RHYTHMS | PRAYER, PRACTICE, PLACE
Vol 3. Issue 19
Friends,
This issue focuses on how we work, with voices from our friends at Denver Institute. Included is a Prayer for the Beauty & Burden of Work, a Practice of Circles of Responsibility, and a Laundry Service as a sacred Place.
Denver Institute prepares people to serve God and others in their daily work so workplaces and cities are transformed. Their 5280 Fellowship restarts in January 2026, providing theology for work discussions, spiritual formation, and practices like the one included in this issue.
All blessings.
Jared Mackey
PRAYER | BEAUTY & BURDEN OF WORK
By Ross Chapman
Lord of the garden and the city,
You placed humanity over the work of Your hands
To tend the earth and cultivate life,
To bring order, fruitfulness, and care.
The call to cultivate now echoes in our neighborhoods,
In offices, shops, kitchens, fields, and factories.
In our daily work, let us find beauty—
In a problem solved with skill,
A product made with care,
A service offered with love.
Thank You for giving dignity to every role—
The ones that go unseen and the ones that draw attention,
Each one a part of making our places sacred.
You know the brokenness and burdens of work too—
The systems that favor the few,
The strain of too much for some and not enough for others,
The quiet grief of wasted or unmet potential.
You joined humanity as a worker in obscurity.
Between the garden and the city,
You worked like us, yet weaving hope and life
Through the toil and thistles of a master craftsman.
Teach us to work in ways that bring hope and life,
So all may share in the goodness You intend.
Bless the people we work alongside—
The customers we serve,
The suppliers or strangers whose labor shapes our own.
Bless the spaces we share—
Offices, virtual rooms, or factory floors.
May they be places of generosity, love, and joy.
Let our work be the evidence of Your work.
May we faithfully join You in reflecting Your kingdom,
Until all places are the epitome of flourishing—
Where every home and future is secure,
Every worker enjoys the fruit of their labor,
And the sound of weeping is no more.
Amen.
Ross Chapman is CEO of Denver Institute for Faith & Work, helping Christians offer a more compelling vision or work in every workplace and industry.
PRACTICE | CIRCLES OF RESPONSIBILITY
By Brian Gray
“Grant me therefore the patience to listen to others, the humility to learn from them, the compassion to consider their needs as my own, and the grace to wear well in this place the name of my Lord.”
Practice
Step 1: Identify a challenging situation where navigating relationships or decisions feels overwhelming.
Step 2: Draw three concentric circles on a piece of paper, labeling the inner one “Control,” the middle one “Influence,” and the outer circle “Concern.”
Step 3: Write down the details about this situation that belong in each of the three circles.
Step 4: Reflect on the appropriate and loving actions you can take given what is in your circles of control, influence, and concern.
Have you ever felt pressure from people or situations at work or in your neighborhood that you can’t fully control? The practice of Circles of Responsibility is adapted from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and is designed to guide you in many aspects of discernment, including decision-making clarity, reducing anxiety, navigating conflict, and helping people shift from rumination to responsibility.
A public school district office manager on the Front Range experienced this firsthand while leading her team through a turbulent staffing and funding restructure. She first used this practice to help sort her own responses to God and discern how to love her coworkers in a crisis leadership moment. She then brought the tool to her team meeting, guiding them to differentiate between what they could control, influence, or simply needed to hold with concern. The result? Lowered collective anxiety and clarity about the good next steps they needed to take together.
This simple practice recognizes that we are responsible to God and others in different ways within our work communities or neighborhood. By gaining clarity about our actual spheres of responsibility, we can tangibly love others in the workplace or our neighborhood through well-discerned responses.
Step 1: Identify a challenging situation where navigating relationships or decisions feels overwhelming.
Step 2: Draw three concentric circles on a piece of paper, labeling the inner one “Control,” the middle one “Influence,” and the outer circle “Concern.”
Step 3: Write down the details about this situation that belong in each of the three circles:
Control: Think of “control” positively here, not in an overbearing way. Where do you have real responsibility to personally act? What is within your God-given power to change or effect? This circle is primarily about personal stewardship of your choices, actions, words, attitudes, and habits.
Influence: Most of life involves others. We can potentially shape a situation, but the outcome isn’t entirely in our control. We have limited but important agency to steward with God here. Consider ways you can direct a situation, person, or project through team dynamics, healthy conflict conversations, influencing others’ behaviors, or guiding decisions with clarity.
Concern: We are finite, dependent, and often unimportant in many situations. This circle contains everything you care about or that affects you, which you cannot control or influence. Where do you need to bring your concerns to God? What do you need to lament that you cannot change? What do you deeply feel but can hardly shape? In this circle, strive for acceptance, trusting God and others, letting things go, and reframing situations rightly. By seeing honestly and not over-functioning, we are loving both to ourselves and to others.
Step 4: Reflect on the appropriate and loving actions you can take given what is in your circles of control, influence, and concern.
Ten minutes of practical reflection like this can help you to more tangibly love God, coworkers, clients, or neighbors. In recognizing what is—and what is not—ours to carry, we are more able to love others well.
Brian Gray is the VP of Formation at the Denver Institute for Faith & Work, where he hopes to influence people to integrate their faith into workplace excellence and acts of love.
PLACE | LAUNDRY SERVICE
By Jared Mackey
“I think that’s what God usually does. He takes very normal people, very normal things, and he makes them holy.”
“The joke is I didn't do the laundry at my own house before we bought this business, and now I'm responsible for over 30,000 pounds of laundry every week.” Matt Barnes is the owner of Professional Touch Laundry Services, the most trusted commercial laundry and linen service in the city. Matt communicated in our conversation a compelling vision for how a blue-collar business does the ordinary work of a laundry service while seeing the sacred in the everyday.
Professional Touch Laundry Service was founded by a couple with industrial laundry experience in the late 1990s. In the process of narrowing its focus to laundry of linens for hospitality and events, they developed a durable family business. Professional Touch has weathered challenging financial seasons and storms over 25 years and has become known as the best linen laundry service in the state.
Matt’s approach in buying a business was to find a platform to pastor people in the workplace. “I was looking for a really well-run family business that had history on the front range. Fundamentally, I was looking for a business platform to do more pastoral work.” Matt brought a holy conviction about the culture of a business and the care of its employees. “A desire of mine was to run a business where I could shepherd and care for a population of blue-collar service workers.” That commitment resulted in moving the laundry service from three W-2 employees with a majority of temporary and seasonal staffing to a staff of eighteen W-2 and 1099 employees working directly for the company. “When you give an employee, especially a lower wage employee, some belonging, you can start to build the culture of a business.” Matt’s conviction is crystal clear as he continues, “The culture of the business was a decent, safe, and uplifting place when I took it over. Now it's a joyful place where people have upward mobility and responsibility…they are part of a living cultural organism that is thriving and growing. And…I would argue it's better for profitability.
The laundry service has grown from a 2,500 square foot space, to inhabit a 13,000 square foot warehouse in an industrial complex in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Matt’s vision for the culture in the workplace extends to the neighboring businesses creating a shared social responsibility for the industrial complex. The roofers from the roofing company next door provide as a sense of safety for the primarily female workforce of the laundry service. The plumbing business and mechanics from the motorcycle repair shop in the complex have been invaluable with plumbing emergencies or machinery issues. Together the blue-collar businesses are good neighbors who collaborate toward a common good.
Matt offered a compelling Kingdom vision when asked how the story of Professional Touch could inspire readers to love our neighbors who work in blue collar businesses in our city. “Well, for the 99.9% of people that may read this that will never use our laundry service, I would say we do a very normal set of activities with excellence, and we compound trust and service in a way that's really holy.” He continued with resolute conviction, “I think that's what God usually does. He takes very normal people, very normal things, and he makes them holy.” “We need more vocational, committed followers of Christ just taking normal, ordinary things and making them beautiful, because that's what God's always done.”
A blue-collar business owned and operated with conviction about the value of culture and care for the employees is a shining example of the tangible love of neighbors in a workplace. Professional Touch provides clean commercial linens for the city, and equally compelling, provides a place of belonging and becoming for every employee. The laundry service is a sacred place.
Thank you to Matt Barnes for the conversation about the business and his conviction in leading a blue-collar business for the good of his neighbors and the neighborhood.
PARTICIPATE | ART & PLACE
Enter a place where visual creativity and attention to geography meet.
Art & Place explores how visual art connects us deeper to place.
On Thursday, October 9, attend the opening gallery at Anthology Fine Art to celebrate local artists whose work is shaped by place.
There will be artist panels exploring the often unseen influence of place on art, and asking how art can inspire us to love the people and places around us.
Signature cocktail, wine, and hors d'oeuvres will be served.
Reserve your space to spend an evening celebrating the beauty of art and place.
More rhythms to root your faith in place.
Sacred Place provides a beautiful bi-weekly publication to share the rhythms of a Prayer, Practice, and Place as simple ways to help cultivate love for our neighbors and neighborhoods.
