Workplace Spirituality

"People are working the equivalent of over a month more each year than they did a decade ago. No surprise, then, that the workplace--and not churches or town squares--is where American social phenomena are showing up first. The office is where more and more people eat, exercise, date, drop their kids, and even, at architecture firm Gould Evans Goodman Associates in Kansas City, Mo., nap in company-sponsored tents. Plus, the influx of immigrants into the workplace has raised awareness about the vast array of religious belief. All over the country, for example, a growing number of Muslims, such as Milwaukee lawyer Othman Atta, are rolling out their prayer rugs right in the office."

Of course that is USAmerica but there are some equivalencies we should note UK-side: more working hours and religious groups for whom the sacred-secular divide is new and more problematic than us inculterated Christians.

What I wasnt ot flag up though, is the importance of the workplace for Christian ministry and hence the need to invest in chaplaincies and similar enterprises and to move ourselves out of the Weekend Church [=leisuretime spirituality] mindset. But given that the average UK church is pretty self-absorbed ["if it ain't run or pastored directly by us we don't want to know"] how can workplace church really take off without appearing to rival weekend church? We will need a great deal more collegiality among churches and their leaders if an unedifying spectacle is not to follow. We will also need other models of meeting together in workplace setting than the evangelical prayer meeting which is actually a difficult environment for many Christians for reasons of personality or cultural style.

The article is worth looking at also for an examination of the forms that workplace spirituality is taking.