How Do We Balance Faith and Work?
Unpacking the concept of Faith and Work and how it could change our not only our lives, but our city and world.
Scripture: Colossians 3:23-24
If Colossians 3:23-24 are true, that we work for the Lord, not for people, how can we do that tomorrow?
Today's idea of faith & work, or vocational stewardship, is something that I'm passionate about. I believe that if our churches grasped this concept, our cities and world would be changed. I realize that's a big statement, but I genuinely believe it. However, it's not something that I've always seen; In fact, without some of my mentors, I never would've seen it.
I was first introduced to this idea indirectly six years ago, when my wife and I were newly married, living in Knoxville. One day, she came home from work and told me that she wanted to move to Memphis to do the Memphis Teacher Residency (MTR). She had been leading an after-school nonprofit and felt God leading her into the classroom. In MTR, I saw this beautiful vision of sending excellent teachers with a Christian worldview into the schools that needed them the most. I was filled with excitement.
As we moved here, under the leadership of David Montague, Director of MTR, and the MTR staff, my wife was assigned two books about faith and work and vocational stewardship: Kingdom Calling by Amy Sherman and Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller. At her encouragement, I read them and couldn't put them down because I saw what they were seeing about this topic and its potential.
As an exciting new hire at Christ Church with plans to change the world, I went to my boss at the time, Bob Whitsitt, with all these ideas. In his wisdom, Bob asked me, "What church is doing this well?" I replied, "Well, Tim Keller's church in New York City and they have a workshop for pastors and leaders." And Bob told me to go for it." So he sent me and Noah Gray, Executive Director of the Binghampton Development Corporation, up there to learn.
While there, Noah and I saw it again. This potential of what would happen to our city if believers in Christ grasped this idea that they worked not for people but the Lord. That their vocations were not their own, but something to be stewarded to love God and others. That what we do matters vocationally and has meaning. It has a purpose that extends past the day-to-day of our lives.
I'll repeat it. I believe that if our churches grasped this idea, our cities and world would be changed.
I share this journey of discovery about faith & work for this reason: I recently heard that the only competition that Scripture not only encourages but commands is Paul's instruction to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12). I want to honor those that helped give me eyes to see this topic. I've spent my entire 11-year vocational career working for a church, camp, or nonprofit, and I would have missed it without them.
No matter where you work, missing this topic is not difficult.
The average American spends nearly 1,800 hours, or 75 full 24-hour days, a year at work.
The average church attendee will spend roughly 50 hours per year at a Sunday morning worship service.
Despite those numbers, many struggle to see where God is and could be during the workday. We believe that this barrier exists between the sacred found in religion and the secular of vocation/world. For some reason, neither category is broken down or mixed. So we put on our sacred hat when we are here on Wednesdays or Sundays, hang it up, and put our secular hat on at work. As a result, we end up working and living and doing our vocations no differently than those who do not follow Jesus.
But if you are a Christ-follower, we are called to work and live and do our vocations differently.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23-24)
We don't just work for our bosses, our board of directors, the stockholders of our companies- but heartily as for the Lord. We don't just work for our paycheck or title, but for a Godly inheritance that is our true reward. We don't just serve clients, employees, children, or patients, but we serve the Lord Christ.
Consider that reality for a moment. Isn't that an incredible picture to have in your mind as you head into the office, clinic, or school tomorrow?
I pray that it is the picture you have in your mind tomorrow. But I want to give you more than that. The reality of work is that even when you arrive at work believing that you work not for people but the Lord, Mondays can make us scream into the abyss, fight someone, or give up.
So how can we work for the Lord and do it in a way that we know it in our heads and believe it in our hearts, even when things are hard? We have to begin with knowing confidently what God teaches in Scripture and through the gospel about work.
To do that, we have to go back to the beginning of Genesis 1 and 2. In these chapters, we see a God at Work. We see that work and vocation are good things. We work in the image of a working God. In these chapters, God is at work, creating and ordering the world. First, he creates something: the heavens, the skies, the seas, the earth. Then orders it: calling the stars, creating birds, fish, animals.
“The heart cannot love what the mind does not know, so we must begin with knowing and understanding how God views work.”
"By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of His mouth all their host… he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm." (Psalm 33:6)
God then turns to Adam and Eve. Made in his image, He gives them the same calling. Work, create, and order. He tells them to create- be fruitful and multiply. He tells them to order- Subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth. We were initially designed and given the task to be stewards of God's creation.
"The LORD God took man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." (Genesis 2:15)
In Scripture, what is the first thing we see Adam doing? What is the first thing in Scripture that we see Adam doing? He's working. He's naming the creatures. One of our misconceptions about work is that we have to work because of sin and the world's fallenness, but Scripture presents the opposite: Work is a good and sacred thing. We are called to work in the image of a working God.
Amy Sherman makes this point clear in Kingdom Calling as she shows different ways we see God at work in the Scriptures and how our careers do the same thing still today:
God redeems and reconciles people together and people to God
Creates and fashions the world into beauty
Provides and sustains humanity with the necessities of life
Maintains fairness and justice
Comfort, heal and care for those who are sick and hurting
Reveals truth and knowledge
The reality of sin, brokenness and the fallenness of the world leads us to this misconception. If you want further proof of the importance of work in our callings, look at how big of a role it plays in the curse given to Adam found.
"Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust, you shall return." (Genesis 3:17-19)
Sin changes our work and vocations. It remains a good and sacred thing, but now it is corrupted and changed, just like everything else in this world.
Tim Keller expands on these more in Every Good Endeavor:
Work is difficult.
We have conflict with our coworkers, inability to accomplish needed tasks, deals that fall through, patients that we lose, and larger systemic injustices that we exist within.It can feel selfish.
We are tempted now to lie and cheat to advance ourselves at the cost of others. We will do anything to get ahead.It can feel pointless.
We feel grief over performance. We work our whole lives but wonder if we made a difference. We envision things that we can't accomplish with our work, whether due to our abilities or our environment.
But it isn't just a physical death that disrupts it.
Something deeper happens: A spiritual death occurs with our work. We forget our identities in God and worship og God, and work becomes an idol and identity marker for us. Keller says that with our work, we now live where work is our identity. The result is that success goes to our heads, and failure destroys our hearts.
As Christ-followers, though, our stories are not over in Genesis 3. God does not leave us to labor pointlessly, difficultly, and selfishly. God enters into the story of humanity's brokenness in the person of Jesus Christ to heal, redeem, and restore. In the incarnation, the sacred of God enters into the secular of this world. Jesus was constantly working in the image that we have of a working God:
Redeeming and reconciling people together and people to God: loving his enemies and forgiving sins.
Creating and fashioning the world around him into beauty: calming the storms into peace.
Providing and sustaining humanity with the necessities of life: loaves and fish so that no one is left hungry.
Maintaining fairness and justice: making socioeconomic and racial outcasts the heroes of his stories.
Comforting, healing, and caring to the sick and hurting: the lame walked, the deaf heard, the blind saw.
Revealing truth and knowledge: the crowds marveled at his sermons & parables.
At the culmination of his life, as Jesus prayed in John 17:4, He glorified the Father on earth, having accomplished the work that He gave Him to do. That work was taking all the sin of the world and the brokenness on Himself to the cross. Then, with a cry of "It is finished," Jesus defeated sin and death forever. This brings redemption to our souls, our relationships, and the whole world, including our vocations.
Jesus redeems our work as a sacred act of God's restoration in our world.
Because Jesus accomplished His work at the cross, we now can experience freedom with our work. Our jobs aren't for us to form our identities or justify our existence. Our failures and losses no longer crush us. Instead, our jobs are freed up to respond to the work that God accomplished and continues to accomplish, as the kingdom of God breaks transforms the world. Thus, our vocations are redeemed to be a sacred part of God's restoration in our world.
So how can you begin to work tomorrow morning differently?
Four Ways to Work Differently (Two inward and two outward moves)
First, the inward moves:
1. Redemptive work is excellent.
If it's true that we work not for people but for the Lord, then Christians should be excellent at their jobs. We are not working to glorify ourselves, impress our bosses, or make a name for our organizations. Instead, our work is a response to the finished work of Jesus on the cross, which again frees us up to let this response be the very best possible.
Keller often makes a joke when talking about this by asking what makes a Christian pilot? It isn't that they play Christian music over the speakers or hand out tracts. A good Christian pilot lands the plane! Think of Chick-Fil-A; Yes, they are Christian, but what makes the line wrap around the building and into the streets is that they make an excellent chicken sandwich. You eat that chicken sandwich and taste and see that the Lord is good.
“What makes a good Christian pilot? A Christian pilot lands the plane!”
I ask you, how does the way you work communicate the excellencies of the gospel? How can you work in the image of our working God to go above and beyond? How can you do the little things in a way that glorifies not yourself but the God you serve? Are you approaching every component of your job, even the things and people that you don't like, as a chance to work as the best employee possible?
2: Redemptive work is ethical.
If it's true that we work not for people but for the Lord, then there is a certain amount of ethics that the Christian worker is called toward. We can't be content with selfishness, slanderous gossip, or tolerate any amount of immorality in our workplaces. So often, we live under the unspoken assumption with our jobs that what is moral is legal. Instead, we have to look toward the character of Christ to define ethical work.
My wife and I get both of our cars serviced at Powerhouse Motors on Broad Avenue here in Memphis. The owner, Jeff, is Christian. Their logo has a cross, but what keeps us coming back, in addition to the excellent job, is his ethics. We brought my wife's car in once when the check engine light came on. For many service providers, this was a green light to overcharge. We were called back a few hours later that all was good.
I ask you, how does the way that you lead to communicate the ethics of the gospel? How can you seek honesty this week? How can you labor to love like Jesus to those you work with? How are you working in a way that goes beyond legal grey areas and into the heart of Christ?
Let's move to the outward move.
3: Redemptive work is evangelistic.
Since all work is done in the image of a working God, all work is sacred. Your coworkers, bosses, clients, students, customers are your mission field that you are on 1,800 hours a year. If you are a Christ-follower, you are a missionary. This is your commissioning service: Go and make disciples of all nations!
For those of you that have the freedom, ability, and legality to share the gospel verbally at work, go and tell people about Jesus, start Bible studies during breaks, gather coworkers to pray at the beginning of the day, or invite them to join you at church next week.
Others of you, though might not have the ability to share the gospel verbally at work. I want to give a clear answer that because I know, many are questioning it. Romans 13 teaches that authority over us is part of God's good ordering of our world, from government down to your boss. As a Christ-follower, you are called to respect and honor that authority while working, not subvert. However, the difference and distinction must come if you are working at an organization incompatible with the gospel or prohibits you from following Jesus. You must do as Acts 5:29 teaches and obey God rather than man by finding a new vocation.
Here's my encouragement, though, whether you can share the gospel verbally or not: The inward moves of excellent work and ethical work will lead to evangelistic work. Why is this? It's because it's so foreign in our world to combine these things consistently that it'll make people curious. And when they ask you questions, you will be, as 1 Peter 3 teaches, ready with gentleness and respect to give the reason for the hope you have.
4: Redemptive work is equitable.
It leads towards justice and flourishing, not just for yourself but for everyone in your city. Proverbs 11:10 says it this way when the righteous prosper, that is when believers work in an excellent, ethical way when they see their work as stewardship, the city flourishes. Many cities host an enormous wealth gap tied to socioeconomic and racial disparities. We work within massive systems that have the ability for great good and have the potential to marginalize the poor.
How can you steward your vocation to bring justice and equity to our city? How can we hire and value diversity within our organizations? How can we provide pathways towards employment for those that are often neglected? How can we support nonprofits through our dollars and time that are laboring to do this? Finally, how can you use the skills and knowledge to give back to your city?
Let me be clear; professional retirement doesn't end this. It gives you the freedom to do this fully with your life! You don't have to be constrained by the clock. You can use a lifetime of skills to glorify God by investing in the next generation.
Jesus redeems our work as a sacred act of God's restoration in our world.
As He does this, we are promised in 1 Corinthians 15 that nothing we do will ever be in vain. Therefore, we should not be surprised that work is a good and sacred thing given to us in creation; work will again be restored to a good and sacred thing in the new creation. One day, in the coming kingdom, pointless, difficult, and selfish work will be done. The curse will be done. The battle will be won.
In the new creation, we are promised that the dead will rise again and praise God that wood and nails will not hold us down. Our tombs will be turned into flowerbeds as we join with our savior at the table He prepared.
Related Articles
What Does It Mean to Witness by Rev. Shane Stanford
How to Honor God With Your Work by Bro. Chris Carter
A Discussion about Intentionality by Rev. Maxie Dunnam
About Christ Church Memphis
Christ Church Memphis is church in East Memphis, Tennessee. For more than 65 years, Christ Church has served the Memphis community. Every weekend, there are multiple worship opportunities including traditional, contemporary and blended services.
