How do business and Christian discipleship relate? A much-anticipated book is being released this week by Eerdmans: How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and What Can Be Done About It) by John Knapp. (Also Amazon.) The product description says:
Why do so many Christians struggle to relate their faith to their daily work? Is the church to blame? In this book John C. Knapp argues that the church's ambiguous teachings about vocation, money, and business have long contributed to Christians' uncertainty about discipleship in the workplace. Drawing on his own expertise in business ethics and on numerous interviews with Christians in diverse occupations, Knapp brings fresh perspectives to this troubling problem.
How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and What Can Be Done about It) explores the historical, cultural, and educational background to the faith-work gap and proposes a new theological framework for Christian life in the public sphere. Real-life examples enliven the discussion throughout, and each chapter concludes with "Questions to Consider," making this constructive book ideal for group study.
John is doing a three-part blog post to introduce the book:
John C. Knapp is founding director of the Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership at Samford University and author of the forthcoming book How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and What Can Be Done About It). In this post (the first in a three-part series), he discusses the "dangerous chasm separating the worlds of faith and work" that compelled him to write the book.
Many Christians struggling to make their faith relevant to their daily work find the church oddly indifferent to their lives on the job.
I have become increasingly aware of this phenomenon over the last twenty-five years, first as a consultant to an array of business and professional clients, and more recently as an educator of both business and seminary students. I have known countless believers who say the church does little or nothing to equip them for faithful living in the settings where they spend most of their waking hours and productive years.
How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and What Can Be Done About It) was written to shed light on the cultural, historical, theological, and educational influences that have led to this situation. Throughout the book, I incorporate real-life anecdotes and examples, many drawn from interviews with 230 Christians actively seeking to bridge their Sunday church and weekday work. These interviews were conducted mostly by working pastors in a doctoral course I taught, and they involved a diversity of respondents, from corporate CEOs and elected officials to barbers and bookkeepers. They included active members of Protestant (nine denominations) and Roman Catholic congregations in all regions of the United States. ...
Read the whole thing. I attended John's workshop on this topic a couple of years ago and have been anticipating this book ever since. The insights from his research are priceless. I look forward to getting my copy. I suspect you'll be reading more about the book here at the Kruse Kronicle before long.
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