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In the West during the time of Christendom, the church could afford to limit its discipleship and training of believers to prayer, Bible study, and evangelism because most Christians were not facing non-Christian values at work, in their neighborhoods, or at school. They did not need (or did not think they needed) to reflect deeply about a Christian approach to business, art, politics, the use of community resources, or race relations, to name a few examples. In a missional church today, however, believers are surrounded by a radically non-Christian culture. They require much more preparation and education to “think Christianly” about all of life, public and private, and about how to do their work with Christian distinctiveness.
But even this conviction is countercultural. Our Western cultures continue to cherish the Enlightenment “fact-value distinction,” namely, that only things that can be proven scientifically are facts, and therefore facts constitute the only legitimate basis for public work and discourse. Conversely, everything religious, transcendent, or subjective belongs in the sphere of values and should therefore be kept private. The implication for persons of faith is that their religious convictions are not to be brought to bear on their work, whether it is banking, acting, teaching, or policy making. In such an increasingly secular and post-Christian culture, it has become normal for believers to seal off their faith beliefs from the way they work in their vocations. The few who resist usually do so by being outspoken about their personal faith rather than by allowing the gospel to shape the way they actually do art, business, government, media, or scholarship. The church plays an essential role in supporting and encouraging individual Christians as they engage the culture, helping them to work with excellence, distinctiveness, and accountability in their professions.
The Gospel Shapes Our Work
Dualism is a philosophy that separates the spiritual/sacred from the rest of life. It originally had roots in Hellenistic thought, which viewed the material world as bad and the spiritual world as good. The Enlightenment’s sharp division between the public world of “objective facts” and a private world of “subjective values” and spirituality is a descendant of dualism (as is the false dichotomy we addressed in the previous chapter regarding “conservative” word ministry and “liberal” deed ministry). These divisions continue to shape the way people understand and express their faith, leading to a widespread form of dualism that sees the church and its activities as good and untainted and the secular world as bad and polluting. In this view, the best way to truly serve God is through direct forms of ministry — teaching, evangelizing, and discipling. Christianity is seen as a means of individual spiritual peace and strength, not as a comprehensive interpretation of reality that pervades everything we do. Over the past few generations, this dualistic approach to ministry and life has effectively removed many Christians from places of cultural service and influence.
A Center Church theological vision promotes the centrality of the gospel as the basis for both ministry in the church and engagement with the culture. As we have tried to show, gospel-centered churches examine all that they do in light of the gospel of grace. But this goes beyond confronting legalistic Christianity to include confronting dualistic Christianity. Why? Because the two are actually related! Legalistic Christianity leads to dualistic Christianity. When people fail to grasp the gospel of grace, they tend toward a Pharisaical obsession with ritual purity or cleanness. If we assume we are saved by the purity and rightness of our lives, we are encouraged to stay within the confines of the church, content to be in relationships and situations where we don’t have to deal with nonbelievers and their ideas. In addition, the black-and-white mentality of legalism does not allow for the kinds of flexibility and tolerance for uncertainty that are necessary for deep, thoughtful Christian reflection, creativity, and vocation. For example, while the Bible does tell us a great deal about how the church should operate, it doesn’t give explicit details about how to run our businesses in a Christian way. To do so requires engaging with the ideas of the world in a thoughtful manner, which is difficult and threatening — and it is easy to revert to dualism.
The opposite of dualism is worldview Christianity. Christianity is more than simply a set of beliefs I hold so I can achieve salvation for my individual soul. It is also a distinct way of understanding and interpreting everything in the world. It brings a distinct perspective on human nature, right and wrong, justice, beauty, purpose, scientific discovery, technology, and work. If I believe the universe was created, entered, and redeemed by a personal, triune, creator God — rather than believing it happened by accident — then I will necessarily have a distinct view on every one of these fundamental issues. And these perspectives will determine how I live my daily life.
The Bible teaches that all our work matters to God. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers believed that “secular” work is as valuable and God honoring as Christian ministry. When we use our gifts in work — whether by making clothes, building machines or software, practicing law, tilling fields, mending broken bodies, or nurturing children — we are answering God’s call to serve the human community. Our work then, whatever it is, matters greatly to God.
It is equally true to say that God matters to all our work. That is, we also believe that the gospel shapes the motives, manner, and methods we use in our work. What, then, is the vision for work held by a church that emphasizes the centrality of the gospel, serves the city, engages the culture, and cultivates a missional community? We do not want Christians to privatize their faith away from their work; nor do we want them to express it in terms of a subculture. Rather we want to see Christians growing in maturity, working in their vocations with both excellence and Christian distinctiveness, seasoning and benefiting the culture in which they live.
Churches must help Christians see how the gospel shapes and informs our work in at least four ways:
1. Our faith changes our motivation for work. For professionals and others who are prone to overwork and anxiety, the gospel prevents us from finding our significance and identity in money and success. For working-class people who are prone to captivation to what Paul calls “eyeservice” (Col 3:22 KJV; “their eye is on you,” NIV) and drudgery, our faith directs us to “work . . . with all [our] heart, as working for the Lord” (Col 3:23).
2. Our faith changes our conception of work. A robust theology of creation — and of God’s love and care for it — helps us see that even simple tasks such as making a shoe, filling a tooth, and digging a ditch are ways to serve God and build up human community. Our cultural production rearranges the material world in such a way that honors God and promotes human flourishing. A good theology of work resists the modern world’s tendency to value only expertise in the pursuits that command more money and power.
3. Our faith provides high ethics for Christians in the workplace. Many things are technically legal but biblically immoral and unwise and therefore out of bounds for believers. The ethical norms of the Christian life, grounded in the gospel of grace, should always lead believers to function with an extremely high level of integrity in their work.
4. Our faith gives us the basis for reconceiving the very way in which our kind of work is done. Every community works on the basis of a collective map of what is considered most important. If God and his grace are not at the center of a culture, then other things will be substituted as ultimate values. So every vocational field is distorted by idolatry. Christian medical professionals will soon see that some practices make money for them but don’t add value to patients’ lives. Christians in marketing will discern accepted patterns of communication that distort reality, manipulate emotions, or play to the worst aspects of the human heart. Christians in business will often discern a bias to seek short-term financial profit at the expense of the company’s long-term health or to adopt practices that put financial profit ahead of the good of employees, customers, or others in the community. Christians in the arts live and work in a culture in which narcissistic self-expression can become the ultimate end. And in most vocational fields, believers encounter workplaces in which ruthless, competitive behavior is the norm. A Christian worldview provides believers with ways to interpret the philosophies and practices that dominate their field and bring renewal and reform to them.1
How the Church Can Help
We must, therefore, reject approaches to work that counsel withdrawal or indifference regarding the culture. Members of such churches are told to either evangelize and disciple through the local church or, at the very least, to send in their tithes so the more committed Christians can please God directly by doing the work of ministry. In these types of churches, there is little to no support or appreciation for the “secular” work of Christians. On the other hand, we must also reject the approach that stresses social justice and cultural involvement but fails to call us to repentance, conversion, and holiness. We want to avoid both simple cultural confrontation and cultural assimilation and instead become an agent for cultural renewal. We want to disciple our people to work in the world out of a Christian worldview.
I believe the church needs to help people work in three specific ways: accountably, distinctively, and excellently.
Working Accountably: Vocation-Specific Spiritual Nurture
There is a need to provide the basic “means of grace” — prayer, mutual/peer ministry and accountability, learning in community, shepherding oversight — that both fits the time patterns and addresses the life issues of those in a particular vocation. This will address two common problems. First, the jobs and careers of urbanized culture increasingly do not fit into the traditional “forty hours with weekends off ” pattern. They increasingly require travel, have seasonal cycles, and entail many changes of residence, in addition to long and/or changing weekly hours. As a result, many who are moving up in their careers find it difficult to access the normal venues for spiritual nurture — Sunday services and weekly weeknight small groups. So you will need to devise creative ways of providing this nurture as you reflect on these kinds of questions: Should some groups meet only monthly face-to-face but weekly online? Should some church staff be released to do more frequent one-on-three shepherding and discipleship?
The second dynamic is that each vocation presents many spiritual and moral issues, ethical quandaries, temptations, discouragements, and other questions that particularly confront the Christians in that profession. A good deal of spiritual nurture in the church is very general and only addresses generic or private-world matters. But we spend most of our week in our vocational field, and we need to hear how other Christians have dealt with the same problems we face every day. Some vocations are so demanding that Christians will drop out of them if they fail to receive specific encouragement and support. So Christians in the same profession need to mentor and support each other.2
At Redeemer, working accountably takes the form of what we call “vocational fellowships,” made up of Christians in the same vocation who band together to minister to one another in the ways mentioned above. Some vocational fellowships consist of periodic gatherings in which people in related professions meet, listen to speakers, and discuss a topic. Others have monthly meetings or weekly small groups. Midsized groups can also be based on vocational commonality rather than on geographic location. For example, you might have a monthly or biweekly meeting of artists. Not only do vocation-specific groups provide accountability and encouragement; they can have an interesting evangelistic edge. Often members of a profession who don’t profess to be believers will be attracted toward thoughtful and supportive fellowships of Christians whose work they respect.
Working Distinctively: Worldview Development and Training
For many of us, it is obvious we are working for the Lord when we directly use our gifts to convey Christian messages. But we don’t always know how to work distinctively for the Lord while going about less obviously Christian cultural and vocational tasks. It is easy for a singer to feel he is using his gifts for Christ as he sings “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted” from Handel’s Messiah, but how does the gospel make the rest of his work distinctive? Is he just a singer who happens to be a Christian? Or is he a fully Christian singer whose art is shaped by the gospel every day of the week? How will his work be any different from that of a person with radically different beliefs about human nature, God, and the meaning of life? Will the only difference be that he doesn’t sleep with his costars or that he only sings religious music? Is career advancement his real motive for what he does, or is he consciously witnessing to the goodness of creation and the meaningfulness of life by the excellence of his art? Will the skill and commitment of his art always testify — even to the most skeptical people — that this world is not an accident, that it is coherent and beautiful, that we were created for a purpose?
Similarly, it is easy for an MBA to feel she is using her gifts for Christ as she sits on the board of a charitable nonprofit or serves as a trustee for her church. But how does the gospel make the rest of her work distinctive? Will she have the same view of corporate profits as a person with different beliefs about human nature, God, and the meaning of life? Does she act in all her business dealings with the awareness that every human being is made in the image of God — each person so precious that God has given his Son for them?
The question for the church is this: If we believe that Jesus is Lord in every area of life, how do we train our people in the practice of that lordship? In general, this practice has to arise out of intentional learning communities that bring together three different groups of people: (1) older accomplished Christians in a field, (2) younger arriving Christians in a field, and (3) teachers knowledgeable in the Bible, theology, and church history. These three groups work together to ensure that the right questions are being addressed and to forge answers to those questions that are both biblical and practical. And what kinds of questions will these be? At the very least, these groups should ask three things of every vocation:
1. What practices in our field are common grace and can be embraced?
2. What practices are antithetical to the gospel and must be rejected?
3. What practices are neutral and can be adapted and revised?
At Redeemer, working distinctively happens in the vocational groups (described above), as well as in Gotham Fellows — a program for young adults who are less than five years out of university and working in their first jobs. Those who participate in the program have a mentor in their field and invest heavily in theological training, worldview reflection, and communal spiritual formation.
Working Excellently: Mentoring and Cultural Production
In concert with working accountably and distinctively, Christians must support and help one another do their work excellently, with diligence and innovation. In some areas this support can be provided through mentoring relationships. Those who are more experienced and accomplished in their field should be moved by the gospel to make themselves available to those who are new in the faith or the field. In other vocational areas, this could even mean cooperative ventures — starting new companies or nonprofits, executing individual artistic projects, initiating a new journal or periodical, creating an art gallery, or starting a volunteer program. This kind of discipleship takes several forms at Redeemer, but one example is the Entrepreneurship Forum in which the church conducts an annual business plan competition and gives grants to the best plan for a for-profit and nonprofit initiative. Those who present plans must show how the gospel informs the integration of their faith and work.
I place the excellence factor last to remind us that if the first two factors are neglected, the resulting ventures are likely to be poorly conceived. Often we think of “Christian businesses” as those that hire born-again Christians and perhaps have a daily Bible study at the office. It is rare to encounter a business that has thoughtfully worked out its mission and its financial and personnel policies theologically. Many “Christian art” productions are in reality just ways of pulling artists out of the world and into the Christian subculture. In general, cooperation in cultural production should not mean Christians banding together to leave the big, bad world; rather, cooperation involves working together — even with nonbelievers — in order to serve the world. This cooperation is not likely to happen until greater numbers of Christians become more willing to embrace a less dualistic understanding of their faith.
As we have seen, Christians make two opposing mistakes in addressing the idols of their vocational field. On the one hand, they may seal off their faith from their work, laboring according to the same values and practices that everyone else uses; on the other hand, they may loudly and clumsily declare their Christian faith to their coworkers, often without showing any grace and wisdom in the way they relate to people on the job. An essential part of the church’s integrative ministry is to help believers think through the implications of the gospel for art, business, government, media, entertainment, and scholarship. We have to provide creative ways of delivering spiritual nurture so believers can be accountable to other believers and to the faith they profess. We teach that excellence in work is a critical means for gaining credibility for our faith; if our work is shoddy, our verbal witness only leads listeners to despise our beliefs. And if Christians live in major cultural centers and do their work in an excellent yet distinctive manner, it will ultimately produce a different kind of culture from the one in which we now live.
I am often asked, “Should Christians be involved in shaping culture?” My answer is, “We can’t not be involved in shaping culture.” But I prefer the term cultural renewal to culture shaping or cultural transformation. For a possible model, think about the monks in the Middle Ages, who moved out through pagan Europe, inventing and establishing academies, universities, and hospitals. They transformed local economies and cared for the weak through these new institutions. They didn’t set out to take control of a pagan culture. They let the gospel change how they did their work — which meant they worked for others rather than for themselves. Christians today should strive to be a community that lives out this same kind of dynamic, which will bring the same kind of result.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In your own ministry context, how have you seen and experienced the effects of dualism? Where have you seen secular institutions retreating from partnership with religious institutions? How has dualism led you to be less integrated in public and in your relationships with others? Where is your church unwittingly retreating from culture and accepting this premise of a private/public dichotomy?
2. If you currently serve in full-time ministry, have you ever worked outside of professional ministry? If so, how does your time in the workforce inform the ways you prepare your congregation for Christ-honoring vocation? If you haven’t worked in another vocation, have you ever felt limited in your ability to compellingly argue for biblical ethics and integration at work?
3. This chapter suggests four ways that churches can help Christians see how the gospel informs and shapes their work:
• Our faith changes our motivation for work.
• Our faith changes our conception of work.
• Our faith provides high ethics for Christians in the workplace.
• Our faith gives us the basis for reconceiving the very way in which our kind of work is done.
Which of these is most meaningful to you right now? How can you begin to teach and disciple believers to reflect on each of these four ways of relating faith to work?
4. Keller writes, “Each vocation presents many spiritual and moral issues, ethical quandaries, temptations, discouragements, and other questions that particularly confront the Christians in that profession. A good deal of spiritual nurture in the church is very general and only addresses generic or private-world matters. But we spend most of our week in our vocational field, and we need to hear how other Christians have dealt with the same problems we face every day.” Think about the various vocations represented in your church and community. How can you begin to encourage and nurture believers to work accountably in their profession?