Note: From Leading Worship for Workers (Baker, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
If all of life is going to be worship, the sanctuary is the place where we learn how.
– James K. A. Smith, “Sanctification for Ordinary Life”
Theologians, of course, value theology. And, rather predictably, theologians believe that good theology can be profoundly helpful for just about everything that ails humanity. Whenever theologians come across a problem, be it political or psychological, artistic or economic, you can be assured that a theologian will prescribe more theology. It should be no surprise, therefore, that when theologians come across an issue like the separation of faith and work, their first reaction is to prescribe more theological education. After all, when you’re a theological hammer, everything looks like a theological nail.
Why do people struggle to connect their faith to their work? How can they integrate these two disparate parts of their lives? Well, the answer is quite simple. They need to be theologically trained.
The theological line of thinking continues. If workers would only read more books about theology, work and vocation; if they would only hear a good theological lecture about business and economics; if they would only study a biblical worldview of labor and industry; if they would only join a class to help them think Christianly about nursing or marketing or accounting – then these workers would be intellectually equipped to connect their faith and their work. Their faith and their work will be held together through the sheer power of their theological minds. Simply put, if workers were more like theologians, everything would be better.
Our task in this book is not to dismiss theology. We are theologians. We love theology. Nor is our task to belittle the importance of theological education. We have dedicated our lives to its cause. We believe in the power of theological ideas. We certainly would not write a book filled with them if we didn’t. Christian workers absolutely need some level of theological training.
However, through our research and experience working alongside pastors, professionals and congregations on this issue of faith and work, we’ve become increasingly convinced that theologies of work need to be practiced, embedded and embodied in communities of worship. Theologies of work will never be sustainable if they remain theoretical. If my work truly matters to God, that theological assertion needs to be reflected in my community’s worship. Daily work should “show up” in the community’s prayers and sermons, its songs and benedictions, its testimonies and sacraments. Theologies of work matter, but they need to be sung and prayed. We need to find ways for our theologies of work to inhabit more than our brains – they need to enter our bones.
In the past, the two of us followed a common path. We believed that faith and work “integration” was an intellectual problem that needed to be intellectually grasped. A worker either “got it” or didn’t. Today we believe that “integration” is not so much an intellectual concept that you grasp; it’s more like a craft or a skill that you practice. An integrated life is not an intellectual achievement, an all-of-a-sudden eureka moment of theological discovery. It is more like a fabric that’s been torn into pieces. The fabric of faith and work needs to be slowly and intentionally woven back together over a lifetime of prayer and worship. In short, integration is more a habit to be practiced than an idea to be learned.
Our wager here is that gathered worship in the sanctuary can offer workers the time and space they desperately need to begin the long process of mending the torn fabric of “faith” and “work.” Week after week a worker can practice bringing her daily work before her Lord in worship. Through prayer and petition, thanksgiving and lament, she practices laying down her work before the larger work of God. The torn cloth of her faith and her work can be mended in and through her worship.
The mind of the worker still matters. What workers think about theology, vocation and work is still important. The question is, in part, one of pedagogical method and formation. How does a theological idea about work actually embed itself deeply in the life of a worker? Put another way, how does intellectual theology of work become lived theology of work? Some Christians have a theology of work floating about in their brains; others have it embedded in their bones. We want the latter.
Our wager here is simple: if we want to cultivate this deeper way of knowing, we will need the practices of worship. Studying biblical and theological concepts about faith and work will always matter. However, if these ideas are not constantly reinforced and remembered in and through the practices of communal worship, they will fail to put down sustainable roots.
Give Answers, or Bear the Weight?
Imagine, if you will, two nurses and two pastors. The first nurse comes to her pastor and shares stories of the highs and lows from her past year of work at the local hospital. She talks about her struggles with anxiety regarding her patients. She shares her workplace joys of accomplishment, healing and blessing. She asks some difficult theological questions about illness, disability and death. She shares some laments about the health-care system.
The first pastor responds by making a valiant attempt to answer her many difficult theological questions. He falters a bit (he’s never worked in health care). Running out of things to say, he gives the nurse a book about faith and work and looks up another on theology and health care. Finally, he lets her know that he will be leading a book club on faith and work in the spring. Perhaps she could invite her fellow nurses to come and hear him teach.
The second nurse goes to his pastor and offers the same reflections. He receives a very different response from her. Hearing him out, the second pastor makes no attempt to teach him about faith, work or health care. This pastor offers no theological answers about death or disability. Instead, she listens and asks probing questions about the nurse’s work and his workplace joys and heartbreaks.
In closing, the pastor asks if she could meet with him and the five other nurses from their congregation for lunch at the hospital. Sitting around a small table in the hospital cafeteria, the pastor asks the nurses even more questions about their work. She wants to hear more about their victories and failures with their patients. She wants to hear more about their prayers for their colleagues and doctors, their challenges and frustrations of work on their specific floors. The pastor takes notes. She commends them, prays for them and closes by inviting them to worship on Sunday morning rather than to a class.
That Sunday, during worship, the pastor asks the nurses to come forward. She asks the elders to lay their hands on them and she prays – not a generic prayer but one that she’s composed specifically for them. The prayer articulates the nurses’ vocational struggles, longings, praises and pains to God – all those things they shared in the hospital cafeteria. The prayer asks for the Holy Spirit’s protection and power to go with the nurses as they return to the hospital the next day. Following the prayer, the congregation stands together and commissions the nurses. The pastor sends the nurses out with a blessing and a charge for their ministry to their patients.
Two nurses and two different pastoral responses. In the first encounter, church is largely understood as a place you go for theological “answers” about work. It is a place of theological training. However, in the second interaction, we find a different understanding of the church. It is not, first and foremost, a place for theological training or answers; instead, it is a place where workers can carry their workplace questions, pains and praises to God in community. The church won’t always have answers for work, but it can provide a set of practices and a group of fellow workers who can bear the weight of work together – week after week.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the first pastor or his response. There is a chance that the nurse will remember (and perhaps even appreciate) the pastor’s class and his attempts to answer her theological questions about death and disability. There is even a chance that she might read and remember a few of the ideas from his books on faith, work and health care.
But the second nurse? There is no possibility whatsoever that he will ever forget the day his entire church surrounded him, placed their hands on him and prayed for his work. He will never forget that they carried the joys and the heartbreaks of his hospital, that they – as one – offered his career up to God’s sovereign grace. This is the power of worship.
Taken from Leading Worship for Workers: How To Design Liturgies for All of Life, by Matthew Kaemingk and Kathryn Roelofs, ISBN: 9781540969842; used with permission from Baker Publishing 6030 East Fulton Road Ada, MI 49301.
Matthew Kaemingk, professor of public theology at Theological University Utrecht; Kathryn Roelofs, managing director of the Worship for Workers Initiative
