Monday, September 12, 2005

Is Secular Work of Real Worth, or Not?



There is an editorial piece in this months Christianity Today that pushes some major buttons for me. Entitled "Neighbor Love, Inc.", the article (not available online yet) is about work; the secular kind, that is. The kind that 99% of the working age folks in the world get out of bed and head off to five days a week. And sadly, the kind of work that a large portion of the clergy has not a clue about.

Here is my dilemma; when each Sunday rolls around, I attend church, and my experience with the Church (in the universal evangelical sense) is that I am left consistently with the impression that what I do as a vocation and, what I believe to be a calling, five days out of most every week hardly ever connects with what I am learning, doing, and experiencing on Sunday. Very little connection what so ever, thank you very much. Its as if the working world speaks English and the church-going world speaks, well, some form of language only understood by drunk Portuguese sailors.
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat through an otherwise average or good sermon, and thought to myself, "the person delivering this message has no idea whatsoever what my Monday to Friday world is like". And, might I ask why the only theme I seem to hear about the working world is a variation on the topic of "Sharing Jesus With your Fellow Employees"? Not that I am against that concept, but hearing it over and over again is like driving a car with only one radio station, when you well know that other people can get XM satellite in their cars.

So why is there this massive disconnect between the secular and the sacred? What is going on here? Why do many evangelicals fail to make a real connection between the working world and the cloistered world of church. More thoughts later, but in the mean time, I am open to suggestions (hint: comments?).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this subject. It's a little too early in the morning for me to contribute much of worth here but you have hit on something that sadly, is all too true.

The truly unfortunate part of it all is that the Christian who spends most of his or her life in the secular work world can have a great impact on how people view the church and more importantly, the gospel.

I don't mean this strictly,in the sense of "sharing Jesus with your fellow emplyees" but more in the sense of living the kingdom life Monday to Friday and not just in the church context. For the most part, we are left to try and figure this out on our own because we don't seem to get training or teaching or preaching that relates to what we experience in the work world.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve,

My experience is the same as yours.

My explanation is that there are not very many leaders inside or outside of Church. The VP’s where I work try to run our company just like most every other company. They rarely take a risk, express an opinion that is not politically correct, or make a big change.

Similarly, most Pastors just want to be like all of the other Pastors and do church just like all of the other churches. “Purpose Driven Life” was more of the same, but very few Pastors resisted the program because they didn’t want to risk not doing it because all of the other churches were doing it.

I don’t like to criticize individual Pastor’s because most pastors are trying their very best, but the system is very broke and needs a real leader to step forward.

Thanks for asking!

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