In this episode, Josh and Eric explore what it means to stay human — and Christian — at work in the age of artificial intelligence.

Using David Brooks’ essay on three types of AI users as a starting point, they discuss the “productive passenger,” the “reluctant optimizer,” and the “mental marathoner.” Along the way, they ask what may be lost when AI makes work easier, why effort and attention still matter, and how Christian vocation reframes the conversation around productivity.

The episode lands on a deeper question: if AI can produce, summarize, and assist, what can it not do? Brooks suggests that AI cannot hunger — it has no structure of cares, no order of loves, and no vocation. Josh and Eric connect that insight to worship, Sabbath, work as an offering, and the ordinary choices that shape our loves at the desk on Monday morning.

If you are trying to use AI wisely without outsourcing your attention, your calling, or your humanity, this conversation is for you.

In 1942, with bombs still falling on London, a bestselling detective novelist stood up and told the Church it had gotten work almost entirely wrong.

Her name was Dorothy Sayers. She wasn't a theologian — she paid the bills writing murder mysteries and translated Dante for fun. But in her essay "Why Work?" she made a claim that still stings: most of us, and most of our churches, treat our jobs as the part of life where God isn't paying attention.

This week on the podcast, Josh and Eric do something different. Instead of a living guest, they invite a guest from the past into the room and put four honest questions to her essay — then let an 80-year-old argument talk back to the way we work now.

A software company sat down to figure out how to ship better products — and accidentally wrote a theology of work. In this episode, Josh and Eric step away from interviews for an unscripted experiment: bringing a biblical imagination to bear on Shape Up, the product-development methodology from 37signals that quietly reshaped how they lead teams and do their daily work.

Using the story of Daniel in Babylon as a frame — accept, resist, infuse — they dig into why "how much time is this worth?" beats "how long will this take?", how appetite and the circuit breaker confront our arrogance and covetousness, why cool-downs look a lot like Sabbath, and what honest project tracking has to do with not bearing false witness. It's common grace, finitude, and getting real work done — all in one conversation.

What does it actually look like to live out your faith at work — not just "be nice" or drop a Bible verse at the water cooler, but genuinely shape the culture around you?

In this episode, Josh and Eric sit down with Chris McNamara, Director of People & Culture at Lancaster Bible College. Chris's path to HR wound through an ice cream parlor, real estate, motherhood, ministry, and nonprofit leadership — and along the way she learned that faith and work were never meant to be two separate compartments.

Whether you're in HR or just trying to reflect Christ in the next meeting, email, or spreadsheet you open, this conversation is a practical, encouraging reminder that your ordinary labor is extraordinary participation in God's redemptive work.

Does your work actually matter to God? In this episode, hosts Eric Brandt and Josh Swartz sit down with pastor, author, and leadership coach Terry Timm to tear down the false divide between Sunday worship and Monday work.

We dig into a theology of everyday work, what "pastoring for Monday" really looks like, how to lead faithfully in pluralistic workplaces, the surprising link between liturgy and your 9-to-5, and the one shift that can change how you see your job for good.

Terry Timm is the author of A Movable Feast: Worship for the Other Six Days, lead pastor of Christ Community Church of the South Hills in Pittsburgh, and a vocational coach who helps people live out their calling in every sphere of life. Learn more at terrytimm.com.

What would it look like if your faith actually showed up at work – not just on Sunday?

In this episode, Josh and Eric sit down with theologian and author James Spencer to explore why so many sincere Christians live with a faith that's fully engaged on Sunday and effectively absent by Monday morning. James brings his Thinking Christian Framework to the conversation — a four-part approach to recognizing God's reality, developing a theological disposition, committing to theo-logic, and engaging in disciplined inquiry — and shows how it hits the ground in ordinary work life.

Every year, Gallup runs studies on job satisfaction — and every year, the results are worse. People feel stuck, unfulfilled, and disconnected from any deeper purpose in their work. But what if the problem isn't the job? What if it's the paradigm?

In this episode of FaithWorks Lancaster: Conversations on Calling, we sit down with Pastor John Pletcher — lead pastor of Manor Church in Lancaster, PA, author of Henry's Glory, and a longtime voice in the faith and work movement — to talk about what it actually looks like to find lasting significance in your daily work.

John shares the personal story that sparked his passion for this topic: a father who loved Jesus deeply and was gifted at working on cars, but who could never see those two things as connected. That painful compartmentalization — what John calls "pie life" — is at the heart of why so many believers feel a nagging sense that their work doesn't really matter.

We dig into the Hebrew roots of the word for "work" in Genesis, what it means that Jesus spent years as a tektone before his public ministry, the difference between satisfaction (something you seek) and significance (something you uncover), and why Eugene Peterson called the workplace "the primary realm for spiritual formation." Whether you're turning wrenches, teaching students, or managing spreadsheets — this conversation is for you.

What got two guys who think way too much about faith and work to actually start a podcast about it? In Episode 2, Josh and Eric pull back the curtain on their own journeys — how they got here, why they care, and what they're still figuring out.

Josh shares how his path through pastoral ministry, a "gas station sabbatical," and landing in educational technology at Lancaster Bible College shaped the way he sees his work as an act of creation — "bringing order out of the chaos." Eric traces his own journey from Dorothy Sayers and Tim Challies to Matt Perman, and how stepping into leadership made faith and work integration feel urgent and personal. Together, they dig into the Sunday-to-Monday gap, what it really means to work as image bearers, and why "doing the right things" is only half the equation — the how matters just as much as the what.

Is your work just a means to an end, or is it something more? Most people spend 40+ hours a week waiting for the weekend, feeling like their professional labor has no connection to their deeper purpose. It’s time to close that gap.

In this inaugural episode of FaithWorks Lancaster, we go beyond the surface level of "career advice" to explore the theology and philosophy of work. We tackle the "sacred-secular divide" that leaves so many professionals feeling unfulfilled and explain why the work you do with your hands and mind is a vital form of worship to God.