Closing the gap from Sunday to Monday

What is the greatest obstacle to whole-life discipleship in the Church today? In the early days of the faith-and-work movement, researcher David Miller pointed out the disconnect between parishioners’ Sunday corporate worship experiences and their Monday vocational lives. Miller captured what he believed to be the great obstacle to whole-life discipleship, coining the term “the Sunday to Monday gap.” He made a heart-arresting and persuasive case that many sincere Christians lament local church leaders who miss the opportunity to equip them as apprentices of Jesus for their Monday worlds.

As a voice for the growing “faith, work, and economics movement,” I have devoted the last two decades to encouraging church leaders to become more intentional in narrowing the perilous Sunday to Monday gap. If we embrace a robust Biblical theology, we’ll also wisely conclude that any theological paradigm dividing our Sunday and Monday worlds is indeed perilous. I believe church leaders will need to more fully articulate and model the vital importance of whole-life discipleship in the ordinary callings and contours of our Monday worlds. Followers of Jesus need to see their specific vocational callings, both paid and unpaid, as a primary means for God-honoring worship, spiritual formation in Christ-likeness, incarnation of gospel plausibility, opportunities for gospel proclamation, and serving the common good through tangible acts of neighborly love.

Narrowing the Sunday to Monday gap may be one of the greatest obstacles to whole-life discipleship, but it is also one of our greatest opportunities. I have read many books articulating the integration of Christian faith, daily work, and economic wisdom aimed at equipping followers of Jesus for their Monday workplace callings, but I find three particularly insightful, practical, and helpful.

God At Work In The Marketplace

In The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth (HarperOne 2014), Dallas Willard and Gary Black call the Church to embrace a gospel that speaks into and shapes all dimensions of human existence, including the marketplace. Reframing Monday as “the God-bathed world of business,” Willard and Black remind us that business is a sovereignly designed means of delivering God’s love to the world. Our work creates value as we serve the needs of our neighbors near and far. How transforming it would be, both for the Church and the world, if all disciples of Jesus would grasp that they are called to be ministers of the gospel in their paid and unpaid workplaces.

From original creation and throughout the Scriptures, our work and our worship are portrayed as integral and seamless; they should not be understood in a dichotomous framework. While we don’t worship our work, it is an essential part of discipleship.

Bringing Our Monday Into Sunday

How should our Monday world shape our weekly gathered worship experience? In Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy (Baker Academic 2020), Matthew Kaemingk and Cory Wilson open our eyes and hearts to how the Scriptures reveal the interwoven nature of work and worship in the Old Testament and early church. Israel’s worship and its liturgical forms were designed and intended to engage the goodness of work as well as confront the inevitable ethical challenges in the fallen workplace.

If we are going to narrow the Sunday to Monday gap, then we will need to bring our Monday work back into our Sunday worship liturgies. Our Sunday liturgies don’t exist to minimize or help us escape our Monday worlds, but rather to help us live more fully into them as whole-life disciples of Jesus. We are to bring our entire selves and our Monday callings with us when we gather for corporate worship. Skillfully unpacking Biblical texts, Kaemingk and Wilson affirm the importance of bringing our Monday work into our gathered Sunday worship in life-giving and practical ways. For example, they point out that a proper Sunday response to an economic harvest will be one of gratitude to both God and neighbor. Monday’s profits should lead to Sunday praises. Monday’s losses should lead to Sunday laments. All Monday workplace realities should lead to confident trust in God and joyful worship.

Practicing God’s Presence

In Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work (Hendrickson 2019), Denise Daniels and Shannon Vandewarker confront one of the most serious consequences of the Sunday to Monday gap: a false bifurcation of worship and work. This division reinforces an impoverished form of Christian deism, where God is virtually irrelevant and absent in the muck and mire of our Monday workplaces.

Yet the Bible calls us to live into and experience the with-God life wherever we are and whatever we are doing throughout the week. How do we begin seeing our paid and unpaid workplaces as truly holy ground? Daniels and Vandewarker help us see the burning bush encounters that, like Moses’, appear in our Monday workplaces. The authors explore remarkable and transformative practices to help us more fully experience the with-God life in our Monday worlds. Practicing God’s presence, we become more attentive to our Good Shepherd’s tender presence, abundant provision, watchful protection, and wise guidance.

—Tom Nelson is the founder and executive chairman of Made to Flourish, a ministry that promotes the integration of faith, work, and economic wisdom for community flourishing. He is the author of Why Your Work Matters, published in April by Brazos Press.