Picture the people at your church describing you, then the coworker who sits nearest you doing the same. If the two descriptions would not match, you have found the question behind this guide: how do you practice being the same Christian at work that you are on Sunday? The answer offered here is a week-long discipline. You name the gap between your church self and your work self, then practice closing it in the places where faking it is hardest. Alone, it takes about seven days. A group can use it over two meetings, one before the week and one after.
In a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation with Lisa Fields, Ryan Gilliam, who built a small business with his wife and says he worked in HR for several years, argues that what people call workplace witness is mostly sincerity kept up all week long.
Start with two honest portraits
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write five words a friend from church would use to describe you. On the right, write five words that nearby coworker would use. Don’t write the words you hope they would choose. Write the ones you think they actually would.
Now compare the columns. Circle any word that appears on one side but would surprise the people on the other. “Patient” at church and “short with people” at work is a gap. So is “generous” on one side and “keeps score” on the other. Pick the gap that seems most real and write it at the bottom of the page in one sentence. Keep this sheet. You will come back to it at the end of the week.
In a group, nobody has to show their page. The exercise works because it is private.
Reading two texts about the watched and the unwatched
Colossians 3:22-4:1
Read Colossians 3:22-4:1 slowly. Paul writes, “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God” (Colossians 3:22). The next verse widens the scope: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23).
Two older English words carry the passage. “Eyeservice” in Colossians 3:22 means work done only while someone is looking. “Singleness of heart” describes an undivided person whose motive does not change when the audience does. Paul does not first ask whether these workers talk about Jesus on the job. He asks whether they are the same person when the master steps out of the room.
The context needs naming honestly. Paul is addressing enslaved people in Roman households, and a modern employee is not in their position. The passage describes their situation; it does not endorse slavery. It also turns at once to the masters: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1). The principle reaches us by analogy, not as a direct command. Worker and boss answer to the same Lord, who sees what a human supervisor misses.
- Which phrase in Colossians 3:22 describes the opposite of what Paul wants? What does that opposite look like in a workplace you know?
- Why might Paul tie undivided work to fearing God rather than to fearing the master?
- What does Colossians 4:1 change about how you read the verses before it?
Daniel 6:4-10
Now read Daniel 6:4-10. Daniel serves in a foreign government, and his rivals go looking for a weakness. The text reports that “they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him” (Daniel 6:4). Their conclusion: “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God” (Daniel 6:5).
This is narrative, so it describes what Daniel did rather than issuing a rule for every reader. Still, notice the shape of his life. His work record and his worship are so joined that his enemies can only attack one through the other. When the decree comes, he prays “as he did aforetime” (Daniel 6:10). He does not start praying publicly to make a point. He simply does not stop.
- What did Daniel’s coworkers know about him before the crisis, and how did they know it?
- What does the phrase “as he did aforetime” in Daniel 6:10 suggest about where his consistency was built?
What the conversation adds
Ryan Gilliam opens with a familiar complaint. He says “sometimes you hear a lot of pastors say that folks act one way at church and they get to work in like a totally different way.” Some people call the alternative marketplace ministry, he says, “but it’s really just being sincere with your faith and being the same way all the time.”
Lisa Fields frames this as part of defending the faith, which surprises people who think of apologetics as arguments. She says “one of the biggest aspects of defending your faith is your life.” She then names what spoils that defense: poor work, gossip, constant drama. Her conclusion is that “your life speaks louder than your defense of the faith,” especially at work, where people are skeptical.
Gilliam points to the moment consistency gets hard. He says it is easy “when things are going well and life is good and business is good, but when you have those adverse situations and circumstances that come up, you know, it’s not so easy.” He describes someone stealing $60,000 from him and his wife early in their business, with about 40 employees who knew he opened meetings in prayer. The question he faced was blunt: “when things aren’t going your way, are you gonna curse?” He reaches for Ephesians 4:26, which reads, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” The verse assumes anger will come. What it forbids is anger turning into sin and being left to settle.
Gilliam also names a quieter pressure that comes with authority. When employees came to him needing time off or money, he admits “it was so much easier to want to be a boss in certain situations.” He describes deciding instead, “this is the time I need to show Grace. This is the time I need to show mercy.” For anyone who supervises even one person, his test is worth carrying into the week: “would somebody make this decision knowing God is standing next to them?”
The gap between church self and work self rarely opens in calm, observed moments. It opens when no one is watching, when something goes wrong, and when you hold a little power over someone else. Those are the places this week’s practice targets.
The practice: five workdays, five pressure points
Read each day’s focus in the morning, and give it two or three minutes of honest review before bed. If you don’t work a traditional job, apply it to school, volunteering, caregiving or wherever you spend your working hours.
- Day one: carry the gap. Reread the sentence at the bottom of your portrait page. Don’t try to fix it yet. Notice each time the gap shows today. At night, write down when it appeared and what set it off.
- Day two: the unwatched task. Choose one task no one will check, praise or grade. Do it as carefully as you would if your most respected church elder were reviewing it. At night, ask what was different about your effort, and why.
- Day three: guard your mouth. Fields named gossip and drama as habits that shade a believer’s words. For one day, say nothing about a coworker you would not say with that coworker present. If you slip, notice what pulled you in. Was it boredom, belonging, or resentment?
- Day four: plan for the provocation. In the morning, name the situation most likely to set you off this week. Decide in advance what you will do with the anger, using Ephesians 4:26 as your standard: feel it, don’t feed it, and settle it before the day ends. At night, record what happened, even if the moment never came.
- Day five: the small power. If you supervise anyone, find one request where using your authority would be easier than showing mercy, and ask Gilliam’s question before you answer. If you don’t, look at the power you do have over information, credit, or someone else’s mistake. Choose the response you would make with God standing beside you.
After worship on the weekend, take out your portrait page. Reread your gap and your notes. Write one sentence on what you learned about where your two selves split, and one thing you will keep doing next week.
Testing the practice before trusting it
First, sameness is not automatically good. Someone could be equally impatient at church and at work and call that consistency. The goal is to bring both selves under the same Lord. Sometimes the work self is the more honest one, and the gap reveals that the Sunday version is mostly performance.
Second, the practice can slide into image management, the very thing Paul calls being “menpleasers” in Colossians 3:22. If you do the unwatched task mainly so you can mention it later, you have turned it back into eyeservice.
Third, a week of living it can quietly become a reason never to say it. Conduct does not replace speech. Fields herself expects the conversation to come: “People ask you questions at work about your faith.” Scripture asks believers to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). This week trains credibility, so that when someone asks, your words have a life underneath them. It does not train silence.
Fourth, the week may expose a failure, and that can feel like proof you aren’t a real Christian. Paul answers that fear directly: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Good works follow, because “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Consistency is a direction you return to, not the ground you stand on. If day four went badly, the most consistent move is to go back to the person affected and make it right.
For groups
At the first meeting, do the portrait exercise and spend most of the time on the two passages, using the observation prompts under each one. Save the questions below for the second meeting. Let anyone pass on any question. People usually speak more freely about patterns they noticed than about their own failures, so begin there. If someone describes mistreatment by a boss, listen without forcing a lesson onto it. Colossians 4:1 holds those in charge accountable too.
Questions for the second meeting
- Of the three pressure points, unwatched work, things going wrong, and small power, which exposed the most for you, and why that one?
- Paul ties “singleness of heart” in Colossians 3:22 to fearing God. What would change in your workday if God’s view of your work mattered more to you than your supervisor’s?
- Daniel’s rivals could find fault with him only through his faith. Is there an area of your work where someone could fairly find fault with you instead? What would it take to change that?
- Fields argues that a person’s life speaks louder than their defense of the faith. Where do you agree, and where does that claim need the limit 1 Peter 3:15 sets?
- Gilliam describes the pull to simply act as boss rather than show mercy. When is enforcing a rule the faithful choice, and when is it only the easy one?
- Did the week reveal anything about your Sunday self that needs to change, not only your work self?
The question to carry forward
Lisa Fields says it simply: “my ministry doesn’t end when I leave church.” She describes serving at church on Sundays and adds, “but on Monday when I clock in, ministry starts too.” Look again at the two columns you wrote on the first day. If you redrew them now, would any word move? Choose one gap to keep working on, and decide which ordinary Monday moment you will use to practice it next.