in life outside the gathered church.

A teaching team that includes some who earn their living in so-called “secular” jobs is a team that can lead not only by word but also by example.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Six)

Where is the Church’s Frontline?

In its website, one church describes “a number of ways to serve” on the frontlines. The article identifies several teams responsible for parking cars, greeting visitors, helping people find seats, making coffee, and getting people connected.

Each of these activities has its place for a few minutes on Sunday. But wait. Can we honestly call these the “frontlines” of the church? According to Dictionary.com, the frontline is “the visible forefront in any action, activity, or field.” The Cambridge English Dictionary defines the frontline as “working in a job that involves dealing with ordinary people and real problems.”

What Would Jesus Say?

So far as we know, Jesus never used the term “frontline.” But if he had, where would he have located it on his map? Clues to answering that question probably lie somewhere in those things we know he did say. Statements such as these to his followers: “Go into all the world.” “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” And this one to his Father: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

As vital as it is for us to meet together, it sounds as if Jesus might position the frontline for the church “out there.” Out in the world where we deal with “ordinary people and real problems.” Out in the world where representing Christ and his Kingdom has its “visible forefront.” Out there where sheep, meeting wolves of all kinds, get worn and wounded. Out there where they feel isolated, cut off from others who have their backs. Out there where they bump into puzzling dilemmas they’ve never encountered before and have no idea how to deal with. So hearing from others who also serve out there can restore, renew, and encourage.

The Power of Frontline Reports

Those outside the church context know the value of frontline updates. For example, one health-care website explains: “These ‘reports from the front lines’ are designed to help health policy leaders understand the current state of the U.S. health care system, how health systems are adapting to the changing environment, and what's working and not working in both the private and public sector toward the goal of achieving higher quality, more efficient care.”

Church leaders too should make room for those serving in the workplace to bring reports from the frontlines. In this way, employers and employees will have opportunity to help others in the church family see their jobs as serving God. How is God moving in that arena? What dilemmas or challenges are they facing? What opportunities are opening up? How can fellow believers pray for them?

Frontline reports offer one major way of practicing Heb. 10:24—”And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” The strong Greek word behind spur on in the NIV has been translated by others as motivate, stir up, and stimulate. This affectionate prodding is something we do for “one another.” It is not a one-person ministry. Along with all the other one-another instructions in the New Testament, this one flows straight out of the directive given by Jesus: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

Changing a Local Church Culture

In The Other Six Days, R. Paul Stevens suggests that, “each week [in the church meeting] an ordinary member should be brought forward and in five minutes interviewed along these lines: “What do you do for a living? What are the issues you face in your work? What difference does your faith make to the way you address these issues? How would you like us as a church to pray for you in your ministry in the workplace?” Stevens says that by including such reports, “the culture of a local church can be partially changed in fifty-two weeks . . . .”

Lowell Bakke, who served as Professor of Pastoral Studies in the Bakke Graduate University, says: “The church needs to teach that work is worship. So on Sunday we could report on how we worshiped during the week. We should have people report on how God shows up in their work and how they are working for the glory of God by serving their masters. . . . They could explain how they fulfilled the purpose of the church by . . . stewarding their work for the good of the community.”

How can church leaders unearth these workplace reports? Mainly by making it known that the church body needs to hear and is looking for such stories. Through announcements (up front, in bulletins, on websites, etc.), such reports can be asked for. These could include idea-prompters—such as: How are you dealing with an unreasonable boss? What sticky, Catch-22, ethical issues are you facing? How have you been able to maintain a godly lifestyle on the job while remaining on good terms with those who live by different standards? And so on.

Strengthening Our Teammates

These windows to the work world would provide a way for the body to build itself in love “as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16). In a blog, our daughter, Jana Jarvis, expanded on why we gather as believers: “We go there to face a new week, locking arms and re-energizing each other to go out there and love God and people with abandon. Whether we meet together in a church building, a restaurant, or a home, our goal is the same . . . to encourage one another. To remind each other. To strengthen our teammates.”

As they face each new week, where will those leaving a church gathering encounter most of the people they ought to love “with abandon”? Those they interact with in the course of their paid or unpaid work. Reports from the frontlines will help equip working Christians to practice that love and those good works on the job. And it will let them pray intelligently for their brothers and sisters who are struggling to continue representing Christ in their workplaces.

For Example . . .

I was once invited to preach in a church about an hour from where we live. I prepared a message on Daniel’s daily work in the pagan government of Babylon. I knew a woman I’ll call Beth who worked for state government. So I invited her to accompany my wife and me and to bring to that congregation a report from her frontline. After my message, Beth told of how God had seen her through a very difficult situation on her job. When she finished, I asked if someone in the congregation would pray for her.

Immediately, a young woman raised her hand and offered to pray. But before saying a word, she began to weep. Then, quickly regaining her composure, she offered a heartfelt prayer for Beth. Afterward, we learned the reason for her tears. This woman had just faced a situation in her workplace much like the one Beth had described. Nothing I could have said in the sermon would have spoken to her like that report from the frontline of the workplace.

Pastors can and should teach us what the Bible says about our daily work. But for first-hand accounts of how fellow believers are turning their work into worship and service to others, we’ll need to hear straight from them.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Five)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Five offers brief descriptions of and links to faith-at-work books. (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four)

Every church I’ve been a part of for as long as I remember has had a library. All the pastors I’ve known have had their own personal libraries. Paul, writing to Timothy, urged him, “bring my books” (II Tim. 4:13, NLT). Books, churches, and church leaders have had a long relationship.

Even in our age of iPhones, blogs, and tweets, people still read books. Pew Research Center findings for 2019 say that 72 percent of adults in the U. S. report having read a book in the last year. Sixty-five percent of adults had read a printed (versus electronic) book.

So church leaders wanting to incorporate work-truth into the life of the congregation would do well to own and point others to some of the current books on practicing faith in the work world. Such books offer a valuable source of insights, quotations, and illustrations on what God has revealed about daily work. Every church library needs at least a small section of such books. And leaders knowledgeable about them, can recommend them to members of the congregation whose main ministry takes place in the workplace. Here, then, is just a tiny sampling of the hundreds of these books now available: (click on book titles for Amazon listings)

THE OTHER SIX DAYS: VOCATION, WORK, AND MINISTRY IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE, by R. Paul Stevens.

—The author’s purpose: “My central concern in this book is to recover a truly biblical basis for the theological enterprise, especially as it relates to the ordinary person not only in the church but the world.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Reinventing Laity and Clergy;” “Calling in a Post-Vocational Age;” “Mission – A People Sent by God.”
—A key quotation: “Kingdom ministry has been almost totally eclipsed by church ministry. Ministry is viewed s advancing the church rather that of the Kingdom.”

GARDEN—CITY: WORK, REST, AND THE ART OF BEING HUMAN, by John Mark Comer.

—The author’s purpose: “The guts of this book are about working, resting, and living a full existence. About ‘spiritual life’ invading all of life. And about waking up to a God-saturated world.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Unearthing of a Calling;” “I Am Not a Machine;” “The Lord of the Sabbath.”
—A key quotation: “We’re not as important as we think. The Sabbath is a day to embrace this reality, to let it sink in, to own it, to celebrate it.”

EVERY GOOD ENDEAVOR: CONNECTING YOUR WORK TO GOD’S WORK, by Timothy Keller, with Katherine Leary Alsdorf.

—The author’s purpose: “Why do you want to work? . . . Why is it so hard to work? . . .How can we overcome the difficulties and find satisfaction in our work through the gospel? The rest of this book will seek to answer those three questions in its three sections, respectively.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Design of Work;” “Work Becomes Fruitless;” “A New Conception of Work.”
—A key quotation: “All work now becomes a way to love the God who saved us freely; and by extension, a way to love our neighbor.”

JOB-SHADOWING DANIEL: WALKING THE TALK AT WORK, by Larry Peabody.

—The author’s purpose: “For anyone willing to take the time to mind it closely, each incident Daniel lived through in the workplace will usually pay off with multiple nugget-filled layers. No, you’ll never be a Daniel. But will you dare to let him mentor you?”
—Sample chapter titles: “Calling: Working in the World Wholeheartedly;” “Ruling: Tending God’s Earth;” “Discipline: Staying Spiritually Fit.”
—A key quotation: “As you face on-the-job pressures, you and other Christians there need more than a smile and nod on the weekend from believers you hardly know. If possible, you need to find and network with each other at work. Daniel did.”

KINGDOM CALLING: VOCATIONAL STEWARDSHIP FOR THE COMMON GOOD, by Amy L. Sherman.

—The author’s purpose: “. . . the glorious vision of Proverbs 11:10 . . . requires at least two big things. First, it means that many churches need to have a more robust, comprehensive view of what they should be aiming at missionally. . . . Second it means that churches need to take vocation much more seriously.”
—Sample chapter titles: “What Does a Rejoiced City Look Like?” “Integrating Faith and Work;” “Deploying Vocational Power.”
—A key quotation: “. . . the vast majority of these [spiritual gifts] assessments don’t help congregants to see how they can apply their spiritual gifts in the context of their daily work or in volunteer service outside the four walls of the church.”

WORK MATTERS: CONNECTING SUNDAY WORSHIP TO MONDAY WORK, by Tom Nelson.

—The author’s purpose: “. . . my prayerful hope is that some of the fog in your mind may clear, and you will experience a more integral, seamless faith. I pray that your calling to a specific work may bring with it a new dynamism of heartfelt joy and purpose.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Is Work a Four-Letter Word?” “Work Now and Later;” Work and the Common Good.”
—A key quotation: “Much of our daily work is caring for our Father’s world and those who call it home. We make things. We fix things. We care for things. We serve others. What you do here is not a waste. . . . Your time here in our Father’s fallen world is a preparation for an eternity of activity and creativity in the new heavens and new earth.”

GOD AT WORK: THE HISTORY AND PROMISE OF THE FAITH AT WORK MOVEMENT, by David W. Miller.

—The author’s purpose: “In an era when membership in mainline denominations has plummeted and churches are radically rethinking how to reach out to people, it is my hope that study of the Faith at Work movement will highlight and encourage further exploration of both the need and the opportunity that is knocking at the church’s door.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Response of the Church and the Theological Academy to FAW;” “Analyzing and Understanding the Faith at Work Movement;’ “The future of the Faith at Work Movement.”
—A key quotation: “Whether conscious or unintended, the pulpit al too frequently sends the signal that work in the church matters but work in the world does not. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that workers, businesspeople, and other professionals often feel unsupported by the Sunday church in their Monday marketplace vocations.”

HOW THEN SHOULD WE WORK? REDISCOVERING THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF WORK, by Hugh Whelchel.

—The author’s purpose: “The purpose of this book is to explore the Biblical intersection of faith and work, attempting to understand the differences between work, calling, and vocation and how they should be Biblically applied in our daily lives.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Cultural Mandate;” “The Reformation View of Work;” “Primary and Secondary Callings.”
—A key quotation: “Work in different forms is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible, more than all the terms used for worship, music, praise, and singing combined.”

Weaving Work Truth into Church Life (Part Four)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Four offers brief descriptions and links to videos of various lengths that can be used in meetings of the gathered church. (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three)

Theology-of-Work Video Resources

In the classic Acres of Diamonds, published in 1890, Russell Conwell relates a legend he heard in India. A farmer, learning of the immense value of diamonds, sold his farm and went on a lifelong search for them. He failed, went broke, and committed suicide. But the man who bought his farm discovered it was loaded with diamonds.

Sometimes a treasure-trove lies unnoticed right under our noses. That’s the case with theology-of-work resources. Many members of the wider Body of Christ have created a wealth of work-truth assets—videos, books, articles—that can easily be tapped into for the benefit of those you meet with on Sundays. Yet far too few church leaders and Christians know of these riches.

Your church can make use of such resources in any number of ways. Videos of whole messages—powerful ones—can be shown occasionally during the sermon time on Sunday mornings. Shorter video clips can effectively illustrate points made by those who usually preach or teach. This blog will offer some brief descriptions of just a tiny sampling of video resources now available:

Tim Keller: “Why Work Matters”

—23 minutes. Why does your work matter to God? And why does God matter to your work? Tim Keller speaks to each of those in this video. He quotes from Martin Luther, who “talks about how wrong it is to think of dividing Christian work into spiritual work and secular or worldly work.” Luther wrote: “There has been a fiction by which bishops, priests, and monks are called the ‘spiritual estate,’ while princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are considered the ‘temporal estate.’ This is an artful lie and a hypocritical invention.”

Keller also quotes Robert Briner, author of Roaring Lambs, as saying: “There should be no less support or attention for an earnest Christian young person who's been accepted to Julliard School of Music than for one going off to a theological seminary. The church needs writers, performers, artists, speakers, politicians, businessmen and businesswomen, and workers in every craft and trade. In God's eyes there should be no hierarchy—there certainly should not be in ours.” Click Here

Tom Nelson, “Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work “

—20.4 minutes. In this video, Tom Nelson, who pastors Christ Community Church in Leawood, KS, describes how, after a decade in pastoral work, he confessed his “pastoral malpractice” to his congregation:

“About ten years into my ministry, I stood before my congregation and confessed to them. . . . I'd come to the conviction that as a pastor I needed to confess my pastoral malpractice. . . . For the first ten years of my ministry . . . I had failed to help people connect Sunday to Monday. . . . I had failed in my pastoral vocation to equip people for all of life. In other words I had spent the majority of my time equipping my congregation for what they were called to do the minority of their lives. This majority-minority disparity is rampant across the pulpits of America. It is fundamental that we understand that we need to address this Sunday to Monday gap.” Click Here

Dennis Bakke: “Joy at Work”

—13.3 minutes. Dennis Bakke co-founded and served as the CEO for Applied Energy Services (AES), one of the largest energy-supply companies in the world. In that company, he developed and tested a biblically-based approach to managing a business. In his book, Joy at Work, he describes how he implemented it in AES.

In this video, Bakke describes the purpose for which God puts us here on earth as, “to steward the resources, to meet needs in the world, and to evangelize. When we understand those things, it will change everything about how we work . . . it will change the way we operate our churches—it will change us, and we will truly experience joy at work.” Click Here

Bob Doll: “Following Christ in the Workplace”

—10.5 minutes. In this video testimony Bob Doll, chief equity strategist for Nuveen, a global investment company, addresses the Lausanne Global Leadership Forum in 2013. He relates how God used the loss of his job to deepen him and to shape his character. On the need for Christians to find and encourage each other, he says, “people in agnostic or sometimes God-hostile environments often need someone else to take the lead before they step up and share the fact that they are of faith as well.” Click Here

Mark Greene: “The Sacred-Secular Divide”

—3 minutes. In this video, Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity describes the “devastating impact” of split-level thinking among believers. Green includes the testimony of a teacher, who says:

“I teach Sunday school once a week for 45 minutes and my church asks me to come up the front so they can pray for me. For the rest of the week I'm a full-time teacher, and yet as far as I can remember, no one has ever asked to pray for the work that I do in school. It’s as if they want to support half my profession and not the other half. It's difficult because no one would say that teaching Sunday school is more important than the work I do for the rest of the week. But that's the unspoken message that I get. If you look at it this way, I've got 45 minutes once a week with children who are generally open to the gospel, with parents who are supportive of the faith. Or 45 hours a week with kids who have very little knowledge of Christianity and parents who are either as ignorant or hostile to the faith.” Click Here

“Workaholic”

—2.5 minutes. This video, produced by RightNow Media, takes a humorous look at a most serious topic—the danger of turning our work into an idol. Click Here

“Work is God’s Good Gift”

—2.3 minutes. This moving video is visual-musical poetry. It concludes, “There is beauty in work when we work as worship.” Click Here

Colleen Theron: “My Faith at Work”

—1.25 minutes. Colleen Theron, an environmental lawyer, tells how she had felt “almost guilty” about working in a non-church-related job. Church work, she thought, would prove that she was “really in ministry and doing the right thing.” But after years of feeling this way, she began exploring Scripture and finding “so many examples of God using people in their actual workplace.” Click Here

These are just a few of the many excellent video resources that can help you weave work-truth into church life. Hopefully, these samples will send you on a search to find additional videos.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Three)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Three suggests several theology-of-work teaching themes that will help prepare Christians to do their work as service to God and to people. (Part One) (Part Two)

Teach God’s Word on Work—Often

Forty years ago, books on serving God on the job were rare. Now they number in the hundreds. But most working Christians—for various reasons—won’t be reading any of them.

Countless hours of YouTube videos provide teaching on the theology of work. Yet chances are no one in your church has seen even one.

Today, an entire website, theologyofwork.org, offers hundreds of pages on faith in the workplace, small group studies with videos, and much more—but few working believers have heard about it.

Where, then, will that Christian who spends 2,000 hours a year on the job find biblical teaching on how to work with a Kingdom-of-God heart and mind? Only in a local church where the Sunday menu frequently includes work-truth. Church leaders who want to move in that direction may well ask:

Where to Begin?

Instruction in the theology of work should start with the truth that God himself is a worker. Three times Gen. 2:2-3 refers to God’s creation activity of chapter 1 as “work.” “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (emphasis added). Later Scripture pictures God as engaging in a variety of work roles: potter, gardener, architect, garment maker, warrior, builder, singer, shepherd, judge, refiner, and more.

Next, the theology of work focuses on the fact that the working God made people in his image and likeness. We work because God does. This gives dignity to all honorable work, whether manual or mental. God put his human creatures into a garden and assigned them “to work it and take care of it” (Gen 2:15). So, contrary to what many think, our work did not result from God’s curse (Gen. 3). His curse on the ground made work difficult—thorns, thistles, sweat, painful labor—but did not erase the essential goodness of work.

Where to Continue?

God the worker made us to be workers: biblical work-truth rests on that foundation. What after that? Teaching should assist believers in exploring the richness of how the Gospel transforms our labor days. The bullet points that follow offer a sampling of the areas that belong in a biblical theology-of-work teaching menu. Such instruction will help equip Christians in the workplace to:

• Grasp God’s original intention for human work—and its renewal in Christ. God made people to serve as his property managers over his real estate—the earth. We carry out that role by working. Sin has made the job difficult, but in Christ God has restored our capacity to care for his creation. “We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). We are “created . . . to do”—to work.

• Sort out biblical (and unbiblical) motivations for working in the world. Scripture gives us at least seven reasons for getting up and going to work each day. Mondays transformed!

• Identify and break free from the idolatries of today’s working environment. Making a living is one godly reason for working. But when money trumps all else, it quickly takes over as a false god. Pursuing power for power’s sake also forges an idol.

• Choose a biblically informed direction for one’s life work. I’ve taught a graduate-level theology-of-work course for seven-plus years. In each class, students have surveyed at least five Christians doing non-church work. I now have the results from nearly a thousand respondents. One of the questions asks: “Before you entered your life’s work, had you received any biblical instruction on how to go about choosing it?” Seventy-two percent say no. Young Christians, especially, need to know how to discern how God has gifted them and how this can help them discover his calling on their lives.

• Make god-honoring decisions about difficult right-wrong dilemmas on the job. Scripture does not speak directly to most of the ethical knots Christians must sometimes unravel in today’s workplaces. For example, you observe a coworker violating company Internet policies. Do you turn a blind eye out of love for him? Or do you notify the owners out of love for them? In addition to prayer, Christian workers need some ethical decision-making frameworks to help them be “as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.”

• Practice God’s call to rest, avoiding both underwork and overwork. Pressures in U.S. culture can push employees to become work-idlers or work-addicts. In Men Without Work, Nicholas Eberstadt writes: “By 2015, the number of prime-age inactive men [in the U.S.] was over 7 million.” By contrast, a recent study revealed that about 30 percent of the U.S. population is affected by workaholism. A biblical theology of work teaches the wisdom of God’s work-rest rhythm—one he himself modeled at Creation.

• Distinguish the truth from the lies about earnings and profit. Far too many Christians live in two minds about making money. Input from advertising and the media only make the subject of profit and wealth even more confusing—and sometimes guilt-inducing for believers who want to honor God. Those whose pay comes from so-called “secular” enterprises need sound biblical teaching here.

• Recognize and avoid the pitfalls of the unbiblical sacred/secular divide. Centuries of church tradition have conditioned Christians to think of work in higher/lower terms. In this distortion, the work of pastors and missionaries ranks well above that of salespeople and grocery clerks. But the biblical author Daniel worked as a government employee. Abraham raised sheep and cattle. And Jesus served many years as a carpenter-builder. In the surveys among Christians in non-church work conducted by my students (see above), 42 percent said they wished they could quit their jobs and take a church-related job. The sacred/secular divide must go.

• Seek Out and Encourage Fellow Christians at Work. Scripture instructs us to “encourage one another daily” (Heb. 3:13). That’s next to impossible in a congregation of even 100 people whom you may see once a week and speak with even less often. On the other hand, Christians who work for the same company may cross paths nearly every weekday. Looking back on decades of Sunday instruction, I cannot recall even once hearing a call to intentionally seek out, encourage, and pray for fellow believers in one’s work circle.

• Shine as light in the work world: glowing without glaring. God calls each Christian in the workplace to represent Christ in that setting. We are, as Jesus said, “the light of the world.” That includes our call to shine in the work world. Jesus said our light will shine through “good works” (Matt. 5:16). Light enables seeing. But a spotlight aimed directly into the eyes can blind. We are to glow in the dark, not glare like oncoming high-beams. Christians need help in learning how to be workplace witnesses with an appropriate balance of deeds and words.

Many pastors, lacking significant work-world experience, may not feel adequate for teaching these and other theology-of-work topics. But most congregations include people with years of on-the-job background. Those currently in the work force as well as the retired Christians make up a typically untapped pool of workplace experience. Together—they, with their workplace insights, alongside pastors, with their biblical depth—can bring the gospel-enhancing theology of work within reach of everyone in the congregation.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Two)

Why so little Sunday talk about weekday work? What’s behind the silence? Part One set the stage for a series on specific ways to bring work-truth into congregational meetings. The first step involves dealing with a viewpoint that can block the work topic from the Sunday agenda. What is this idea that stops such talk?

Visualize your next full-church meeting. What will people see as their purpose for getting together? How does your church leadership explain the reason for gathering? I ask this, because our purpose (or the lack of it) shapes everything we do. If I go into my garage intending to change the oil in my car, I’ll find a wrench and a drain pan. But if I mean to build a bookshelf, I’ll roll out my table saw and some sandpaper. Purpose steers my every action. It’s no different when it comes to church. How we answer the “Why meet?” question determines what does or does not take place on Sundays.

Do We Really Know Why We Should Meet?

As much as churches differ, virtually all seem to agree that the purpose for assembling is . . . to worship. So we have worship services, worship pastors, worship centers, worship teams, worship music, and worship leaders. There’s even worship software! Countless Christians equate worship with the songfest just before the sermon. Others see worship as a feeling of adoration or reverence for God.

If we define worship in those ways, and if we see worship as our purpose for gathering, what will the meeting agenda include? Praise music will fill a good bit of the time. A Bible message that inspires us to exalt God in our hearts, thoughts, and conduct will take most of the remaining minutes. Both good. But any talk about work—that earth-and-money-related thing we do on weekdays—will have a hard time finding its way in. After all, what does work have to do with those conceptions of worship?

But what if this almost-universal idea of why we gather—worship—differs from that which the New Testament teaches? What if worship, while not excluded, is not the main reason to meet with other Christ-followers? Is this farfetched? Some kind of heresy? Plenty of Bible scholars who have studied the New Testament on this subject say otherwise.

The New Testament Perspective on Gathering

In his book, Paul’s Idea of Community, Robert Banks, an Australian theologian and author, says this: “One of the most puzzling features of Paul’s understanding of ekklesia for his contemporaries, whether Jews or Gentiles, must have been his failure to say that a person went to church primarily to ‘worship.’ Not once in all his writings does he suggest that this is the case. Indeed it could not be, for he held a view of ‘worship’ that prevented him from doing so. . . . Since all places and times have now become the venue for worship, Paul cannot speak of Christians assembling in the church distinctively for this purpose.”

The late I. Howard Marshall served as Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In his paper, “How Far Did the Early Christians Worship God?” he investigates the “Why gather?” question. After studying the relevant New Testament passages, he wrote: “It is simply not the case that the purpose of Christian meetings was understood as being primarily and directly worship, homage and adoration addressed to God. To speak of a Christian meeting as being ‘a service of worship’ with the implication that everything which takes place must somehow be related directly to this primary purpose is to depart seriously from the NT pattern.”

Why, Then, Should we Gather as Believers?

So—if not worship—what is the New Testament reason for Christians to meet? Banks says: “The purpose of church is the growth and edification [building up] of its members into Christ and into a common life through their God-given ministry to one another.” Marshall agrees: “We are greatly hampered by the one-man ministry which is still so common. Somehow we need to give the individual members of the congregation the opportunity to exercise the gifts of the Spirit, to receive from one another and to show love to one another.”

What Banks and Marshall are saying echoes the purpose of the participatory church meeting Paul describes in I Cor. 14. All that is done should be for “the strengthening of the church” and so that “everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” In Heb. 10:24, 25, the writer—in urging believers not to skip their meetings—tells why they need to gather: so that they may “spur one another on toward love and good works,” and so that they may “encourage one another.”

Strengthening. Instructing. Encouraging. Spurring on. Gathering should be all about one-anothering in love—the very essence of Jesus’ new command in Jn. 13:34. When we discover and adopt the New Testament reason for our meetings, the agenda door will swing open so that work-truth may enter. As pictured in the graphic, we ought to worship in all we do, 24/7—and, yes, when we assemble as well.

Suppose we try to squeeze worship into the weekly meeting with other believers—or (smaller yet) into the time of singing with them? Then our undersized concept of worship will leave no room for something as seemingly “unspiritual” as our daily work. But what if a church structures its meetings to cultivate mutual up-building in all areas of life? What possibilities might that open up for workplace equipping?

Meeting Formats Can Encourage Mutual Up-Building.

In a meeting format that allows it, those with decades of experience in various workplaces can share how God uses them as light and salt there. Those with gifts of teaching can open up the richness of what the Bible says about our everyday work. And newbies to the work world can ask questions that stimulate others to help them prepare for the places to which God will send them to represent his Kingdom during the bulk of their waking hours.

Imagine the dialogue emerging out of that kind of mutual encouragement from the Scriptures and from the testimonies of those seeing God move in the whole lives of fellow Christians. It could cause those present to suck in their breath in awe as they realize what his Spirit is doing through ordinary people in their daily activities, including their work. In this way real—not artificially stimulated—worship would arise from the assembly to the glory of God.

The body of Christ includes a variety of members with diverse callings and gifts. When those members assemble, they must have the opportunity to cross-enrich each other. As Paul puts it in Eph. 4:16, the whole body “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” When it understands the New Testament purpose for gathering, the church can aim for each-othering.

A shared-church meeting welcomes all of God’s truth—including his truth about work.

Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part One)

--———Vincent van Gogh: Weaver Standing in Front of Loom———--

“Shared church.” What does it mean? It’s a short handle for one-anothering, as members of Christ’s body use their Spirit-given gifts for the benefit of all. It also refers to the vital give-and-take between the church gathered and the church scattered.

Large blocks of scattered-church hours are spent on work. Some paid, some unpaid. So the gathered church needs to invest plenty of time preparing people to serve Christ in their work arenas. A while ago, someone asked me, “If you could plant it from scratch, what would a church look like that fully embodied a biblical theology of work and really empowered its members to be ministers in the workplace? What would it do?”

That question sent me searching. I’ve found several ways a “church-from-scratch” might incorporate what God has revealed about work into the agenda of its regular gatherings. Using these practices in a church with years or decades of history would be more difficult—though not impossible. I hope to unroll these ideas in future blogs. In this blog, I’ll try to set the stage for those that follow.

Daily Work Deserves Major Church Attention

Life as a Christ-follower includes more than work. So the focus on our daily labor should not suck all the air out of a church agenda. In Eph. 4:11-12, Paul directs church leaders to prepare God’s people for the work of serving. Believers do such serving in their marriages, in their parenting, in their neighborhoods, in their relationships with believers and unbelievers, in their use of money, and so on. Over the years, many churches have offered training in most of these areas.

But even though Christians spend so much of their serving time working, equipping them to do their daily work as a faith-worship offering has been missing from most fellowships. The multiple strands in the pattern for Kingdom-of-God living need to be woven firmly into the fabric of each congregation. Yet in most churches, the threads of work-truth are not in the “loom.” This void has created the need to focus extra attention on how to incorporate the theology of work into the very life of the gathered church.

What Is the “Theology of Work”?

The theology of work is the study of what God says about work. In Scripture, God has given us answers to important questions: How did work originate? Why does God want us to work? What about work and money? What guards us from overworking? Does our work accomplish anything of spiritual value? In Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller and Kathryn Leary Alsdorf open Chapter One this way: “The Bible begins talking about work as soon as it begins talking about anything—that is how important and basic it is.”

The theology of work cannot replace the gospel. But the gospel must transform every square inch of our scattered-church lives. So right instruction on what Scripture reveals about work should take its proportional place in the menu of teaching about what Christians are to believe and to do. For most believers, paid or unpaid work claims a thick slice of life’s pie-chart. “Proportional,” then, should translate into a significant amount of teaching on work in a given year.

Truth or Tradition?

You’ve probably heard the saying, "The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so." Along the way, church people absorb many ideas about work that just “ain’t so.” This means that much of the teaching on work will involve unlearning—clearing away debris deposited by many religious traditions.

One of those time-worn but unbiblical notions splits work into two tiers. There’s the upper level. So-called “spiritual work” is seen to be the kind God really cares about—working on a church staff, crossing a cultural boundary or an ocean to do work overseen by a mission board. Work of that sort. Then there’s the lower tier—so-called “secular” work, which includes pretty much everything else. Programming computers. Keeping books for a corporation. Flying commercial jetliners. Managing a household. God, according to this way of thinking, doesn’t value lower-tier labor nearly as much as he does the higher “spiritual work.”

Split-Level Living

Two-tiered thinking has consequences. Labeling some work as “spiritual” and other work as “secular” leads to split-level living. As a result, Christians must cope with a divided mindset, a double-mindedness. This produces what might be called the “present-body-absent-heart” syndrome. Yes, people show up for work, but their hearts are somewhere else. They wish for evenings or weekends, when they can engage in church activities that “really matter to God.” Or they bide their time until retirement sets them free to do something they see as spiritually significant.

Gallup polls reveal that only one-third of American workers are “engaged” with their work. This leaves the other two-thirds as either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.” This present-body-absent-heart condition involves great loss not only for working Christians but for their employers as well.

Pint-Sized Vision

This sacred-secular work divide also produces small-scale thinking about why to get out of bed to go to work. Many Christians have been conditioned to believe “secular” work has only two values. One, it puts believers into contact with unbelievers, thus providing opportunities for sharing the good news about Jesus. And two, it provides money to pay the bills and to support “spiritual” causes—the church and overseas missions.

But—on any given day—seeing only these two values for “secular” work offers very little incentive. First, because the boss is paying for hours on the job, appropriate opportunities to explain the gospel to coworkers come only rarely. And second, paychecks don’t arrive every day. So most workdays can drag on with seemingly no eternal value. Actually, though, God has not just these two but many more reasons for sending so many Christ-followers into the work world.

Where can the misleading—and hurtful—ideas about work be replaced with biblical and true ones? The best place, I believe, is the gathered church. Earnings from the workplace, from the scattered church, support the gathered church. In shared church, the gathered part reciprocates with teaching and encouragement.

So in this upcoming series of blogs, I hope to describe a variety of ways in which a biblical theology of work can be woven into the life of your church. Ways in which your church, on Sundays, can equip God’s people for their workdays.

The OTHER Invisible Church

No doubt you know the difference between the visible and invisible church. The people you see on Sunday make up part of the visible church. Are all of them really trusting Jesus? Hopefully. But for some, maybe not. On the other hand, all who have truly come to God through faith in Christ make up the invisible church. Those represent the classic definitions.

But another invisible church exists. When a local church dismisses its Sunday meeting, a great many of its members scatter on weekdays into the world’s workplaces. There, in offices, schools, shops, homes, fields, factories, hospitals, and so on, they seem to “disappear.” The visible crowd on Sunday disbands into what C. Peter Wagner has called “the church in the workplace.” The other invisible church.

This workplace church is not invisible to God. It’s just that those in the visible church lose sight of it. And yet the church in the workplace can be found exactly where Jesus sends it—into the world (Jn. 17:18). Because of that, the visible church should stay in touch with and support it. What makes it so difficult for the visible church to see the one in the work world? Three reasons come to mind.

1. The Unreal Gap Between Spiritual and Secular Work

True story. A woman who had served as a computer programmer for the U.S. Navy went to Thailand and then Laos as a missionary. After six years she returned to the U.S. and began working for the federal government. Nothing prepared her for the contrast in how Christians related to her while overseas versus when she was back home.

“Once I let Christians know I was headed for Bangkok,” she recalls, “I suddenly began receiving frequent invitations to speak. Now that I carried the label ‘missionary,’ they just assumed I had something worth listening to. People constantly asked how they could pray for me and my work.”

But when she returned to work in the States, the letter-writers stopped asking about her work. The prayer support ended. “I was still doing the same things here as I had been doing there,” she says. “But now I experienced mostly an absence of interest in my work. I felt demoted.”

Her work—which the visible church could see while she was overseas—became invisible once she returned to her homeland. Although she did the same sort of work in both places, one kind was considered “sacred” and the other “secular.”

2. The Absence of Workplace Reports on Sunday

The workplace church also becomes invisible when it is rarely if ever spoken of in the gathered church. On furlough, the missionary to Thailand and Laos was often asked to report back to supporting churches. But those serving on the front lines of the workplace church hardly ever get to tell their churches what God is doing in and through them there. Lesslie Newbigin, who returned to his home in England after decades as a missionary in India, noticed this silence in the gathered church. In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society he wrote:

“Churches have had almost nothing to say. Each man [in the workplace] has been largely left to find his own way. If you ask for books on how a Christian should conduct a Sunday School you will find plenty. But if you ask for guidance to a Christian banker, or a Christian lawyer, or a Christian farmer as to 'how a servant of Jesus Christ understands and exercises these jobs', you will find almost nothing. For all the vast and varied warfare of the Church in the world, she has left her members largely to fend for themselves.”

What did Newbigin say should be done? “The congregation has to be a place where its members are trained, supported, and nourished in the exercise of their parts of the priestly ministry in the world. The preaching and teaching of the local church has to be such that it enables members to think out the problems that face them in their secular work in light of their Christian faith.”

3. I Know Where You Live but Not Where You Work

Glance through your church directory. You’ll find names, family members, and home addresses. But it’s virtually certain you won’t find occupations or workplaces. In a paper entitled, “Lesslie Newbigin’s Approach to the Modern Workplace,” Matt Kaemingk writes: “Newbigin aptly observed that the modern Western church had chosen to make itself ‘local’ to where its congregants slept but not where they worked. This created a situation in which the institutional church was local and relevant to one part of life and quite distant and irrelevant to the other.”

Although not everyone agrees, many think the term “missionary” should describe every Christian. Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon, once said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” When you drive out of the parking lot in many churches, you will see a sign that says, “You are Now Entering the Mission Field.” So it would seem that Christians in the work world are serving as God’s missionaries—engaged in his mission—to that part of his creation. The paths of Christians most often intersect with those of non-Christians in job-related settings.

Traditional, overseas missionaries are supported. Christians know their addresses—so they are written to. Christians hear their reports—so they are prayed for. Yet workplace missionaries—those in this invisible church—seldom receive this kind of backing.

Why Must the Invisible Church Become Visible?

What makes it so important that the missionaries in the invisible church be recognized and supported? Another quotation from Lesslie Newbigin helps to clarify that:

“It is in the ordinary secular business of the world that the sacrifices of love and obedience are to be offered to God. It is in the context of secular affairs that the mighty power released into the world through the work of Christ is to be manifested. The Church gathers every Sunday . . . to renew its participation in Christ’s priesthood. But the exercise of this priesthood is not within the walls of the Church but in the daily business of the world.”

One of those invisible-church missionaries works in the UK. She tells her story in “The Sacred-Secular Divide,” a video narrated by Mark Greene:

“I teach Sunday school once a week for 45 minutes, and my church asks me to come up front so they can pray for me. For the rest of the week, I’m a full-time teacher, and yet as far as I can remember, no one has ever offered to pray for the work that I do in schools. It’s as if they want to support half my profession and not the other half. It’s difficult, because no one would say that teaching Sunday School is more important than the work I do the rest of the week. But that’s the unspoken message that I get. And if you look at it this way, I’ve got 45 minutes once a week with children who are generally open to the gospel and parents who are supportive of the faith, or 45 hours a week with kids who have very little knowledge of Christianity and parents who are either as ignorant or hostile to the faith.”

How is the visibility in your church?

More on Distributed Church Leadership

How are churches led? The answer matters greatly—to you, to me, and to God’s Kingdom agenda.

One of the narrators in the Sheep Among Wolves movie (see previous blog) described leadership in the Iranian church as “decentralized” and “distributed.” Since viewing that film, I’ve been mulling over that word distributed. In a church with distributed leadership, what would keep it from sinking into everyone doing what is right in their own eyes?

The Distributor

Growing up with a Dad who fixed every engine on the farm, I soon learned the role of the distributor. It was that strange-looking little contraption with all the wires sprouting from its topside. Its main function? To send a high-voltage current to all the spark plugs—and to make certain each plug gets its jolt of electricity in the proper sequence and at just the right instant.

While young I also learned that God is a Distributor. He parceled out the Promised Land to his people, the Israelites. Jesus took the fish-and-bread lunch of a boy, multiplied it, and distributed the servings to the crowd. Reflecting this characteristic of the distributing God, Christians in the early church brought the proceeds from property sales and divvied them up among those who needed financial aid.

It’s easy to picture how electrical current, real estate, food, and money can be distributed. But leadership? How can it be shared around without inviting chaos? Conditioned by the way the world works, we expect top-down, concentrated leadership—with slang terms to match: head honcho, big cheese, top dog, and so on. Those in such power positions maintain control. They work to keep people—and the things we humans do—from getting out of line.

John Holmes: The flock of starlings acting as a swarm.

But the church in Iran operates with decentralized and distributed leadership. Who keeps the train on the rails?

Watch the Birds

While I was pondering all this, an article came to my attention—on swarming. Many of God’s creatures swarm. Birds do (see photo of starlings). Bees do (Deut. 1:44). Locusts do (Ex. 10:12). Fish do (I’ve seen them while snorkeling). But rather than displaying bedlam and confusion, such swarming creatures can form dynamic and free-as-the-wind patterns of great beauty—as in this YouTube example.

These stunning displays by starlings have, for centuries, led to speculation on how they do it. Is it extrasensory perception? Biological radio? Group soul? Groupthink?. Whatever the answer to the “How?” puzzle, an Audubon Magazine article says, “any [bird] member can initiate a movement that others will follow.” Many birds—operating as one body.

An Ephesians 4 Approach

But back to church leadership in Iran. In Sheep Among Wolves, Dalton Thomas says leadership there is “not based around a particular individual or skill set or gifting. It’s built around an Ephesians 4 framework of empowering everyone in the body.” Their experience, then, suggests that the God who made many animal creatures able to practice distributed leadership can also enable his reborn human creatures to do so.

Jesus himself invites us to learn about life in God’s Kingdom by birdwatching (Matt. 6:26). Even though not made in God’s image, such creatures can teach us vital lessons. Among us image-bearers, of course, we should expect the practice of distributed leadership to work from a completely different source of power.

Behind Distributed Church Leadership.

That word power, it seems to me, points us to the how of distributed church leadership. Jesus had promised those first disciples that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:8). And the Holy Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is a Distributor. Paul, after listing a number of gifts, explains, “It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts” (I Cor. 12:11, NLT).

The Holy Spirit, the Distributor, is also a Leader. It is “those who are led by the Spirit [who] are the children of God” (Rom. 8:14). So if all in a church allow God’s Spirit to lead them, they have the power to practice distributed leadership—each one responding to the impulses of the unseen Leader within. Only this can explain how the New Testament church was able to do what it did. In Acts 4:31, 32, they were “all filled with the Holy Spirit.” As a result, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” No human leader was urging or compelling them to act this way. Distributed leadership. Shared-church leadership.

On the other hand, if those in the church fail to follow the Holy Spirit’s internal leading, distributed leadership won’t work. In that case, our only alternative is to fall back on centralized, human leadership that is forceful enough, persuasive enough, loud enough, to keep us all in line. The world counts on hierarchies to control its armies, its politics, its businesses, and so on. But Jesus taught his disciples not to settle for that kind of leadership among themselves: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you” (Matt. 20:25-26).

A Leadership Alert

The New Testament reflects Jesus’s caution about dominant leadership. In church-related contexts, the NIV mentions “leaders” only five times. Always plural, never singular. Paul does not address his letters to church leaders. Rather, each is addressed to the whole church body itself—“To the church in . . .,” “To the saints in . . .,” and so on. Today, the focus has shifted. By googling just now on “church leadership,” I got well over 6 million hits.

If we Christians are capable of practicing distributed leadership, why does the New Testament speak of human church leaders at all—elders, shepherds, overseers, etc.? Why would we have any need for recognized leaders? Because members of Christ’s body have not yet arrived. God knows we will need some seasoned folks among us who are able, as needed, to keep us—or call us back—on course.

In the New Testament, we find non-dominant leaders serving in various helpful ways. For instance, because they have matured through testing, they are able to lead by setting examples for us (I Pet. 5:3). We can see the Jesus-life reflected in their marriages. In how they raise their children. In how they relate to non-Christians. In how they handle money. God also gives leaders the gift of being able to grasp a wide-angle view of the church body. They are to oversee it, to watch it with care. They help others discern their callings, find their faith-voices, and exercise their grace-gifts in the church and in the world. They create and maintain a setting in which members of Christ’s body may serve each other with those grace-gifts. Such leaders guard the church from false teachers, encourage it to push on through rough patches, and correct it when necessary.

But—returning to the bird-swarming analogy—we dare not let leaders do our “flying” for us. If they do, we will soon be content to sit back and enjoy the show as they perform their flying acts. Then our wing-muscles will become flabby. We may even forget we have wings. And when that happens, we will become dependent on the kind of overly prominent, run-the-show kind of leadership Jesus warns us against.

How our churches are led matters greatly to God’s Kingdom agenda.

Shared Church in an Unlikely Place

One of the fastest-growing church movements in the world astonishes us Westerners. This Christian movement lacks most of what we may think a church needs to flourish. Growing at nearly 20 percent a year, its progress leaves us dumbfounded. The movement owns no buildings. Has no denominations. No Bible schools or seminaries. Lacks any centralized leadership. Is made up completely of former Muslims.

And It’s In . . . Iran

A feature-length movie about this rapidly-expanding Christian community has recently been released. Sheep Among Wolves (Vol. 2) documents the Gospel-eruption taking place in Iran. Produced by Joel Richardson and directed by Dalton Thomas for Faith Alliance International, the film says maybe a million people in that Muslim nation now follow Jesus. Sheep Among Wolves lets us hear the stories both from Iranian Christians themselves and from outsiders who work closely with them when they visit other Muslim countries.

Broadly Shared Leadership

The film leaves no doubt: Jesus is forming a shared-church environment in Iran. As Thomas explains: “The leadership is decentralized and it is distributed [see diagrams]. It’s not based around a particular model. It’s not based around a particular individual or skill set or gifting. It’s built around an Ephesians 4 framework of empowering everyone in the body.”

Thomas continues: “The entire body of Christ should have the yoke of leadership upon them for disciple-making, for the apostolic, for the prophetic, for the evangelistic, for the pastoral and for the teaching. But if we reduce the church to pastoral and teaching ministry, and we sever the rest of it . . . it’s going to undermine the church’s ability to actually be the church.”

Non-Western Approaches

These Christians in Iran are not constructing church buildings. In fact, the regime is closing and destroying such buildings within its borders. Instead of wood and concrete, the church is being built of the “living stones” of I Peter 2:5—disciples willing to follow Jesus even if it costs them their lives. An anonymous believer explains, “Everything is foundational on prayer. We start with prayer, we find people of peace through prayer. We even find locations through prayer. When we have prayed and found a person of peace, we start speaking to that person.” Another says, “We don’t convert to disciple; we disciple to convert.” Thomas says, “When we talk about church planting in the West, generally what we’re talking about is a pastor or a teacher starting a community . . . who listen to him give speeches for half an hour to an hour once a week. This is foreign to the Iranians.”

The typical church model so familiar to Westerners, which depends on stage performances and sundry programs, does not work in Iran. Using a computer analogy, Thomas says, “The ‘software’ of the gospel will not run on the ‘hardware’ of Western church in the Middle East. . . . In fact, I don’t even think it can run in the US, and I don’t think it can run in Europe, but we’re still perpetuating this model, and we’re still selling the hardware even though we haven’t quite realized in the West that our software doesn’t run on it.”

A Majority are Women

Women play a major part in this distributed leadership. They make up about 55 percent of the Iranian-church movement and leadership. Most have endured unspeakable suffering. As one woman puts it: “Every day I ask the Lord, ‘What part of my testimony will help the person in front of me?’ The Holy Spirit shows me what part of my testimony I need to share with women. I tell that part of my testimony, and I wait on what the Holy Spirit wants me to do next. I will talk about when I was raped, or how I was beaten, or how my father didn’t love me, or my suicide attempts.”

One story comes from the experience of a girl who cannot recall a time when her father was not raping her. She says, “If God can forgive Adam and Eve after he’s given them everything, and just loved on them, then I can forgive my father that has raped me all my life.” The inserts from the movie—Fatma, Ali, and Shirin—show vignettes of other women and men now bearing Gospel fruit in the Iranian church.

Are We Being Rocked to Sleep?

The film sounds a wake-up to the West. It includes the story of a Christian couple who moved from Iran to the U.S. After living in America for a while, the wife begged her husband to return to their home country. He thought she was out of her mind. “Who wants to go back to Iran under all sorts of oppression where the sharing of your faith could bring the end of your life or brutal incarceration or rape or all sorts of horrible things?” But she insisted, explaining, “There’s a satanic lullaby here. All the Christians are sleepy—and I’m feeling sleepy.”

Iranians Who Love Israelis

Sheep Among Wolves recognizes the great gulf between Iran’s government and the church growing within its borders. The film quotes an Iranian official as saying, ““We were not created for this world. We were chosen to wage jihad. We shall fight them on a global level, not just in one spot. Our war is not a local war. We have plans to defeat the world powers. We are planning to break America, Israel, and their partners and allies. Our ground forces should cleanse the planet from the filth of their existence.”

Commenting on this official perspective, an Iranian disciple of Jesus says, “This is the message that we receive inside of Iran—that Israel loves to kill the Palestinians and watch their blood run in the streets. This is why many Iranians hate the Jews. But God transforms our perspective on the Jews when we come to Christ, and we fall in love with the Jews.”

A Biblical Parallel

After watching Sheep Among Wolves, I recalled the scene when David showed up in King Saul’s army and offered to fight Goliath. Saul, meaning well, thinks he can best protect this naïve young son of Jesse by outfitting him with his own armor. A deadly serious situation? Yes. But the episode turns comical. Watch the king, who towers over almost everyone else. He lifts his impressive bronze helmet from his royal head, stoops down, and installs it on this boy. The heavy armor sags as Saul drapes it over the much younger body. Then, over the baggy armor, the king straps his own sword on David. In The Message paraphrase, David tells Saul, “‘I can't even move with all this stuff on me. I'm not used to this.’ And he took it all off” (I Sam. 17:39).

Thinking like Saul, we Western Christians seem to believe doing church takes a lot of weighty gear. But more like David, this church in the Middle East has no need for all our heavy equipment. Apparently Jesus, who is building his church there, affirms that. One in the film says, “The Lord is using the Iranian church to speak to the church in the West.”

From our Iranian brothers and sisters, what might we learn about doing church?

Click here to watch the film on YouTube.

Sermons: Core of Church Meetings?

Over nearly eight decades—as infant, child, adult—I’ve been part of at least a dozen churches. Large and small, urban and rural. As I visualize the arrangement of the meeting room in each church building, one thing stands out: the pulpit. Usually of wood, it was ornate or plain. Sometimes just a simple stand. Almost always on an elevated platform, it served as the focal point of the layout. Rows of pews or chairs faced it. And from it came the main event of the gathering, the sermon.

Throughout my upbringing in the church culture, it seemed only natural that the sermon serve as the centerpiece of our Sunday meetings. Why? Because of its length and placement in the agenda. And because that was all I had ever known. Today, it’s easy to assume that the sermon and the way we “do church” is the way first-century believers must have done it. Pulpits and sermons—both appear so essential to church as we practice it now.

Encouraging Signs

But more and more church leaders are questioning our customary Sunday ways. They are seeing that church-as-silent-audience cannot measure up to church-as-one-anothering seen in the New Testament. The most recent example of movement in this direction just came to my attention—an October 2019, Premier Christianity article by Sky Jethani: “The Case Against Sermon-Centric Sundays.”

In his article, Jethani, a pastor and former Managing and Executive Editor of Leadership Journal, “explains why digital technology is disrupting our 500-year-old emphasis on lengthy Sunday sermons.” He traces some of the dramatic leaps in humankind’s ability to communicate. We’ve gone from scrolls to hand-written codexes to printing presses to electronic devices. Each step in this evolution of information-sharing affected the shape of Christian meeting practices.

Technology has Transformed Us

But, says Jethani, “With the advent of digital technology and smartphones, we are witnessing the most significant shift in communication since the printing press. . . .Anyone with a smartphone may access thousands of sermons from anywhere, anytime. . . . This low demand and high supply means the market for Bible instruction has reduced the cost to virtually zero. . . . There is a lot of excellent, orthodox content available online – but few churches are helping their people find and engage with it. What if church leaders reallocated some of the time that had been devoted to sermon preparation, and instead used it to curate the best online biblical resources and content for their people to engage with, Monday through Saturday?”

I can personally confirm this easy access to great teaching. Three times a week I spend nearly an hour in a fitness center. There, rather than watching the TV monitors on the exercise machines, I listen to some of finest biblical scholars and teachers on the planet. How? By tuning into YouTube on my iPhone, which delivers the messages right into my ears.

Assessing the Sermon

The sermon, though, continues as the focal point of most congregational meetings. This in spite of the absence in first-century gatherings of sermons of about the same length by the same person week after week. David Norrington, in the conclusion to his book, To Preach or Not to Preach: The Church’s Urgent Question, writes: “In the New Testament churches the growth into spiritual maturity of both individuals and communities was achieved by a variety of means, which did not include the regular sermon.” He says sermons may only have become “standard practice . . . as late as the 4th century.” Martin Luther and other reformers made sermons the centerpiece of church meetings. John Calvin called the preacher “the mouth of God.”

Today, Jethani, says, “Most churches have inherited a 16th Century model that is increasingly unsustainable with 21st Century realities. . . . Pastors carry a Reformation mindset that sees Bible teaching as a scarcity, which makes their sermons valuable, while millennials with a digital mindset recognize the abundance of Bible teaching available, making most pastors’ sermons, and therefore Sunday attendance, unnecessary.”

Widespread Isolation

It may seem to millennials that getting together with other believers is not needed. Yet at the same time, these younger people typically long for the kind of relationships and one-anothering called for in Jesus’ New Command (John 13:34-35). Could it be that at least part of their reason for considering church meetings “unnecessary” may be that passive-audience church meetings are all they have ever known?

Jethani cautions, “both biblical instruction and gathering with believers remains essential to our faith and mission. There is” he says, an epidemic of loneliness in both the US and UK. We are more connected than ever digitally, but more isolated than ever relationally. Attending a church with hundreds of others, all facing a stage and listening to a preacher, does little to overcome this sense of disconnection.”

That’s a point I make in Curing Sunday Spectatoritis: From Passivity to Participation in Church: “Audience mode, while providing some sense of being together, allows us to assemble with our individuality unchallenged. Audience mode allows me to come and go with little or no perception of responsibility for the other spectators. Audience mode provides slight if any opportunity to lay down my life for others or to risk using my Spirit-given gifts. Audience mode means that, in spite of some surface socializing, I am free to leave just as isolated and self-absorbed as I arrived.”

The Alternatives?

What can we do in lieu of the 16th Century model of preaching? Jethani is not asking us to abandon messages from qualified teachers. Neither is he “advocating one new model.” Instead, Jethani points to two promising directions being practiced by some churches.

The first approach restores the Lord’s Table, rather than the pulpit, as the main focus of the church meeting,. That Table, Jethani points out, “can’t be digitized. Communion is an incarnate experience. The bread is held, blessed, broken, given, and eaten. Believers gather to pray, confess, absolve and affirm. The entire enterprise requires engagement and activity. It cannot be passively listened to via headphones. The body and blood cannot be downloaded or streamed.” Of course, history teaches that even the Table can be co-opted as an opportunity for clerical domination.

Jethani’s second suggestion notes what Francis Chan did after leaving his California megachurch. He began a system of interconnected house churches, “which allows the church gatherings to focus on prayer, fellowship, practical application, relationship-building, and encouragement.” Such an arrangement lets church leaders spend more time developing disciples and less time on sermon preparation.

Earlier blogs in this website have identified other ways to make meetings less sermon-centric. Click on these links:

• A Fresh Look at the Sermon

• Interactive Preaching in Shared Church

• Teaching One Another in Shared Church

The Sticking Point?

What does Jethani see as the most formidable barrier to leaving the sermon-centric model and moving in new directions? He writes: “I suspect the most significant obstacle is within preachers’ hearts. Are we willing to give up the spotlight? Are we willing to step aside from the pulpit and welcome other gifted Bible teachers into our ministries? Are we willing to lay down our lives our microphones and our egos for our sheep? The future shape of the Church depends on how we answer these questions.”

Is continuing on the only path we have ever known the best way? The biblical way?

Unearthing Shared Church

“See that mound over there?” the Israeli guide asked our tour group. “It’s covering some 20 civilizations.” As our minibus continued around Israel, we saw many sites where archaeologists were unearthing evidence of long-forgotten ways of life.

The Mound of Traditions

In a somewhat similar way, the participatory meeting patterns of the first-century church lie buried under layer upon layer of church traditions. As the centuries came and went, the church lived through the spiritual equivalent of hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Each left its coating of sand, silt, or debris. Leaders, faced with disunity, twisted teachings, and selfish ambition, put into place practices they thought would meet the crisis of the moment. Many remedies, perhaps justified as temporary measures, stayed put as succeeding generations made them sacred.

As a result, church meetings today deprive us of the one-anothering called for in Jesus’ new command and practiced by first-century believers. So twenty-first-century century Christians find it difficult even to imagine what went on in those original church gatherings. How can we get to the buried treasure? We need scriptural “shovels” to dig our way through the traditional strata to unearth the shared-church ways followed by those early believers.

I recently came across such a useful “shovel”—an article by Michael Konomos. “Participatory Church” appeared in the website of the International Teaching Ministry of Douglas Jacoby. In it Konomos looks at the clues that point to what first-century Christians did when they met. Below are excerpts from his article (in italics), followed by some concluding comments of my own.

_______________________________________

I am taking a closer look at the case for participatory church meetings outside 1 Corinthians 14. I will concede that 1 Corinthians 14 is the closest that we have to a model/command to do so, and that in general there is a dearth of scriptures describing church meetings. One might argue that means it is up to us to do as we wish, or one might argue that the structure of the meeting was assumed. Whatever the conclusion one draws in light of these unanswered questions, it would be foolish to simply ignore the evidence that we do have. With that in mind, I posit the following...

In general, we are not left with very many instructions in the NT regarding meetings of the church, but what little that we do have seems to point to a more participatory meeting than what we are used to seeing in modern churches.

The clearest case for this type of meeting is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church.

1 Cor 14:26-38
v26- “Everyone has”... All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.

A good exercise is to consider the “one another” passages throughout the NT. After reading each of them, follow it with a “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader” and see if it sounds like it is in keeping with the plain meaning of the passage.

Romans 15:14
I am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader”

Ephesians 5:19
Speak to each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader”

Colossians 3:16
Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom...sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader”

Colossians 4:2
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader”

1 Timothy 2:8
I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing. “...but not at the church meeting unless you are a leader”

There are other fragments of evidence scattered throughout the NT pointing to a more participatory meeting.

Acts 15:4-5
The believers that belonged to the party of the Pharisees were apparently able to stand up during a meeting express their convictions. These were notably not the elders or apostles (v.4).

Acts 15:22
The apostles and elders, together with the whole church, make a decision.

Acts 20:7
Paul may have been “dialoguing”

Perhaps the most powerful argument of all is to think of all the teaching sessions/‘church meetings’ that Jesus held. Were they participatory or rigidly structured? Did people ask questions or sit silently in their chairs? Look through countless scriptures in the gospels—Jesus taught through dialogues much more often than monologues! Jesus “taught” by asking questions—and often not rhetorical ones!

What is the likely format in a church in which all of the members were ‘priests’ that was born in the synagogues and met in each other’s homes? Would it look like the old Priest-officiating-over-the-wretched-people-model?

This is clearly not an air-tight case for participatory meetings. The truth is that, as with many questions we have, we are not left with 100% certainty about the answers. Surely Ockham’s Razor [the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the right one] would seem to be an appropriate philosophy when posed with these questions. The simplest explanation is that the early church had clear, dynamic leadership and participatory meetings in which the various members of the church were able to exercise their gifts. The reasons that modern churches are not conducted in this manner have much more to do with centuries of tradition than they do with a careful study of scripture.

_______________________________________

Tradition versus Scripture

The conflict between those two stretches back a long way. Jesus fought in that battle: “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt. 15:3-4). Paul warned that human traditions can actually gain control over us (Col. 2:8).

Check your own church’s constitution or statement of faith. It may say something like, “the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice,” or “Scripture is the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.”

Put differently, God’s Word in the Bible—not human tradition—is to have the say-so in both what we believe and what we do. In many cases, although the Bible gives no explicit believe/do command, we discover God’s will by seeing what several passages—taken together—point to. Here’s a “believe” example. Nowhere does Scripture say, “Believe in the Trinity.” Yet we believe in the threeness of the one God because of what Scripture says about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And here’s a “do” example. No commandment says, “Meet on Sunday.” But most Christians do so because we see that pattern in Acts 20:7 and I Cor. 16:2 and because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

As the Konomos article points out, the New Testament does not command us in so many words to make our meetings participatory. But the bulk of the evidence says first-century church meetings were highly interactive and relational—shared church. And that makes total sense. Would the all-wise God have given a spiritual gift “to each one of us” (I Cor. 4:7) only to have us bury it unused during Sunday meetings? How does the many-membered, multi-gifted Body of Christ mature? It “grows and builds itself in love as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16).

Search for yourself. Can you find any evidence that New Testament church meetings looked anything like the passive-audience format most churches now follow on Sundays?

Focus on the Frontline

Suppose on Sunday you were to ask ten people, “Who serves at the frontline in our church?”

Chances are that several would say the frontline people are the pastor and those in on the elder board or leadership group. If you heard that response, would you catch the hidden assumption behind it—that the frontline lies within the gathered church? No, says Neil Hudson, in Imagine Church: Releasing Whole-Life Disciples. He sees the church’s frontlines in those locations into which it scatters.

Your Frontline: Where You Live

He explains, “By the term ‘frontline’, we mean the place where we realize God’s calling to engage with non-Christians in mission. Of course, we are called to be missional in all of life, and called to grow in godliness wherever we are, but usually there’s a particular place or group of people that we sense God is guiding us to bless and reach out to. They are often in the place where we spend most of our time—school, work, neighbourhood, a gym, a club.”

While “frontline” shows up repeatedly in his book, Hudson uses the term “whole-life” even more. Most often whole-life modifies disciples or discipleship. Hudson says, “Whole-life discipleship intends to mean what it says: there is no area of a Christian’s life that Jesus does not have ownership of, and there is no part of their life that he does not want to use for his glory.”

The Imagine Project

Hudson serves on the Imagine Project with The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). In that role, he led a three-year project involving 17 churches in a study of “how church communities might learn to engage in the central task of whole-life disciple-making.” The project involved hundreds of Christians and church leaders. In his book, Hudson aims to show how a church can be transformed into one that produces whole-life disciples—people equipped to carry out Jesus’s mission in whatever setting they scatter into on weekdays.

But he notes, “whole-life disciple-making churches are in fact rather rare.”

Shifting Paradigms

In Chapter One, Hudson admits how difficult he himself had found the challenge to move toward whole-life discipling. As a pastor, he heard LICC’s Mark Greene argue for abolishing the sacred-secular dualism that has thwarted the church’s mission for so long. Greene’s urging to make whole-life disciples left Hudson feeling “indignant. I wanted to defend my past sixteen years in church leadership” But deeper down, he knew Greene had spoken truth.

Hudson went home and tested what he had heard in a church-wide prayer meeting. He asked three Christians to tell what they were going through regarding work. One was unemployed, one enjoyed his work, and one had just begun a job. Hudson asked them to explain what God was teaching each of them about him and themselves. He had posted four signs in the meeting room: “I love my job,” “I’d like a new job,” I wish I still worked,” and “I need to know what to do next.” Each one present in the meeting gathered around the sign that best fit their situation. Then those in the four groups discussed their circumstances and prayed for each other.

That prayer meeting, Hudson says, “triggered something in me.” Fast-forward to the three-year project. In his book, Hudson includes reports from pastors whose churches had taken part in it. For example, this pastor described the transformation that took place in his own church culture:

“What’s changed? Everything has changed, and the biggest change has been in me. I’ve had to change the most. For many years we have been an ‘attractional’ church. The central focus was on getting people into the church building. And over the years we’d done this well, filling the church building and putting on great services. But gradually we began to realize there was a disconnect between what was happening in the building on a Sunday and what was happening in people’s lives during the week. It was as though once we left the building, the really important business was over. I needed to be reminded that for the church members, it was just beginning.”

Five Challenges

Hudson knows transforming a church’s culture to one of whole-life disciple-making is not easy. He names five challenges:

1. “The challenge of people recognizing that this is what being a Christian means. . . . Many have little imagination to embrace the possibility that God would be able to use them in their everyday life for his purposes, or that God would engage in shaping their lives through mundane activities.”

2. “The challenge of the inward pull of the gathered church. . . . People easily begin to feel that the important spiritual activities take place in the midst of the gathered congregation, and that to be caught up in activities away from this community is to be dominated by ‘secular’ concerns which are, by definition, things that are outside the orbit of God’s dynamic interest.”

3. “The challenge to the role of leaders. . . . A primary component of the role of leaders is to help equip the people of God for their ministry. . . . Success will be marked by the number of people who have embraced their own frontlines as their arenas for ministry and are living fruitfully there.”

4. “The challenge of sustaining change. . . . It’s one thing to begin to address an issue; it’s another to keep going until whole-life thinking becomes a natural and self-sustaining response. . . . You must ensure that the vision of the Lordship of Christ over the universe and the church is presented continuously, so that people never unwittingly retreat to a personalized therapeutic form of Christianity.”

5. “The challenge of spiritual resistance. . . . A desire to release the people of God to serve him well will attract the attention of the enemy. . . . Os Guinness’s warning about our activities being privately engaging but publicly irrelevant would seem to be the perfect solution to the enemy of God’s people.”

Asking Some Bold Questions

In light of these challenges, Hudson recommends making “one-degree shifts.” As the well-worn proverb has it, “Rome was not built in a day.” But making long-term changes in the culture of a church to one of whole-life disciple-making should include asking some uncomfortable “why” questions. For example:

“Why do we sing so much?”
“Why does one person get to speak uninterruptedly for twenty to thirty minutes?”
“Why do we hear so little about everyday life in church?”
“Why do the songs we sing seem so disconnected from our time and place?”
“Why do people who are under stress in their everyday lives feel as though there’s nowhere they can talk about it in church circles?”

Jesus sends his followers into the world as light, salt, and seed. Every metaphor points to something that must be scattered to carry out its purpose. Only as we prepare whole-life disciples for their dispersed roles as 24-7 agents King Jesus will they glow in the dark, retard decay, and produce fruit that lets the world taste samples of the Kingdom yet to come.

Would Imagine Church: Releasing Whole-Life Disciples make a first-rate Christmas gift for the leaders in your church?