In the middle of December I was on a bit of a rant tweeting about how Christians so often misunderstand work and vocation. I find myself returning to this topic more and more because I think it is so important. Browse through the gallery to see the tweets:

Then Steve Bishop posted this cartoon the other day and I thought that it did a good job illustrating the way the church often adds to the problem.

It's my hope that in 2012 churches will do a lot more to help believers think about their work from a Christian perspective.

These sorts of videos where someone draws while another person narrates seem to be trendy these days. I've mentioned before the importance of recognising the value of our work, and so I found this video to be particularly good. It's so important for those in our churches to see their Monday-Saturday work as a calling, not just something they do to pay the bills. Let's keep working to help people see the significance of their vocation, and their work as an act of worship.

HT: Steve Bishop

When I read James Davison Hunter's book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, last year, one of the things he talked about repeatedly was the need for the church to work out a theology of vocation. In the video below, Mark Greene, of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, talks about how believers should understand their Monday-Saturday work as part of the call of God's people to make known the Kingdom of God. There are a lot of misconceptions about work among Christians – that we work just to pay the bills, that working as a pastor or missionary is a higher calling, that being a Christian in the workplace means just evangelising your co-workers – but these do not square with the fact that humanity was designed to work.

(FYI: the sound quality on the video is not great and Greene's voice is often washed out by the music, so listen carefully.)

As I mentioned above, Hunter argues that it is the church that needs to work out a theology of vocation. This is about the formation of disciples. These are the sorts of big questions we need to be addressing in our local contexts.

The bottom line is that believers need to understand that what they do matters.

Work is something that very few people get right, Eugene Peterson observes in his book, Practice Resurrection. Broader culture, on the whole, tends to romanticize work. Our work is where we find our significance. It becomes the defining part of who we are. It "becomes a way to extend our influence or importance... Work becomes a way to become godlike without ever dealing with God" (104).

Conversely, Christians tend to spiritualize work. This does not mean they are free of the same pitfalls as those who romanticize work – they too will work too much and find their self-worth in their work – but their conception of the significance and meaning of their work is much different.

The pietist 'spiritualizes' work. Work is desecularized into religious acts: prayer, worship, witness. Or it is professionalized into occupations of pastor, preacher, missionary, evangelist. This spiritualization of work de-spiritualizes most of the world of work...the daily work of what is often dismissively referred to as 'women's work' – laundry, meal preparation, child-rearing, typing, and carpooling. It also, across the board, removes unskilled work from the Christian workweek: work for hire, assembly-line work, grunt work. The only work left for honoring and practicing 'good works' is church work, often identified as 'the Lord's work' or 'Christian work' (105).

One of the reasons so many Christians fall into this trap is because they don't understand two things. First, they forget that work is something God gave mankind to do before the Fall. We don't work because of the Fall. The Fall has made work difficult, to be sure, but God designed us to work from the very beginning. Second, and related, is the unbiblical notion that ultimately the things we do on this earth do not matter because in the end it will all pass away. Paul Marshall has noted in his excellent book, Heaven is Not My Home, that Christians are apathetic and passive about so many aspects of our earthly life (like our work) because we don't take God's world seriously. We separate the things of earth from the things of heaven such that vocations like accountant, construction worker, and engineer are just "jobs," while pastor and seminary professor are "callings."

In his 1981 encyclical, Laborem Exercens, the late Pope John Paul II wrote, "Through work, men and women participate in the very action of the Creator in the universe." Our work has far greater significance and worth than we often attribute to it. In a culture that operates with a distorted view of work, the church has an opportunity to begin to develop a theology of work or a theology of vocation where, in the process of discipleship, believers can start to understand that their work in the world has significance and purpose beyond being a forum where they interact with non-Christians or a place where they make money so they can give to the church.

The nature of work, the relationship of faith and work, our work and the Kingdom of God – all these are pressing questions for believers who seek to be faithful in acknowledging Christ's Lordship over all of life. Given that many believers spend the vast majority of their week engaged in their work, it is of prime importance that the church help them begin to answer these questions.

At the time of writing this, I have to leave for work in about seven and a half hours. I have to get up well before the sun rises to get ready for work. My reaction to this will very likely be the same as usual---I will complain to myself about how I don't want to go to work, get up grudgingly, get my stuff together, and go

It's not that I have a bad job; in fact, I think my job is pretty unique. Not everyone gets to head up a crew that takes care of all the grounds maintenance at an 1100 acre (445 hectare) steelmaking plant. There's always lots of activity going on to keep things interesting, and things to watch in operation, like Kress Carriers. But like almost anything, after a while the novelty wears off and you become unimpressed with all the things going on around.

The working environment there doesn't really help either. It's incredibly lazy. There's always a crowd of people out on cigarette breaks, guys are lined up by the timeclock at 2:00pm ready to punch out for the end of their shift at 3:00pm. You know it is bad when we have been told to slow down our working speed.

"Through work, men and women participate in the very action of the Creator in the universe," Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens. Our work is part of the fulfillment what has become known as the Creation Mandate, found in Genesis 1:28. Human beings are supposed to work. It is just a simple fact. That is how we keep busy; it's how we make advancements in culture, technology, and so on; it's how we eat and clothe ourselves and our families; it's how we help others out.

I firmly believe that whatever we are doing at any given time---farming, going to school, managing a business, landscaping, teaching---we have been called to do that by God. He has placed us where we are for a specific reason, to fulfill a specific task. For that reason we must give ourselves fully to that calling, and all for the purpose of His glorification.

John Paul II uses the notion of the Great Workbench to demonstrate the importance of work for humanity. Markos Moulitsas, a blogger from Berkeley, California, summarizes this notion as follows:

The image is the Great Workbench, where all the work of humanity is done. The Great Workbench always has space for one more, and there's always something that needs doing. Tools are waiting there to be used, and they belong to whomever can wield them. You are not chained to the Great Workbench, but you can take pride in the work you do there and claim some part of it for your own.

Finding myself in a situation where the sole purpose of my working seems to be to keep myself out of debt, it is hard to adopt this perspective. But it is true. I may only be cutting down weeds in a gravel parking lot, but I am still doing a task I was called to and I am contributing something by doing that. Jesus himself spent the majority of His time on earth as a manual laborer. As such, the former Pope also suggests that our work is not only contributing to earthly progress, but also in the development of the Kingdom of God. Hearing that makes me easily feel guilty for the attitude with which I approach my work.

And the simplest thing of all with how I approach my work is a complete lack of thankfulness. I have a job. Not everyone can say that. It pays decent, it provides for my needs, and my work is making a difference, even if it is only at an aesthetic level. My employer is grateful for the work I am doing, and the supervisors at the steel company appreciate my work. I too should be grateful that I've been given the job and that I can give of myself for the betterment of others.