As is typical, the first part of a new year is spent reflecting on the past year. For my organization, Discipling Marketplace Leaders (DML), it means collecting all the data of the activities that we have engaged in and seeing both what went well and what was a challenge.

We continue to be very busy, and we are seeing good impacts from those activities! We work directly with churches and denominations, business leaders, and people engaged in every workplace.

However, one audience we do not share as much about is our focus on getting courses into Bible colleges, seminaries, and Christian universities, relating to workplace discipleship and breaking the sacred/secular divide. This particular audience tends to move very slowly and with great difficulty, and any changes must undergo rigorous accreditation processes to add or switch courses. While that is the reason often given for the slow process, I think the challenge goes deeper than that.

Recently, I was reading Our Secular Vocation by J. Daryl Charles. He said this about the topic (emphasis mine):

Any emphasis on the priesthood of all believers that calls Protestants back to their roots and to the sacredness of work in the marketplace is scarcely to be found in seminary and divinity school coursework. Substantial curricular change would require institutional reform on a wide scale, reform requiring a different academic model.

What is needed in theological education is nothing less than the transformation of its core components. Every course in every theological topic at the seminary/divinity school level needs rethinking to eliminate the perpetual “sacred versus secular” residue and to foster the integration of faith, work, and vocation in a holistic way.

At the most basic level, among those things needing serious examination in terms of course content are the following: a theology of creation, a theology of work, human flourishing, a theology of vocation, the history of the sacred-secular divide, the Lutheran breakthrough of the 16th century, the importance of engaging competing worldviews, ethical and economic challenges of the workplace, a theology of stewardship, service toward the common good and community flourishing, and redefinition of “mission.”

The challenge is not just adding a course, such as DML’s “Church-based Business as Mission” course, but a much broader institutional reform to break down the sacred-secular divide.

While we have seen great progress in the faith and work movement, it does continue to be led by church members and not church leaders. Relatively few participants in this movement are pastors or priests.  And in large part, this is because the theological educational institutions are not keeping up with the opportunity and potential of this movement.

In addition to that, for those pastors who are already leading churches, the great majority of them have not spent a significant season of their lives working in the marketplace. When the leaders can’t identify with the challenge and the opportunity, ninety-nine percent of members will continue to belong to churches that help them worship weekly but leave them unsupported for where they spend the majority of their waking time.

Many people ask our DML teams if pastors should be co-vocational—having a job in the marketplace as well as leading a church? We say that it is not necessary (but may be helpful for a season). But at a minimum, pastors should spend time every week meeting with at least one member in a learning position, asking, “What is God doing in your workplace, and how can the church support you to join him in that work?”

It is good to see this movement change and grow. We are seeing more and more Christians grow in their understanding that their work can be an act of worship. We are seeing more and more denominations open their doors and embrace the need for discipleship in this area, especially denominations in Africa.

We continue to pray that theological institutions will begin to train and equip every pastor to know how to equip the priesthood of believers to view their workplace as a place for worship and mission. Please continue to pray with us for a breakthrough in this area!

Editor’s note: This article has been republished from the author’s blog with permission.