I explained my plan for a sermon series on faith and work to a church member who makes his living in the business world. The idea was to explore how people relate Sunday morning faith and the Monday morning reality of the workplace.

“Monday morning’s not usually much of an issue for me,” he responded. “Wednesday afternoon or Thursday -- that’s when it gets to be a problem.”

I recruited four solid church members to participate in the month-long series. By “solid,” I mean Christians who are firm in their commitment to the church and in their personal faith. They are all capable of sharing a compelling personal story. I would devote about one-third of each sermon to an interview with one of these members representing a different field of work. Scripture readings each week linked Jesus’ teachings or encounters with people in the gospels with the occupational field of the week.

The woman who agreed to speak the first Sunday is a petroleum engineer who is very active the church’s life. She recently retired from a high level career with major oil companies and now consults in the industry. The second week focused on the medical field, featuring an ophthalmologist who specializes in pediatric surgery. He has served in many church leadership capacities and regularly leads mission trips to Central America. The third interview was with a public school teacher who started her career in early elementary education, but took a break from employment to raise her children. During those years she immersed herself in church school and then youth ministry. Excited by her experience with teens at church, she returned to school for a further degree and now teaches high school science. The final one to share his testimony represented the building trades, a self-employed electrician who is highly active in the mission work of the church in hands-on ways.

After an introduction on the doctrine of Christian vocation, I called the individual for the week up to the lectern to engage in dialog. The conversations followed a standard set of questions, which they had received several weeks before their Sunday.

• Is there a connection for you between Sunday morning and Monday morning? Are there some real tensions?

• How did you find your way into your career field? Can you see God’s hand in your vocational choice in any way?

• How important is it for you to use the talents God has given you in the work you get paid to do?

• What are some skills and wisdom you’ve acquired in the secular workplace that you are able to use in Christian service in the church and world outside of work?

• How does your Christian faith support you in the workplace? Does it offer spiritual strength, perspective or outlook, or ethical standards?

• Are there moments or ways that you feel you’re really in ministry while on the job?

I drew upon the interviews, then, in the concluding portion of the sermons. The interviews served as a vehicle for these members to engage in a practice that is underused in many of our churches -- testimony. The speakers put human faces and flesh and blood on what would otherwise have been a doctrinal or homiletic skeleton.

The most profound learning for me was that these members were able to express the connection of faith and work as a complex, dynamic relationship. They all seek to live their Christian faith in the workplace. They are all aware of contradictions and temptations. They all call upon the resources of their faith in the secular setting. They all bring skills and wisdom gained in secular employment into their involvement in the mission of the church. And they all have modified their work lives in some way as a result of their Christian experience.

Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Connecticut. He was formerly an academic dean at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.