John C. Knapp

"Is faith only of value when healing is needed? Is it not essential to living our daily lives as instruments of God's healing power in the world? Church culture, like business culture, reinforces the notion that the proper place for faith is the private sphere. Despite this, many men and women in the pews are not easily persuaded that the God they worship on Sunday morning is unconcerned with how they make their living."

So writes John C. Knapp, director of Samford University's Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership. This perspective resonates with many. Our life outside the congregation is of little 'spiritual' value; Christianity is a part-time activity. These are the implicit messages conveyed by far too many church services. Knapp's contends that the church has failed us and has failed businesspeople in particular.

The ground covered in this book is similar to, but more focussed, than Amy Sherman's excellent Kingdom Calling. Going to most church services we would never realise that there are over 2000 Bible verses that deal with business, the impression given would be more in tune with Augustine's when he is alleged to have declared that 'business is in itself an evil'.

Knapp and his team interviewed 230 people to see how church has helped them in their businesses. It makes for sombre reading. Most found that the church was too concerned with the (so-called) private sphere of life and uninterested in the public realm. The majority found that the church had done 'little or nothing to equip them for faithful living at work'.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Knapp identifies some glimmers of hope. The faith at work movement provides some promise. He stresses that this is a laity led movement. But is that such a bad thing? This highlights one weakness of the book. It doesn't really address the role of the church - it fails to distinguish between the church as an institute and as an organism.

This is a book to give to your pastor. My concern is that it will only be read by the 'laity'. Until we see a change in clergy training it may be a while before we see a paradigm shift in the way that the church as institution equips the church as organism for 'works of service'.

Review first posted here: here… (más)

"Is faith only of value when healing is needed? Is it not essential to living our daily lives as instruments of God's healing power in the world? Church culture, like business culture, reinforces the notion that the proper place for faith is the private sphere. Despite this, many men and women in the pews are not easily persuaded that the God they worship on Sunday morning is unconcerned with how they make their living."

So writes John C. Knapp, director of Samford University's Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership. This perspective resonates with many. Our life outside the congregation is of little 'spiritual' value; Christianity is a part-time activity. These are the implicit messages conveyed by far too many church services. Knapp's contends that the church has failed us and has failed businesspeople in particular.

The ground covered in this book is similar to, but more focussed, than Amy Sherman's excellent Kingdom Calling. Going to most church services we would never realise that there are over 2000 Bible verses that deal with business, the impression given would be more in tune with Augustine's when he is alleged to have declared that 'business is in itself an evil'.

Knapp and his team interviewed 230 people to see how church has helped them in their businesses. It makes for sombre reading. Most found that the church was too concerned with the (so-called) private sphere of life and uninterested in the public realm. The majority found that the church had done 'little or nothing to equip them for faithful living at work'.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Knapp identifies some glimmers of hope. The faith at work movement provides some promise. He stresses that this is a laity led movement. But is that such a bad thing? This highlights one weakness of the book. It doesn't really address the role of the church - it fails to distinguish between the church as an institute and as an organism.

This is a book to give to your pastor. My concern is that it will only be read by the 'laity'. Until we see a change in clergy training it may be a while before we see a paradigm shift in the way that the church as institution equips the church as organism for 'works of service'.

Review first posted here: here… (más)

This book is a fascinating though sobering look at another two worlds important to me that often do not mix—Christianity and business. Knapp bases much of the book on a series of 230 interviews to find out how Christians experience work and the church. The results are often disheartening as many of the respondents saw the church as having little or nothing to say about the challenges they faced in their work lives. The book is full of statistics and quotes from the interviews. One striking statistic is that only 18 of the 230 people had ever consulted a pastor for advice about a work-related matter. A related quote was, “It would be important to feel the freedom to talk about work-related problems with my pastor, but for some reason it seems it wouldn’t be appropriate.” Statistics and quotes like these form the core of the book.

Unfortunately, though the book starts out excellently, it trails off and was a bit difficult to finish. The author admits that he does not have “neat answers or prescriptive solutions.” However, I consider the book important for church leaders to read to see an area that they need to address within their churches. It is certainly a book that has made me think quite a bit and one I have discussed with my pastor and other folks.… (más)