Loving Monday: Business as a Calling

Integrating work and faith has not been a strong suit for many Christians or the Church. Mostly such conversations about integration involve how to invite your coworkers to church, or offering general suggestions on being a Christian at work. Few try to go beyond and offer real ways that business people can integrate their faith with their business or help people see work as a calling.

Christianity Today addresses the issue in an interview with John D. Beckett.

Do you think churches still don't understand business as a calling?

I do. Relatively few churches and pastors are reinforcing the legitimacy of a call into so-called "secular work." I have colleagues with tremendous business influence who are starving spiritually in their local churches. There's zero feeding; there's zero reinforcing of the call they have in the marketplace.

I see this all the time. Too often Christianity is presented only in the context of personal relationships between coworkers, not in the context of the type of work involved. What does Christianity look like for someone in the insurance industry? Or the entertainment business? What does Christianity have to do with sales and the retail industry?

Idea: What if, on a Sunday morning, we had a commissioning prayer for all business owners? (We could do the same thing for teachers in September.) We could talk about how important work is, and offer encouragement and prayer. Maybe even allow time for business people to network with each other.