Faith and work have long been torn apart

When I was a college student in Chicago, I worked on a small paint crew. Every morning, my boss, Vinny, a devout Christian, greeted me at 6:30 with an old plastic carafe filled with off-brand coffee. I would pour myself a bitter cup as we talked about our common faith and the work at hand. No matter how reluctant I felt to begin a long shift, Vinny would remind me that “what we do with our hands matters as much as what we store in our minds.” Yes, we were doing our job. But more importantly, we were offering ourselves to the Lord.

Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson speak to the deep divorce that so often exists between work and faith. Our Sunday rhythms are spiritually disconnected from our Monday routines, and Work and Worship seeks to bridge this divide. The authors, both respected scholars in the Reformed tradition, uphold the importance of sound theology while simultaneously proposing a move from theory to practice, from theological musings about work to an embodied faith. “Theologies of work matter, but they need to be sung and prayed,” they write. “They need to enter our bones.” 

Kaemingk and Willson seek an integrated understanding and practice of worship that brings together our Sunday gatherings with our weekday commutes. Workers “do not sit at the table and read textbooks about theological ethics.” Instead, Christian workers must develop an understanding of work and faith that speaks to their lived and felt reality; they need to “see it, taste it, smell it, pass it, and watch it take on flesh all around them.” Work and Worship is a step in this direction.