Katie Roelofs has spent years thinking about the space between Sunday morning and the rest of the week. A pastor in the Reformed Church in America and managing director of the Worship for Workers Project, Katie is co-author of the new book Leading Worship for Workers. She argues that churches, often without realizing it, have widened the gap between faith and work, training people to leave their real lives at the door instead of bringing them into worship.

In this episode, Katie talks with Dwight and Alicia about what it looks like to close that gap. She describes a congregation that reimagined its offering plate around the ancient idea of first fruits, inviting people to bring forward the actual work of their hands. She talks about developing pastoral curiosity, the practice of genuinely learning what congregants carry into the pews each week, and about why the opening and closing words of a worship service shape people more than most leaders realize. Katie also addresses a question many pastors hear in one form or another: does God actually care about my job? Her answer draws on Genesis, on the theology of vocation, and on a vision of worship as the gathering and scattering of a people formed to carry faith into their daily work.

The easiest answer for that is I think it's an intentional disconnect that churches inherently, whether they realize it or not, have built in over time. So we actually, at the beginning of our book, we have a little audit section where we invite church leaders, pastors, whoever's in ministry, to do a little self-audit of your worship practices. and we give several different categories for why.

what we call vocationally conversant worship or why the bridging between Sunday and Monday oftentimes doesn't happen and as a matter of fact churches actually like to widen that chasm a little bit.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Alicia Granholm.

And I'm Dwight Zscheile Today we're joined by Katie Roelofs Katie is a pastor in the Reformed Church of America and serves as the managing director of the Worship for Workers project through Fuller Seminary. And she's the co-author of the new book, Leading Worship for Workers. We wanted to talk with her about the connection between the central Christian practice of worship and what most of us spend much of our time doing: working. Katie spent many years.

in worship leadership and pastoral ministry herself, and she's passionate about helping congregations think deeply about their worship practices as faith and life formation. Katie, welcome to Pivot.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Katie, we are so happy to have you. And I want to start by asking this question. So a lot of churches would say that they want people to live out their faith during the week. But if we're really honest, Sunday and Monday can look like two very different worlds. Why do you think that disconnect is so common?

The

easiest answer for that is I think it's an intentional disconnect that churches inherently, whether they realize it or not, have built in over time. so we actually at the beginning of our book, we have a little audit section where we invite church leaders, pastors, whoever's in ministry, to do a little self-audit of your worship practices. and we give several different categories for why.

What we call vocationally conversant worship, or why the bridging between Sunday and Monday oftentimes doesn't happen. And as a matter of fact, churches actually like to widen that chasm a little bit. So often it's communicated to people when they walk through the door. We know you've had a really hard week. Think about all that you've been through. You've been through board meetings. You've been through a tough week in the classroom. We want you to just leave all of that behind.

Mind and come and worship God. This is this, this is the sacred space. That's what's being communicated, right? This is the space where we are here to worship. so leave everything else behind, no distractions. don't be thinking about what's going on in your week during the sermon. Don't think about it while you're singing. This is the time to focus on God. And if we think about that, it takes just a second to correct our brains to actually start to think about that because there is something correct about that. That worship is the time where.

We are oriented to God and we are reoriented to each other. But at the same time, if we really do believe that our work matters to God, that our worship matters to God, and that God is present across the whole of our weeks, Sunday to Monday and every day of the week, the the widening of that chasm, I actually think it's it's been an intentional thing that's happened over time to churches, maybe without even realizing it.

So it's intentional by design. Yeah.

By design. So

Well, so let's unpack that a bit more because your book raises some interesting questions around, you know, what is worship actually for? And is it mainly this time to kind of receive God's grace? Is it a place where we learn preparation for the week ahead? You know, how has your own answer to that question and some of those questions changed over the years?

One of my favorite quotes comes from author who's a philosopher, Jamie Smith. and the quote says, if all of life is to be worship, the sanctuary is the place where we learn how.

If all of life is to be worship, the sanctuary is the place where we learn how. So in our book, we're building a sis we're building a theology of worship that understands corporate worship as the gathering and the scattering of God's people. it is the gathering of the corporate body of Christ who has been in the world, who has been out in workplaces doing God's work, engaging, engaging with God and God's people all week long.

and God then gathers them for this time of worship. And in the sanctuary, we are learning habits that we we are engaging with God and we are engaging habits that we hope will carry with us into the week long. the sanctuary is not a refueling station of sorts. We have a whole section on that, that it's not a refueling station of sorts that if you miss it in one week, you're gonna all of a sudden run on empty. It's a training ground.

it's a place where we learn habits and patterns for which we are going to engage in our daily work each week. It's the gathering and the scattering of God's people.

That image, Katie. So in this season of the pivot podcast that we're in right now, we've been talking about how the church's ancient practices still have something to say to people today. And your book doesn't argue that we need a whole new kind of worship. Instead, it asks us to look again at practices like gathering, confession, prayer, communion, and blessing. What have you discovered about the wisdom that's already there for us as Christians today?

to pull on one most obvious example, something that's raised a lot of questions and a lot of conversation coming out of our book. And it's the section on offering in particular. in a digital age where almost all churches have shifted to an online giving platform, we make the case that churches have forgotten what it is. They have they know how to give, but they no longer have an understanding, a theological understanding of what it means to offer.

And so we go and we pull back from the early church, from the first fruits idea, that it's not just a monetary gift that was brought in the Israelites, brought the very work of their hands. They brought the bread that they had just baked, they brought the olives that they had just picked. And that was their sacrifice of praise. They never entered into worship empty-handed. So too should God's people never empty enter into worship empty-handed.

They carry with them the fruits of their labor. They carry with them their what we say, trumpets and ashes and tears. They carry their whole selves before God, and that's what's offered up. so we've worked with several churches over the last couple of years to rethink offering practices beyond just like the digital giving era where it's like either tap to pay or it's transactional, that it just comes out of your bank account. You never know it happens.

and like the empty plates are just passed down the pews and nothing ever, nothing ever goes in them. so we've invited churches. One of our favorites was a church that ended up having a s like a section in the front of their church where they had offering every week. And so people who normally sit in the pews and kind of do the empty plate thing, they brought vocational offerings. They brought the spreadsheet that they had completed that they were proud of.

the very work of their hands that we believe God smiles on. the doctor brings the stethoscope, the child brings the artwork, and they all bring it forward and they lay it down as their offering for the week, their first fruit, the first that they picked, the best that they picked, with trust that when they offer it and they lay it down, that God will God will bring more into the harvest. So offering was has been like a really interesting

piece of this book that we've had the opportunity to engage with over the last couple of years.

Love that, Katie, especially as you say, right? because many of us, especially if we work, we get paid for work that 99.9% of the rest of the world will never see, right? You know, it's we don't we're we're not out harvesting our crops and actually have something physical per se necessarily to show for it. And so

Just that kind of juxtaposition, right? Of where you started with the invitation to to leave the hard, hardship, if you will, of of our week behind as we come into worship space. But actually, no, bring it with you into the worship space. What you know, a physical representation of of your first fruit. So

It's beautiful picture.

Well, so one of the things I'm curious about, I think in in the disconnect that can happen between, you know, worship and and kind of church life and then people's nine to five in their their working time is that pastors often can feel really disconnected in terms of just knowing what people are actually walking through during the week. and you talk a bit in your book about, you know, encouraging pastors to

To really sort of overcome that by spending more time learning about p what people are actually doing. so say more about that and and how is that a pastoral practice and and what does that look like? In and I think pastors or leaders who might be listening to this are thinking, well, my schedule's already busy, you know, how do I do that? How do I add that in as well?

And we're not trying to argue that the schedules are not busy. we're saying that wearing a wearing a pastoral curiosity about the workers in your congregation. we encourage people said, like, close your eyes and just picture, picture your view from the front every Sunday. Like when you're standing in the pulpit or you are up and you are leading worship and you look out and you see the sea of faces, you can picture them, right? do you know what is actually going on behind those faces?

More so than this is the person who teaches in a third grade classroom. What's that like for that person? what are some of the burdens that they carry with them? What are the major events in the in the school year that are going to be times of high stress or times of relief on the on the other side? I think we've grown so accustomed as pastors and worship leaders not to seeing people vocationally for what they do and for the weight that that weight that that often brings for them.

that we encourage people for a moment just to sit with a moment of pastoral curiosity and to imagine, but beyond imagining, then to go and investigate and to go find out. not so that you get a great sermon starter, not so that it can be used in that way, but an opportunity to really know a whole and holistic human being within your congregation. we've grown so accustomed also to just surface level interactions with people.

and pastoral care, you oftentimes get people either when they're doing really well or when they're really not doing well at their worst. but what does their everyday life look like? and how are your worship practices and the sermons and the the discipleship efforts of the church, how are they speaking directly to the working and to the real lived lives of the members of your congregation?

For those who have never done pastors, for those of you who have never done a vocational visit, going to a workplace and simply being a visitor. On Sunday mornings, we're so often the, for lack of a better word, the experts in the room that are being listened to. But go into a workspace and actually listen and learn. if you have a baker in your congregation, walk into the bakery and smell the scents, have a conversation, learn, learn what it is.

for them to engage Jesus saying, I am the bread of life. Wearing that hat of pastoral curiosity and learning more about your people in this way and how your worship and preaching can be fueled and can be informed by the daily lived realities of your people.

Hmm. Katie, I wanna ask a question from the other direction. When someone says, I don't think God really cares about my job, what do you think that's they're really saying?

Saying God does not care about my work

Means that God doesn't care about who you are as a human being. We go back to the Genesis story. God created us inherently as workers. Part of bearing God's image is to work, is to be a worker. That doesn't just mean caring for a garden in Eden. that looks like caring for those students in that third grade classroom. That looks like caring for the grounds that you have been tasked with caring for.

We have been inherently created by our good God to work. So to say that God doesn't care about our work

Means that God doesn't care about us as human beings. I th

Think

it get gets back to that discipleship piece, right? That if, as you say, right, we're we gather to scatter. And I'm not sure we really know how to send people out well to really live into their identity in Christ in their everyday, ordinary life. And so

I f to me when I when I hear that, you know, that understanding of like or that realization or just kind of mindset that people have that like, well, God doesn't really care about my work, then that to me is a is in a place where you know, church leaders can really help people's theology about that. And it's a gap to me, is a gap of

of especially for people who are part of a church community, it's an area where there's a lot of opportunity to help people genuinely see what their calling is as a coworker with Christ.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're right on that. There's the theological gap. There's the practical discipleship gap. There's also it's a pastoral care opportunity to speak into a why would you why do you say that? What is it about your work that maybe feels untouchable? Large part of work and worship is a level of authenticity, an ability to be honest about what we do for a living, what we do with our daily living.

And recognize that not only is it acceptable to bring before God, but also to bring before other people, to bring before God's people. Is this a safe space to be able to do that? Is the sanctuary a safe space to be able to do that? and one of the things we touch on in the book, is what we call a saccharine version of worship where everything has to be buttoned up and it has to be polished and clean. smiles only in this place, no tears allowed is what we say.

Is it a safe space to say I got laid off this week? Or I had a project that went south this week and I might lose my job as a result of it. a place where we can be honest before God and also be on honest with one another.

Which of course, if we think biblically about ancient Israel's worship in Psalms, Course of the Lament and is all over the place right there. so you know, I I you this conversation is bringing to mind Robert Whitnow's book, The Crisis in the Churches, which was, you know, a few decades old, where he says, you know, the reason why churches are are struggling and and dying is because they tend to focus on what the church cares about institutionally rather than the primary struggles.

that people care about in daily life, you know, and so so let's make the connection a little bit more into thinking about practices. you know, things like confession, lament, prayer, blessing, like so how might leaders concretely kind of retrieve these ancient ways of of living out the Christian life and in in worship, and then make them spaces where people can show up, really bring their struggles in a more authentic and honest way.

And not be shamed, not have it be a kind of saccharine, superficial experience, but really have it be a vulnerable, open, deep place in community.

Think that happens slowly over time. this is not a like listen, listen to the podcast and get an idea and go out and all of a sudden just do it. sacred spaces and safe spaces don't happen immediately. They happen over time. and so building in a regular pattern and a regular routine, in a lot of ways, worship practices they're formational and they're slow work. It's a slow drip.

Of allowing safe space for God's people to be honest. And so it's not something that's going to happen in two or three Sundays. It's something that's going to happen over a long amount of time. just creating enough space at first that people within their own minds and within their own prayers can say, This is this is something that God cares about and something that I can pray about. and then gradually working in times of corporate confession, not just about

things that in our own lives and areas of sin and brokenness in our own lives, but a recognition that it's almost like concentric circles, that within your place of work there's things for which we need to confess and lament. things within our country, things within our larger world, giving people different entrance points and different opportunities to engage that safe space. prayers of lament. that's an interesting conversation that

I think a lot of churches and church leaders have had, especially over the last couple of decades, as particularly more contemporary worship has shifted away from it, it through song, through prayer, through preaching. how do we actually engage lament? and I've told people it's like building up a muscle that has atrophied, that we slowly over time have to build resilience. and one of the arguments against lament is, you know.

I don't I don't feel this in the moment, so why am I being forced to participate in it?

There's also a level of empathy and care for one another that we learn and we flex those muscles of lament. So not only are they there when we need them ourselves, but we are doing this work with and for one another, recognizing that we're worshiping as a corporate body of Christ, never just an isolation on our own.

Can you write a lot?

about hope.

in ordinary life in your book. And most people aren't doing something, you know, super dramatic this week. They're caring for family members or friends, answering emails, making deliveries, helping customers or showing up for another shift. How might the church help people see those ordinary, everyday places as places where God's grace is already at work?

One church engaged a visual exercise that I that I've loved. And so I always share this as one of my first examples. it's a mission map. If you can picture like churches used to have, and maybe they still do have, maps of the world, and you have your missionaries who are in Ghana, your missionaries who are in Central or South America, and their pictures are there, and there's maybe a pin where they're serving. What would it look like to do a vocational mission map where you have your city?

Or maybe even just if you have a smaller radius, a 10 mile radius outside of church, where people are invited to come and put a pin in the map where God is where God brings them and sends them every week. a visual vision map. Kids can have a pin in the school. Could start to instill a healthy theology of work and worship in our children from a very young age. you don't just go to school because the state mandates it, you go because

God created you to be a learner and a grower. And this is, this is your work right now. and it's the place where God sends you every single week. but we've seen various iterations of that, some kind of mission map of sort that says, you know, when you go to your office, think about that pin. as a matter of fact, maybe we'll send another extra pin with you that you can keep tagged into your into your whiteboard right behind your desk that every time you look at that pin.

you remember that mission map and you s you remember that this is where God has sent you on a mission this week, into this space and into this place. whether you are a retiree, whether you are a stay-at-home parent, whether you are any of those, any of those things. vocation is not limited to a nine to five. it's also not limited to any one profession. we believe that vocation is something that is a God-given gift that lasts through the whole of your lifetime.

So let's unpack the leadership dimension of this a little bit because I could imagine some pastors and other leaders listening to this and saying, Well, wait a minute, you know, people have such high particular expectations of what happens in worship. And they might feel really constrained about, you know, messing with that or disappointing those expectations. So what does an experimentation process look like for introducing some of these very different kinds of

maybe approaches to classical worship practices or spaces within the congregation's life where this conversation can happen. Like help us think about that a bit.

I often tell pastors and worship leaders that this work is about deepening. These are deepening practices. They're not expanding. When you think about expanding practices, it's getting a lot of good ideas. It's like the conference effect, right? Like you go, you get a lot of ideas, and you want to try them all at the exact same time. vocationally conversant worship, as we talk about in our book, these are deepening practices. So we say, what what are two or three things that your church does?

really well? And for every listener who's listening right now, your answer is going to be different even than the church next door or the church across town. Maybe congregational singing is a strength for you. Maybe one of your favorite moments is when you gather around the table. Maybe you are really good at the the art of hospitality. What are a couple things that your church does really, really well? And how can we deepen those vocationally?

Not about expanding, trying new things, but how do we deepen what we are already doing really well? we say a lot can happen in the gathering, in the scattering, the first and the last words that are spoken in a worship service. Every church does that. it happens every single week for every church. So those gathering words and those scattering words, those are ways that you can deepen over time. just simply how you communicate. We all know you've had a long week.

We encourage you to bring that with you into worship today and trust that you are going to be met with the very presence of God that has been with you all week long and is going to go with you as you go into whatever this next week holds.

So take a couple of the fundamental good things that your church is already doing and seek to deepen those rather than expand them. If you

You could change one habit in the average church over the next five years, right? We know this isn't a a a quick fix. not again, not by adding another program, but by changing what pastors and worship leaders pay attention to. What would you hope would be different?

There are several things. One of the first things that comes to mind are the closing words of the service. We just talked about the opening words of a worship service. People so often miss a prime opportunity for discipleship at the very end of a worship service. If the last words you say are, thanks for coming, everybody, have a great week. Come again next week. Think about how that gradually forms people over time. When you hear those words week after week, thanks for coming.

We hope you come back again next week. Versus a beautiful blessing and ascending saying, God goes before you to lead you and behind you to protect you. So go. Go into God's world to love and to serve and know that you never go alone. The grace of the Lord be with you.

Think about over time how those two different messages will just form and shape people. I think one of the biggest things is just formation in general, recognizing that worship is more than singing a really great set of songs and hearing a sermon, but that those practices that we engage, those moments of confession, those moments of lament, those moments of praise and gratitude, sharing a meal together.

Those are all formative moments that are meant to change how we live out our mandate to be disciples in God's world. They're not just filler, they're not just the lead up to what comes next. They are faith formative moments for all ages, from our youngest to our oldest, recognizing the intentionality we need to put into our worship practices as leaders week in and week out.

Well, those are wonderful. And I I just appreciate how you're inviting us to think more deeply about the theological assumptions that people ha have been formed in. and one of the things the aspects of modern Western culture is that bifurcation and privatization of faith and, you know, restriction of religion or faith to sort of these certain experiences rather than understanding of all of life as life in the spirit. The spiritual life is

life, you know, in Christ holistically. And I think until we get at that kind of more holistic theology, it's so easy then to just think, well, church is this institution that claims a bit of people's time, talent, and treasure over here on the side, rather than we are, you know, living this way of life following Jesus and the power of the spirit. So

So thank you so much for these reflections and invitations to deepen our ability to walk with people as leaders in worship and in the life of the church, to meet them where they are and to help them really live into that spirit led vocation that God gives to each of them wherever they are through the days of the week.

Thank you so much for having me today.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. We always love to hear from you, so please send us an email at pivot at faithlead.org with your thoughts and questions. To help spread the word about pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend. We'll see you next week.