The Work Environment and the Church

For the past two years, I’ve worked in an office at a Christian university. I love my job and most of my coworkers. They have their quirks like all people. We have bad days and good days. There are about ten of us that work together daily; we work, have devotions, go to chapel, share prayer requests, fix problems with students, fix each other’s problems–all in close proximity. For example, you can’t have a completely private conversation with someone in this office. Someone always hears or finds out about it later. Kind of like gossip.

Now, on the other side of my life, I am a regular churchgoer. That is when I have a home church to attend. Attending a church, participating in the body (even if I don’t like it all the time) is a mark of obedience to God. So I do my best, but I’ve been church homeless for the past two years. My church split after a lot of drama and lies and cheating and hatred. It left me pretty broken up inside, not ready to jump back into the body. I lost faith in the church a long time ago, but I totally gave up on it when that happened.

Here’s the kicker: I would much rather be at work than be at church now. Not because I hate church that much, but because I feel so much more edified by the body of Christ within my coworkers. Why does the body of Christ work so much more efficiently in an employment situation than in a volunteer situation? I have a few ideas.

I never had at church what I have here. I’ve never been more touched by or cared about than I am here. Work has given me an opportunity to see the character of my coworkers, their personalities, their passions, their gifts, their struggles, without being in a sit down, face-to-face confession session. At church we’re thrown into awkward forced worship situations or small group Bible studies before we even know the people. We’re expected to open up, take off our “perfect people” masks, and share our stories to total strangers. That hurts, and it’s hard.

I think the church has grown lazy. People want to have a so-called “church family” by showing up for service on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. But the church is a BODY not a POTATO (a comfort food or something that sits on the couch all the time). It is meant to work and move and play and mainly to lovingly serve. The most work my church ever did was on choir concerts and Jesus plays that they labeled “outreach efforts.” Effort–that’s all it was, too, just meaningless effort that never furthered them as a community of believers and never furthered the needy community around them.

What does work do for a church? It certainly does not earn them salvation. But I think the work brings the worship together, so people can actually meet and be a whole as opposed to lots of bodies worshiping individually in the same vicinity. People who work together eventually start getting to know each other. They learn how to work best with each other. So what happens when they sit down for a heart-to-heart Bible study? They can open up. They understand each other. They know how to talk to each other. They become efficient in achieving a goal. The thing about work is that it forces us to find common ground no matter how different we are. We find common ground to reach a common goal.

You see, we have a choice with people in the church: we can walk away after Sunday and never try to develop relationships with people. But at work, we don’t have a choice; if we don’t want to be friends with someone, we still have to learn to get along and find better ways to work with his/her personality. That’s why the church needs more real hands-on work–for the sake of loving people.

I think it’s about time the church spent more time outside the building than inside, not only for a world in need but for a church community that needs to become a church family. The end.