At a church retreat near San Antonio, parishioners listen to the message of "everyday Christianity" delivered by David Miller, a former IBM executive and investment banker who now leads a faith-in-the-workplace group called the Avodah Institute. Miller, 44, left business to study at Princeton Theological Seminary, not to flee corporate America but to help knit closer ties between business and religion. "People often talk about the sacred-secular divide," he says, "but my faith tells me that God is found in earth and rocks and buildings and institutions, and, yes, in the business world." Avodah, a Hebrew word, means both "work" and "worship."

...Before proceeding further, let's briefly stipulate what this story is not about. It's not about deploying spirituality in your company to boost productivity or soothe workers' psyches. Nor is this story about business ethics. Behaving ethically is a necessary but not sufficient component of integrating faith and work, says David Miller of the Avodah Institute. "This is about who you are, your being, your character within the organization," Miller says. "It's going beyond minimum obligation to being motivated by love of neighbor. Let's say you're in banking. What are you proactively doing to get involved in inner-city lending? How do we treat the migrant worker, the single mom, the illegal alien? These are the modern-day equivalents of the biblical poor." Of course, none of this is intended to suggest that only spiritual people can lead exemplary lives.

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