Pastoring for Monday: Helping the Church Take Work Seriously | Matt Rusten

What would it look like if the church took seriously the 80,000 hours most people spend at work over a lifetime? In this conversation, host John Terrill sits down with Matt Rusten — pastor-turned-vocational-discipleship-advocate and author of Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work — to explore one of the most neglected dimensions of Christian formation: our everyday work.

Matt shares the story of Tom Nelson — founder of Made to Flourish — who famously confessed to his congregation that he had been "committing pastoral malpractice" by equipping people for a minority of their lives while ignoring where they spent most of their time. That confession became the seedbed for an entire movement, and it shapes every page of Matt's new book.

Together, John and Matt trace the biblical arc from creation to new creation and show why work — far from being a necessary evil — is woven into the fabric of what it means to be human. They discuss four postures Christians take toward workplace engagement (boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage gloves, and work gloves), unpack a powerful framework for pastoral care drawn from the stages of enchantment and disenchantment in Ecclesiastes, and offer practical handles for how sermons, small groups, and outreach ministries can begin integrating a theology of vocation — without creating new programs or hiring a "faith and work pastor."

Whether you are a pastor, a church leader, or simply someone wrestling with purpose in your daily work, this conversation offers both grounding and hope.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• The origin story of Made to Flourish and the "pastoral malpractice" confession that launched a movement
• Why faith and work discipleship is a biblical, historical, and pastoral priority
• A creation–fall–redemption–new creation framework for understanding work
• Four postures for cultural engagement: boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage, and work gloves
• Lessons from Lesslie Newbigin and Tim Keller on mission, vocation, and the local church
• Practical tools for pastors: preaching, small groups, outreach, and vocational formation
• The enchantment–disenchantment–re-enchantment cycle and how the Gospel reframes work
• Made to Flourish's three initiatives: Common Good Magazine, Scatter, and pastoral residencies

 GUEST

Matt Rusten — Executive Director of Made to Flourish; author of Pastoring for Monday (IVP, 2026)

LINKS & RESOURCES

Pastoring for Monday (IVP Press)

Made to Flourish

Common Good Magazine

More episodes & podcast offerings — SLBF Studio

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This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

Introduction & welcome

SPEAKER_02 0:03

To live a God-honoring, holy, fulfilling, righteous life doesn't mean that we're called out of our careers to pursue something differently, but we need to intentionally align them with the kingdom of God. The biblical story provides a comprehensive, realistic view of what work is like. And it's and it's more fulfilling to keep these chapters together. That's a lovely way to summarize the gospel, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the academy, the church, and the marketplace. Today, host John Terrell is joined by Matt Rustin for a thoughtful conversation about one of the most important and often overlooked dimensions of Christian discipleship, our everyday work. Matt is the author of Pastoring for Monday. Help your congregation integrate faith and work. And a leader with Made to Flourish, an organization devoted to helping churches equip people to follow Jesus not just on Sundays, but throughout the rhythms of their daily vocations. Together, John and Matt explore why the church has often neglected conversations about work, how pastors can better support workers in their congregations, and why a robust theology of vocation can bring renewed purpose and even re-enchantment to church life. If you've ever wrestled with questions about purpose, calling, or how your work fits into God's larger story, this conversation is for you.

What is Made to Flourish? Matt's background and the organization's mission

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, Matt, I am so delighted to um have you on the podcast today. I've been looking forward to this one. We were joking before we started. One of the benefits I get around here is I get to talk to people who write and think in the space of workplace theology. And this has been one I've been looking forward to for a long time. Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, Matt.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Thank you so much, John. It's joy to be with you today.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Well, it's great to have you and so grateful for your work. And I have to say, I read this book in a weekend, in a long weekend, and I I loved it. I was really absorbed by it. I learned a lot of new things, and uh there are a lot of notes in here. So I really marked it up. I was glad I got two copies because this one's so marked up. I wanted to make sure one got in our theological library here. So we have a clean one there, and I get to keep this one. So, but thanks for being on to talk about this new book. The title of the book is uh Pastoring for Monday. Help your congregation integrate faith and work. One of the places I would like to start, Matt, is just if you could talk a little bit about what brought you to Made to Flourish. Such an interesting organization. You've been there now for a number of years, I think about a decade. Um, what's the organization's mission and uh how does it fulfill its purpose?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah, thanks, John. Maybe I'll start with the organization and then how I got there. So we were launched 10 years ago, 2015, 11 years ago, 2015, really with a mission to come alongside pastors and churches. So there's been research done by David Miller and others that have shown that there's about a thousand or more faith and work organizations. Every city, you know, a lot of communities across the country have a faith and work organization of some sort. So the question becomes why do we need yet one more? Well, you could argue maybe we don't, but we felt like there was a gap because many of these organizations doing fantastic work. They have constituencies, they have audiences that they're serving, but most of them are not serving pastors in the local church. And we felt like there was an opportunity to say, we think we can raise the bar and be an assistance, come alongside churches that are motivated and want to start pursuing vocational discipleship, vocationally informed mission in their churches. So that's the audience that we serve. Uh my background was as a pastor. I served in churches in Kansas City and actually Madison, uh, right in your backyard, and really good churches that valued this conversation and created cultures that it the church wasn't just about how do we get people to come do our stuff, all the activities that we're organizing, but how does the church become a generative, thoughtful, intentional formation of people that are engaged in the workplace, right? Uh, that this is the primary place that people are following Jesus, whether paid or unpaid. So that's what Made to Flourish does. That's how I got connected. I I was actually called by Tom Nelson, the founder of Made to Flourish in 2015. I was pastoring in Madison at the time, and he said, Would you help come get this started? Uh so I moved my family back to Kansas City. My wife, her family's from there. So we moved back to Kansas City and we've been on this journey for the last decade.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, that's great.

Tom Nelson's "pastoral malpractice" confession and how it changed a church

SPEAKER_00 4:54

And I'd love to hear some stories even as we go. Tom has a really interesting background as well, and his whole sense of mission and pastoring shifted over time. And I know that has been a big part of the made to flourish um focus. Wait, actually, why don't you say a word right now? Because I I think his story does um influence I think the development of made to flourish in your own story. Um, what happened with Tom? You talk about it a little bit in the book, but this might be a good time to dive in a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, so Tom Nelson uh planted a church in Kansas City in 1989. He actually just retired after I think it's 37 years of leading that community and served as a faithful pastor. But about 15 years into his pastoral ministry, he has this very dramatic moment where he addresses his congregation on a Sunday and he said, I want to make a confession. I want to confess to you that I've been committing pastoral malpractice. And you're in the congregation.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

You never want to hear, if you're you're sitting in the congregation, uh you probably choke on your coffee. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

What's you certainly look up from, you know, whatever you're reading on your phone at that point, what is he gonna say next? And he basically said the malpractice I'm talking about is not about financial malfeasance or moral impropriety. But I want to just say out loud that I believe I've been spending a majority of my time equipping you for a minority of your life. That I've been thinking about the activities of our church and getting you here and contributing to our budget and our attendance. But if I'm honest, I've spent very little time thinking about where you spend your time following Jesus in the places where you live and especially work. And he had been reflecting on the early chapters of Genesis, the continuity of the biblical story, certainly the reformers. And he said, you know, vocation, work, calling, this these are really important themes that we've been ignoring. And he wanted to raise the bar. I think there was even a confession that I don't exactly know fully what this means, but we're gonna lean into it. And now I can say, you know, 20, 25 years after that initial confession, most church people in the church know that Christ Community Church, their tagline is a church for Monday. And they say that very regularly and they try to lean into that in all that they do.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, that's helpful background because I think it helps people understand your commitments, your heart, and a big part of why you wrote this book, and uh I want to talk a little bit about that. As you noted,

Who is Pastoring for Monday for — and what makes it different?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

there have been a lot of contributions, both in organizational life, but also in books and articles in this area of the faith and work movement. What's different about your book? Who'd you write it for, and what do you hope to accomplish?

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Yeah, the primary audience is pastors and church leaders. So this could be, you know, the preaching pastor of the church, it could be this discipleship pastor, it might also be a worship leader at the church. It could be an elder team that is thinking about the leadership structures of the church or just any engaged leader at the level of the local church. And I wanted to not talk about faith and work in general, but to say if we care about this at a convictional level, why should it take a more prominent place in the life of the local church? Why should pastors, including it in their sermons, why should discipleship ministries and pathways think about how it relates to their uh discipleship pathways? Um, how should mission and outreach pastors and leaders, how does this conversation come to bear for them? So I'm really thinking through how does this come to bear in the life of a local church, the regular Sunday gathering, uh the ministries of the church. And again, it goes back to I think the unique place of made to flourish. That's what as an organization we exist to do is to come alongside pastors and churches. But as you look at the literature and books that have been written, there does seem to be a gap that, you know, sometimes entrepreneurs talk about jobs to be done. You know, if you want to launch a business, you have to say, what are the jobs to be done and how can we help people with the jobs they want to do? So for instance, my book has a chapter on preaching. I don't know of any other faith in work books that talk about the preaching ministry of a pastor. And yet that's so much of how pastors envision their work, includes preaching. So I'm I'm addressing topics that pastors are actually thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, and you don't have to be a pastor to enjoy this book. I don't work as a pastor. Um, and I just found so many helpful insights about not just theologically around a theology of work, but practical insights about how to assist people and even to assist myself when I'm going through challenging faith and work-related questions or challenges or opportunities. So, in even the preaching chapter, there were lots of things that came out of that chapter that I thought, boy, I could really use that even in the way I lead team meetings and do my work around Upper House. So, really want to uh thank you for that dimension of your book. It's very practical. We're gonna talk more about the practical insights that you offer and what churches can do. But I want to start with where you start the book, uh, or at least begin to get into the details of our conversation with where you start the book. And that is with

Matt's father: a model of faithful, integrated work

SPEAKER_00 10:15

a story about your dad. He really stood out for you for obvious reasons as a real model of faithfulness. I wonder if you could talk to us about him a bit. What did you see in him? How did he demonstrate this integrative lifestyle, faith and work coming together that really made an impact on you?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Yeah, so my dad passed away a few years ago. And when I was writing the book, I think I was in a reflective space, just looking back in his life and thinking through his example. And my dad was a superintendent of schools in a small town in North Dakota. So maybe some of your listeners uh live or know of a space like that. It's the sort of place in a state that if you saw the name of that town, you wouldn't even recognize it. These are towns of three, four, five, six hundred people. There were nine kids in my graduating class, right? So you got to figure even if you're valedictorian, you're not sure if you can put that you're in the top 10 percentile of your class. Like these are small, small schools. And I just say that that um, you know, these were this was not a glamorous position. And yet in a small town, life revolves around the school, right? This is the place of entertainment. This is where basketball games are going, school play, music, et cetera. So I think my dad, as a superintendent, you know, he took that job really seriously. He was a person of duty. He was really animated by wanting to serve the small town. So he'd get up at 6 a.m. every day. He wanted to be at school by 7 a.m. So he could have an hour and a half of uninterrupted time, uninterrupted time before the students came to school. Then he'd be there all day. He always tried to be home by five o'clock to get home for dinner. But then most nights, many nights, he'd be back at the school, uh, whether it was a board meeting, whether it was uh a school activity that the students were at. So my dad worked really hard, 50, 60, sometimes 70 hours a week at the school. And when I think about my dad's example, one was just the consistency of uh what he did, just the same routine every single day. He also did his work with a lot of joy. Teachers knew him as a person that would crack jokes, that was someone that took an interest in their lives and was a pleasant person to be around. But I got a chance to interview him for my mom and dad's 60th wedding anniversary. So he was 82 years old. This is, I think, five or six years ago. And my dad, without hesitation, started listing out what percentage of students went into vocational fields rather than college after school. He knew that number right away. Then he started listing out the different places where they were finding jobs: Arctic Cat, Polaris, Marvin Windows, things like that. He had created a whole uh system of uh vocational training at the schools he was at, and he listed them off. Again, at the age of 82, mechanics, carpentry, home ec, it's like these things were on the top of his mind. In other words, my dad's work to him was deeply meaningful. He saw the outcome of what he was doing. And I just saw that consistency and it left a big impact on me. I do go into this in the book, and maybe uh, you know, it's a follow-up that we can go into if you'd like. But that same dad who was consistent at school was consistent at church. He showed up every single Sunday. We were just there in the pews. And as I think back, I don't know, I don't want to be uncharitable, but I don't know if there was a single time in all those years that my dad ever heard his pastor say, Ken, God has you exactly where he wants you. You know, how's it going at the school? How can we be praying for you in your work? Those type of conversations I think would have made a massive difference to my dad. Because my dad had purpose in his work and he he was a person of faith, but I don't think he ever saw how those two things fit together in a meaningful way.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, that's such a powerful story.

Why work discipleship is central to biblical and pastoral life

SPEAKER_00 14:19

And that's exactly where I want to go. I, you know, as a pastor, you know, you care deeply about human flourishing. You want to see uh your congregants thrive in all dimensions of life. And and so my question for you, and I know this is a big motivation for Made to Flourish, and the question is why is uh discipleship related to our work such an important or foundational part of church life? Why, why should it become more fundamental and foundational to the things we talk about, work on, educate on in a church context?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

You know, it's a big answer. It it um we could talk biblically. This is the biblical storyline of what it means to be human. The back in Genesis 1, our the original creation, we were called to have dominion and to rule. This is God's purpose for humanity. And we believe that was uh frustrated in the fall, but that does not change his fundamental calling of what it means to be a human being. That's not all that it means to be a human being created in God's image, but it certainly is tied up because God Himself is described as a worker, right, throughout scripture. So it's part of the biblical storyline that gets developed about what it means to be a human in God's world. There's also, I think, a very practical shepherding paradigm. This is just a reality. This is where people spend their days. And I think as pastors, as shepherds of God's people, we should have a interest, a concern, like a focus, uh a curiosity about where people spend most of their time, again, paid or unpaid. I think there's also a church historical, you know, aspect to this that I think it was uh was it Alan Kreider in the patient ferment of the early church? He talks about one of the ways that the church grew in the early chapters or in the early centuries was not through a church-centric model of inviting people to church. Like the early church was not handing out Easter pamphlets of like come to our Easter celebration because they were scared for their lives. They were scared of outsiders. What happened is people patiently lived the message of Christ, spoke the message of Christ in the marketplace, in the places where they showed up to work. And this begins to spread throughout the first century. I talk a little bit about in the book that uh there's this passage in Luke chapter three where John the Baptist is out preaching, and he sort of has a bullhorn in his hands. He's got, you know, you can imagine sort of the street preacher. That's how I imagine John the Baptist. And he's saying basically, repent, everyone, repent, you know, for the kingdom of God is near. And if you don't listen, if you don't produce fruit in keeping with repentance, the axe is already at the root of the tree. He's gonna cut down this tree of yours. So people are freaked out, but they're getting baptized at the river, they're repenting. But for the first time in the gospels, it says people in a particular field of work come to John the Baptist. It says even tax collectors came and even soldiers came. And what is interesting, they they they both ask the same question. They say, What should we do? And I love that question because in reading it, you can kind of tell that they're really asking a question about their work, aren't they? If I want to turn my life around, if I want to repent, what does that mean for my tax collecting? What does that mean for my soldiering? You know, I think we all have a sense that tax collecting and soldiering were sort of the dirty jobs of the first century. If you were a good, faithful Jew, you didn't want your kid going into soldiering or tax collecting. Like they seemed beyond redemption. And yet, what does John the Baptist do? He says essentially, if you want to repent, you don't have to leave tax collecting. In fact, you need to go back into tax collecting. You don't have to leave soldiering. In fact, you need to go back into soldiering, but now you're gonna do it differently. Tax collectors, you're only gonna take or are charged essentially what is owed by the government. And soldiers, you're not gonna bribe, you're not gonna bully, you're gonna treat people with respect on the road. And I think it's an early glimpse in the Gospels that to live a God-honoring, holy, fulfilling, righteous life doesn't mean that we're called out of our careers to pursue something differently, but we need to intentionally align them with the kingdom of God wherever we're at.

Creation, fall, redemption, new creation: a theological framework for work

SPEAKER_00 18:34

So, Matt, one of the things that I found really helpful in the book is that you do a lot of work with theological scaffolding. You help churches, pastors, people think about their own work in a theological framework. I wonder if you could, for the benefit of our listeners and viewers, spell out that framework and how we might think about the seasons and cycles of our work in ways that are congruent with the larger storyline of scripture.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, I think what you're referencing there, John, is I have a chapter on purpose. And all of us are trying to make meaning of what we do with our lives and with our work, whatever that means. And it needs to fit into big story, uh into a bigger story. We're meaning-making creatures. We are story, uh, we're storied creatures. So we all, I think, bring stories to what it means to work in our world. So you can just think, you know, some people have a story of necessity. You just got to get a job. It's just our duty. Let's not overthink it. That's just what our work means. Some bring a story of uh impact that we're trying to change the world through our work. And that's why we find a job, is we want to make a big kind of splash in the world, whatever that that looks like. Some, it's not impact or necessity, it's actually success. That, you know, I want to be self-actualized, I want to make a lot of money, I want to advance in my career. That's what it means to work. Some people have a story of misery. It's it's a story that, you know, work is really about suffering, and um, our bodies will break down, our minds will break down, and unfortunately, it's something that we just have to do and suffer through. I think each of those stories gets part of the story right and certainly reflects part of the reality of work under the sun. But I'm trying to um bring up that actually the biblical story provides a comprehensive, realistic view of what work is like. And it's more fulfilling to keep these chapters together. I use the categories of creation fall, redemption, and new creation or restoration. And uh, you know, those those big categories, I think we need to keep them together. That first of all, as I mentioned earlier, work is part of God's design because he is a worker and he creates us in his image. So that's the first thing to say about work is that it is a good, this is part of God's purpose, is full stop. You know, wanting to work, wanting to contribute. You hear young kids when they're three or four years, they they raise their hand. They want to help mom and dad, right? That's a good creational thing that God has put in us. And I think the fall is even more expansive than misery because it tells us that our work is broken individually, it's broken systematically. And we see it both of those very early. So you think about Genesis chapter 11 and the story of the Tower of Babel. You can turn that into a of how I individually am broken in my work and sinful in my work, but it's really a corporate story, isn't it? It's a whole entire organization of workers that say we're all together gonna build something that's about our name. We're gonna raise our name through our work, and then we'll be safe, then we'll be secure, we won't be scattered. And I just want to say that as you chart the biblical storyline, there's so many ways that it shows that our work is broken individually and systematically. Systemically, but that's part of the story, right? So people that take a cynical view of work or uh they're broken in their lives of work and they see suffering, that's part of the story. I think what I'm tracing in the redemptive chapter is we can immediately jump to Jesus, right? And he's the ultimate climax in the in the storyline of God's redemption. But I think God's story of redemption, it begins right away with a family, right? The family of Abraham, who is to be blessed and to be a blessing to all nations. And, you know, the Mosaic law in the Torah, God's people are called a kingdom of priests. That's Genesis language, right? It's royal language of being kings and queens and priests, that these are people who are in the face of God, in the presence of God, uh, as Abraham is commanded to do. And what you see is this kingdom of priests, it doesn't ignore that original creation mandate, but it begins to rewrite this broken story of work. So wherever you see fallenness of work, whether that is exploitation of workers, uh not paying workers, uh, not showing diligence in work, creating economic opportunity for those who are without work, God's kingdom of priests, his royal priesthood begins to rewrite that story. They're commanded to participate with him in rewriting a story of redemption. So I eventually get to Jesus, obviously. In Christ, we are uh remade, we're reformed, but being renewed in the image of our Creator, Colossians says. In other words, our salvation is not just forward pointing to our ultimate hope, but it is backward looking to creation, that something of God's original intention of image-bearing is caught up with the work that's being done in Christ through his Holy Spirit. Uh, and that means, I think, that redemption of Christ has to do something with our work, that we're being realigned and actually representing God in his world as we seek to cultivate and keep and be stewards and have dominion over the work that we have. That's a lot I know about God's story. It's so important, I think, that churches are framing a narrative that helps people make sense of their life of work.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yeah, and that framework was so important, uh, just in my own thinking as I read through it. And and I think the tool that our listeners and viewers will find helpful is just the series of questions you ask at each of those stages. So it is kind of a template of questions that you can be present pastorally with people as they're experiencing both the brokenness of work and the redemptive dimensions of work and helping them see how their work really is connected with God's purposes in the world. And I found that really practical and really helpful. And I think anyone who reads the book will find that to be so as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

If today's conversation has encouraged or challenged you, be sure to subscribe to the Upwards Podcast, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who cares about faith, leadership, vocation, and the common good. We are committed to creating conversations that help people thoughtfully engage faith in every sphere of life, from the workplace to the university to the public square. Now, back to John Terrell's conversation with Matt Rustin.

Lessons from Lesslie Newbigin and Tim Keller on vocation and mission

SPEAKER_00 25:23

You rely a little bit in this book, uh, or repeatedly, I would say, on Leslie Nubigan, the missiologist and British theologian, and you also point to Tim Keller. And I wonder if you could say a little bit about those two individuals and why they're so important for your own thinking.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yeah, in many ways, I think uh both what Leslie Nubigan was writing about as a missiologist in the 20th century, Tim Keller's early ministry in Manhattan, they were ahead of maybe where we would say we are today or where we were at 10 years ago, because they were living in post-Christian spaces before that became a reality for most of the country in the United States. So, what do I mean by that? Leslie Nubian, a missiologist, he spent his early years ministering in India, Madras, India. He's a bishop. And he had left his native England. And after, you know, 30, 40 years of ministering in that space, he returns back to Birmingham, England. And he's asking this question of all those lessons I learned as a missionary in India. Like, I should be returning to like a Christian culture, right, in England. But he what he sees in his uh native England is that they are in so many ways post-Christian, that there was a veneer of spirituality and Christianity, but really the hope of the gospel had been left. So he's asking serious questions about how does the church basically commission missionaries in every field, right? Every follower of Christ has a missionary identity, and you need to have a missionary encounter with the culture. And he really sees the workplace as a primary way to do that. But he's speaking to the church. He's a churchman, and he's saying the church needs to be discipling people that can enter into their fields of work. So he talks about that a lot. So I think Tim Keller, in the same way, you know, he he himself was influenced by Nubigan, but um he's reflecting very deeply on the gospel. Obviously, he's uh a reformed Presbyterian uh minister. But, you know, as he reflects on the gospel, he really sees that the gospel impacts things in three ways. There's an inside out aspect of the gospel. It transforms us from the inside out when we come to Christ. There's an upside-down gospel that he reorients social structures and reunites people that usually wouldn't hang out together in this new community that he's creating in the gospel. But there's also a forward-back aspect of the gospel that what will be true in the new heavens and the new earth is becoming true now in the already not yet aspect of the kingdom. And he basically builds out his entire philosophy of ministry in those three aspects of the gospel. So the inside out gospel, this is the regular evangelism, church planning, spiritual formation of the church. Um, his upside-down gospel, this is his uh mercy and justice ministries, this is the hope for New York that he's creating, this is uh generous justice, was he writes. But he also has a stream of the church that is faith and work. Why would you create that as a mission front of the church? Because he's reflecting this is a third aspect of the gospel, the forward, backward, that what is true uh ultimately, we are working for cultural renewal through our work every day. So he starts the Center for Faith and Work. He uh writes a book, Every Good Endeavor About This. So it comes out in the organizations he creates and also the books that he's writing in these three basically pillars. And I'm reflecting on that and basically saying, gosh, faith and work is not just like a little side thing. We got, you know, maybe a men's Bible study on it, or this little thing over there. I think it needs to be actually the philosophy of ministry, it needs to be a substantial place in the life of a church.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

So helpful. And May DeFlourish picks up on their work and extends that work to the life of the church in in so many ways. So really grateful that you brought out those two leaders that that I think broke a lot of headwind for a lot of us who have followed.

Four gloves: boxing, latex, camouflage, and work — postures toward cultural engagement

SPEAKER_00 29:26

You had this wonderful metaphor that you use for faithfulness in and through our work. You talk about four images: boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage gloves, and work gloves. I wonder if you could um talk a little bit about those four different postures or approaches, and which image is the best image for us to carry into our daily work from your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

I wrote that chapter because as I was talking to pastors in churches about integrating faith and work, so many times their eyes would light up and they would say, Oh, yeah, we're we're doing something. I was talking to someone I remember that was a volunteer at a church, and he told the story of someone that was evangelizing at work, sharing the messages of Christ through like lots of times during their work day. And their boss had kind of brought them into the office and basically said, Hey, you need to stop evangelizing all day. We actually hired you to do a job here, and we're asking you to do that. It's becoming a big distraction among their team members. And this person had been platformed at their church because what they did next is instead of sort of humbly looking to work it out, they confronted them sharply and said, you know, First Amendment rights, I have a right to express my religious freedom. And if you don't allow me to do that, essentially there's big problems. And that was platformed in this church as like a huge victory. Like that was the way that they were living out their faith and work was a really strong confrontation with the workplace that they should have a right to share their faith. And I was reflecting on that, and I just thought, gosh, even if you talk about faith and work, people import different models of cultural engagement to think about the way that they live out their faith in the work. So what do I mean? I use these four metaphors of boxing gloves, of latex gloves, of camouflage gloves, and of work gloves. Boxing gloves are a conflict model that basically we realize in our culture, in our world that doesn't always follow and honor Christ, we're going to have conflicts in the workplace. And the way to be a faithful Christian is to stand up for your rights and confront that in a way that it might involve threats, it might involve lawsuits, it certainly involves uh an expression of what my rights are in the workplace. So that's one approach. A second approach is to say, no, no, no, no. It's not a fighting or conflict approach. It's really latex gloves that we're to remain pure as Christians. And as much as possible, we're just going to avoid uh corrupt situations. Maybe we don't go to that holiday party where there's too much drinking. Maybe we don't try to engage in things that we think are bad. Um, we don't go out with employees, et cetera. And we're just trying to stay pure and we'll go to church on Sunday. So that's another approach. The third approach is camouflage and basically to say, you know what, my faith is important, my work is important, but I just got to do my job. I'm going to put my head down. Sometimes I will do things that maybe cross the lines of what my faith or church tradition would say, but I can't really worry about that because I have a job to do and I'll sort of confess my sins on Sunday if I need to. It's a bifurcated model. And I want to suggest that all three of those models are not the best presentation of what the scriptures calls us to, but really the metaphor that I lean into is that of work gloves. That the primary mode that Christians, the primary posture they should take in the workplace is one of service, is one of love, is one of serving our neighbors, right? Christ, when uh one of his final acts, he gets down on his knees and he begins to clean the feet of his disciples. And, you know, John Stopp wrote about this in a book on mission and vocation. And he basically said there are there are more than one great commission. Yes, we have the one in Matthew, but these commissionings come in all the gospels. And he said for him, the Gospel of John is the most comprehensive of all the commissionings. It's when Jesus is praying and he says, As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And those are some of his final words at the end of John. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And stop asked this question: How did the Father send Jesus? Well, yes, he sent him to preach and to proclaim the good news of the gospel, but he also sent to serve the actual tangible needs of people, right? To heal the sick, to give them food, to um speak words of hope and life, to minister to actually people's physical needs. Uh he himself was a carpenter, right? A tecton. So um John stop and goes on to say in the same way, God sends us to the world, yes, preaching the good news of the gospel, but also being ministers of the gospel indeed, which comes about through our everyday work. So I'm trying to simplify it and give us metaphors to think about what that might actually look like in people's concrete work situations.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Yeah, it's so helpful. I love that image of these worker gardening gloves as really the model that allows us to really take a servant orientation and to really uh see the fullness of our neighbors and the breadth of our neighbors and how we serve them in a work context. So that imagery was really helpful for me.

Practical tools: preaching, small groups, and mission shaped by vocation

SPEAKER_00 34:46

The third part of your book, Matt, um, is really designed to help pastors and churches better support Christian workers. And you go through a lot of homiletical, pedagogical, and even community-building options, these vocation formation groups. I wonder if you could speak to some of these best practices. This is a big question I'm asking, but you've had a chance to observe a lot of churches in your work. What do you see as working really well? What might you share with our listeners and viewers about the ways that churches are really effectively engaging congregation members in the area of work and faith?

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah. So the first thing that I want to do is sort of take the pressure off and say this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to start a bunch of new programs. It doesn't necessarily that mean that you gotta uh, you know, devote a bunch of budget dollars to these initiatives. It doesn't even necessarily mean that you need to hire like a faith and work pastor or something like that. I'm trying to say, in the regular rhythms in life of the church, how does this conversation come to bear? So in the preaching ministry of what pastors do, I'm trying to say, how do we make this relevant? And I give a few tips. I'm I'm riffing on Haddon Robinson and Dallas Willard and Martin Luther King Jr., just some faithful exemplars that did this pretty consistently. And I want to suggest that, you know, a couple ideas is you make this ordinary rather than heroic. So you don't have to find like the most impressive examples of living out faith and work that are influencing millions. Like figure out who's in your congregation, like who's the plumber? And what does this look like for them as they're as you're applying a text? What does it look like for the school teacher to do this? What does it look like for uh the carpenter, for the uh for the accountant? So I want to make this uh really practical in that way. It should be ordinary, not heroic. I think it should be a regular, not sporadic. I talk to pastors and a lot of times they say, Oh, yeah, we do a Labor Day sermon. And I I love that they do a Labor Day sermon, but I would just counsel to say, how is it the one minute moment? How is it the 30-second illustration on your text for this Sunday that can be there? And then I would just suggest that it's specific and not and not general, right? Somehow God has wired our human brains that that we can take a specific example of someone else's life and apply it to our lives. I think sometimes as preachers, we want to not leave anyone out. And we sort of mention this example and that example and this example and that example. And our imagination is never ignited because we never go deep with a particular example of how to live out a principle of scripture that we're explaining. So, you know, that that is just in the preaching chapter of the book. I also talk about small groups. I would encourage churches, many churches have a small group structure. How are your small groups learning about one another's work and praying for one another? So we've got all these one-another's of scripture. We're supposed to pray for one another, bear each other's burdens. We're supposed to show hospitality, encourage one another. And this doesn't even have to be a curriculum that your small groups do. It doesn't have to be like a uh, you know, a video series or something like that. One of the things I love to do in small groups, and we've seen churches do this, just take the first five minutes of your small group and have someone talk about their work. What's a day in the life of their work? What are the uh joys that they experience? What are the challenges? Where do they see sin at work in themselves and in others? And how can the group pray for them? I've used that in small groups. That is like one of the best tools for group camaraderie and getting to know one another. Well, what did I do there? I didn't spend money, I didn't even uh buy a curriculum. It's just a simple rhythm that small groups can engage in. So there's so there's the gathered worship community, there's the your small group structures. And I think this does have uh an impact also on your outreach ministries. How are you gathering data on the work competencies, the skills of your congregation? And how does that fit into your missional and outreach strategies? It could be the partners that you have in a community, your organizational partners. It could be the initiatives that you have. I always sort of remark that, you know, I've gone on lots of mission trips to other countries. And it seems like inevitably, on day two or three, someone will hand me a hammer. And I always want to say, don't you know in my country, they don't allow me to use this hammer? Like I don't use a hammer. People don't allow me to build things in my country, but now you're gonna have me build this school that you've got going. And it's sort of a funny way to say, listen, can we be creative about we need photographers to take photos? Well, let's bring some marketers around that would meet with our ministry partners and talk about their marketing material. Let's bring our school administrators that are gonna meet with the local administrators in the place that we're going. Let's bring some of our civil engineers and we're actually gonna talk with people in the community. Let's bring some of our teachers as we engage with the school system. And let's bring some carpenters who actually know how to build things uh when we're looking at this initiative. That's that's a church that is taking seriously the skills and the competencies that have been formed vocationally in their congregation. So I know that's sort of a smattering of the type of uh thought experiments that I'm that I'm doing in the book, but um, these are easy places to start.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

That's so helpful.

Enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment — the Ecclesiastes cycle

SPEAKER_00 40:11

One of the things I also thought was really helpful about this book is you talk about this whole notion of disenchantment, how so many people have just walked away from the church and that faith and work can really help bring enchantment back into the life of the church. I wonder if you could speak to this cycle of enchantment, disenchantment, and then re-enchantment. And how does the faith and work movement and a robust theology of work in our churches help people to fall in love with the possibilities of church life and work life again?

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Yeah, you know, I first uh learned of those categories from an essay by C.S. Lewis called Talking About Bicycles. It was in a little collection of essays called Present Concerns, like he had written for uh magazines and newspaper articles. But he talks about this fourfold movement that runs through all of life of unenchantment, enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment. And he talks about that's true of our story at work too, right? That um maybe there's a time when we're unenchanted and you know we don't care about work. But that first moment of enchantment, it's when you get the job out of college or maybe it's a change in your career and your hopes are sky high. This is the organization that's gonna be amazing, all the people are smart, the income is good, or it's gonna be uh fulfilling and purposeful, whatever it would be. Uh, but there can be this uh idealism that attends our work. But I think if you've been in a workplace for any length of time, you know that a season, a mindset of disenchantment can take over. And that's where the whole thing seems like a house of cards. Like I'm not sure. Uh you you stop believing in it, that maybe the promotion doesn't come, the project doesn't get going. You know, for the entrepreneur, the product doesn't sell. You see the brokenness in the system. Actually, there's been research on this, and it shows that about the five-year mark for most people working in a job, people get disillusioned and they say, I'm not sure I want to be here anymore. So that's disenchantment. And I think most people probably go through some stage like that in their work at some point. Re-enchantment is not going back to all the naivety of enchantment. You don't become idealistic again. You're more grounded. Uh, you see the brokenness, but you see the possibility of what can be done and your place in it and the purpose of it. And I would just say, I think, you know, that's a lovely way to summarize the gospel, right? Um, and and the gospel's work in us, that we're confronted with the goodness, but also the brokenness of work. But through Christ, we're able to see what is possible when he's at work. And the first thing that happens is he's at work in us, that as we are going to work, maybe you're in a tough stage, this is a place of encounter. This is a place of walking with God. And it might be in a season of suffering, a season of struggle, but God is actually at work bringing you closer to him through what you're going through. And to see that uh as a as part of the reenchanting of work. Um, I kind of go through the um the book of Ecclesiastes and how we see these four stages of unenchantment, enchantment, disenchantment, reenchantment in the life of the uh of Ecclesiastes. But I think for pastors, the takeaway is to say, you know what, as I'm looking out at my congregation, at any moment, I might have people in all four of those stages. Some are idealistic about this new season of work and everything is great, and they need a certain type of message and counsel. Some are just down in the dumps and it's not looking good. And how do you come alongside those people with compassion and patience? Others are beginning to experience re enchantment and. They're seeing God at work. They're bra embracing a sense of work. How do you tell their stories? Not to lift up an idealistic frame, but to say what is possible when someone walks with God and they trust Him amidst the different seasons of work. So I'm holding that up as a paradigm. And I think it provides pastors and church leaders a useful framework to coming alongside and shepherding people who go to work.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Yeah,

What's next for Made to Flourish: Common Good Magazine, Scatter, and pastoral residencies

SPEAKER_00 44:24

I found that section to be so helpful. I want to move to wrapping up our conversation. Matt, I'd love to hear what's next for you, what's next for Made to Flourish. What's around the corner for you?

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Yeah, John, we didn't talk about this in the beginning, but um we really have three initiatives that we try to assist pastors and churches with. Anyone really interested in this conversation? One is the ideas that we're promoting and talking about. We do that through Common Good Magazine. So uh it's a subscription magazine, and anyone can get that. And, you know, some people have podcasts, some people uh have a website. Uh we thought that our contribution could be a print magazine, that if something is worth saying, it's worth saying in print. And it allows us to take this timeless message of creation, fall, redemption, uh, new creation, and its story around work and apply it to current topics. We're hoping to spur the imagination and inspire people of what we're talking about. Secondly, a lot of churches say, you know, I get it, but what would we do in our church as a as a result of that? Certainly, I wrote the book for that aim is to try to give pastors and churches very practical tools that they can start uh going on this conversation. We also have a tool and a training that we've created called Scatter. It's just a tool to help congregations learn who's in their congregation, what their needs are, what kind of support they'd like in connecting their faith with their work. So that's a tool that we're creating. We're hoping to grow that. We'd love to see many churches use that tool in the coming days. And then the final thing that I'll say is I learned these lessons in a church as a young pastor, as a pastoral resident. I didn't learn this in seminary. Uh, I didn't learn it through a class that I took. I was embedded in a church that modeled these values. So we find churches that are living this story out and we help them start pastoral residency programs, not unlike a doctor who's finished their met their medical training and start a medical residency. We help churches start residency programs who are living out these values. So those are some of the ways that we're coming alongside churches. I would say to any listener, if you're interested, either for yourself or for your church, go to madetoflourish.org and check those things out. We'd love to come alongside you in the area of ideas with Common Good Magazine, tools and trainings with SCATER, or to actually help you develop the future generation of pastors that sees this as a part of their pastoral

Closing thoughts and recommendations

SPEAKER_02 46:53

work.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

We will put all the details in the show notes. Made to Flourish is an outstanding organization. They're doing great work. Um, we've been um just blessed to be a remote part of the great work that you do. I strongly encourage uh Matt's book, pick it up. Uh, you won't regret it. Uh, we'll put all the details in the show notes as well. Matt, thank you for your good work, uh, for your friendship and all the ways that you're strengthening the church in these in these really challenging times. You're a breath of fresh air, and uh, and I'm grateful for you.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

John, thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you today. It's a joy uh to be at this work together. I know that so much of what you care about and do at Upper House represents these values as well. So thanks for having me on today.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Thanks for listening to the Upwards Podcast. We hope today's conversation helped you think more deeply about faith, work, and what it means to live thoughtfully and faithfully in today's world. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with someone who would benefit from the conversation. Find more episodes and our other podcast offerings at slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.