Phill Sandahl

What Is Secular Work?

In the previous article Chris worked in an everyday vocation not connected to the church. Often this is referred to in today’s parlance as a “secular” job because it was not connected to church and did not require any professional religious preparation or qualification.

In spite of that, Chris called the coffee shop where he worked his sacred place. 
How can that be?

Secular-Sacred Divide

In the West we have the practice of classifying all of our activities into two camps – the sacred and the secular. The sacred we reserve for things spiritual and religious, and the rest we relegate to secular or worldly. This false dualism leads to the erroneous idea that things that are “secular” are of little concern to God and of lesser importance. Christianity is narrowed down to a focus on personal salvation and little else.

The broader consequences of this are that the church is separated from its surrounding culture. Sunday worship services and participation in church program activities are elevated to a higher importance. Those who work in these activities are elevated as well in the mind of church-attendees. As a result, little effort is spent by the church teaching its members how to integrate their faith into the activities outside the church. Rather, the focus is on bringing people into the church to be saved. When the church limits her vision with this mindset, she becomes unable to impact the culture as God desires. Scott Allen succinctly argues this issue 
in Beyond the Sacred-Secular Divide.

God’s Calling

God has called his church to take the Kingdom of Heaven (and its values) to the entire culture, teaching them all he has commanded and making disciples. When the church has an undivided view of reality and realizes God’s intention to have Lordship over all of his creation, the physical as well as the spiritual realm, she is freed to complete his redemptive plan.

There are some who only see “secular” work as a means to an end. Either a necessary means to gather financial resources to carry out the work of the church, or for the more visionary, as a means to reach out and evangelize the lost. Both of these objectives are desirable, but fall short of God’s complete plan.

God wants to redeem all of creation. His church needs to engage the culture and restore the values that were lost in the fall. Most of this takes place in the workplace where the majority of the lost are, AND where most of the church people spend the greatest amount of their time as well.

Reflections on Whole Life Integration

Willy Kotiuga has posted a provocative draft “People At Work: Preparing To Be The Whole Church”to be presented at Lausanne 2010 in South Africa later this year. 

He draws on models of workers in the Bible to challenge the church to create a sacred work environment wherever God has placed them. Joseph worked every day in Egypt bringing his God-given values including accountability, responsibility, excellence, teamwork, risk-taking, forgiveness and support to the workplace. While these are desirable from a professional standpoint, they also demonstrate an application of the character of God and the qualities of 
a Kingdom worker. Each of these character qualities, among others, provide opportunities for discipling those in the marketplace in godly living, but also provide opportunities to lead them into a relationship with the Lord. Kotiuga concludes, “There is no sacred-secular divide in promoting these values.” When God’s children work “as unto the Lord” the workplace is sanctified.

Your Work Is Worship

When work is done from this perspective one realizes with Bradley Moore “Your Work Is Worship.” Quoting author and activist Dave Gibbons in the book Our Souls at Work

“The word glory conveys the idea of beauty. So as we do good work that reflects God’s character…we unleash his beauty. People see God. Our work is a way to worship God. It has intrinsic value and can demonstrate God’s character when we do good work. Faith and work are to be seamless. Work is an expression of our life in Christ. Separating the two is like separating “being” from “doing.”  How do you know who you are being without considering what you are doing?”

Responding to the Gibbons quote Bradley says,

“These few sentences sealed the deal for me as far as pulling together the oft-segregated work and spiritual realms into one happy path towards the Kingdom of God. We can not separate who we are from what we are doing. How could anyone lead a double-life like that?”

Conclusion

This article opened with a question, “Why did Chris call his work in the café sacred?” Those who live their whole life for the Lord do not have a secular-sacred divide and present their whole life as a “living sacrifice” to God. With God there are no compartments. God’s policy is 
to live your whole life for him, and all of life is equally important to him and is critical in his plan of redemption.