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"The church rarely addresses [work-related] issues. It seems to be more directed toward individual relationships with Christ."
"I do not think it is an interest of the church to help one resolve work problems."
"Family issues, drug and alcohol problems, crises of faith are concerns for my pastor. … It is hard for me to waste the time of one faced with life issues on a personal business issue. I've never heard anything to the contrary at any event I have attended at my church."
"Pastors are too busy taking care of the sick and dying to get involved in people's work whims and troubles."
Is faith only of value when healing is needed? Is it not essential to living our daily lives as instruments of God's healing power in the world? Church culture, like business culture, reinforces the notion that the proper place for faith is the private sphere. Despite this, many men and women in the pews are not easily persuaded that the God they worship on Sunday morning is unconcerned with how they make their living.
John C. Knapp is founding director of Samford University's Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership.
Excerpted from How the Church Fails Businesspeople (And What Can Be Done About It) by John C. Knapp. Reprinted with permission of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
See our earlier interviews with David Miller and Jeff Van Duzer on how church leaders can support businesspeople.
How the Church Fails Businesspeople (And What Can Be Done About It) is available at Christianbook.com and other retailers. Eerdmans has more information on the book.
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JEFFREY PELLETIER
Excellent article. That the Church and Pastors generally are disconnected from economic issues is not new. As a businessperson, ordained minister and a seminary graduate I can testify that seminary does not even approach a discussion on the trials of living daily in what the Bible calls the "Cosmos", the fallen world system. We learn the truth about what is right and good and moral behavior, but we lack true compassion regarding what the "battle" is truly like for people. I am very fortunate, I belong to a church (River Heights Vineyard Church), in which the Lead Pastor has actually managed and even owned a business, and understands at least what is going on for people. So much so that he assisted me in creating an in-reach called "God's Work in Progress", which seeks to help people to integrate excellence in faith and work. I can testify from its success that more Churches should join this movement.
DR PAUL JULICH
Doug Sherman and William Hendricks wrote a book on this subject in 1987 ("Your Work Matters to God") published by NavPress. I don't know if it is still in print. I taught a home Bible class around it many years ago. It was extremely helpful to me (an engineer) and was well received by the class. Definitely helpful to those of us that have been led to serve in fields outside the church.
Bruce Schultz
Well said, John Knapp! Growing up, a well intended minister shared with me that the measure of a ministry was how many in his congregation went into full time ministry. Maybe if he'd seen that the mechanic, carpenter, bookkeeper are also in full time ministry, he'd have batted 1000! And I agree with the writer that it's time for us to commission those entering into the work-a-day world.