Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Five)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Five offers brief descriptions of and links to faith-at-work books. (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four)

Every church I’ve been a part of for as long as I remember has had a library. All the pastors I’ve known have had their own personal libraries. Paul, writing to Timothy, urged him, “bring my books” (II Tim. 4:13, NLT). Books, churches, and church leaders have had a long relationship.

Even in our age of iPhones, blogs, and tweets, people still read books. Pew Research Center findings for 2019 say that 72 percent of adults in the U. S. report having read a book in the last year. Sixty-five percent of adults had read a printed (versus electronic) book.

So church leaders wanting to incorporate work-truth into the life of the congregation would do well to own and point others to some of the current books on practicing faith in the work world. Such books offer a valuable source of insights, quotations, and illustrations on what God has revealed about daily work. Every church library needs at least a small section of such books. And leaders knowledgeable about them, can recommend them to members of the congregation whose main ministry takes place in the workplace. Here, then, is just a tiny sampling of the hundreds of these books now available: (click on book titles for Amazon listings)

THE OTHER SIX DAYS: VOCATION, WORK, AND MINISTRY IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE, by R. Paul Stevens.

—The author’s purpose: “My central concern in this book is to recover a truly biblical basis for the theological enterprise, especially as it relates to the ordinary person not only in the church but the world.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Reinventing Laity and Clergy;” “Calling in a Post-Vocational Age;” “Mission – A People Sent by God.”
—A key quotation: “Kingdom ministry has been almost totally eclipsed by church ministry. Ministry is viewed s advancing the church rather that of the Kingdom.”

GARDEN—CITY: WORK, REST, AND THE ART OF BEING HUMAN, by John Mark Comer.

—The author’s purpose: “The guts of this book are about working, resting, and living a full existence. About ‘spiritual life’ invading all of life. And about waking up to a God-saturated world.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Unearthing of a Calling;” “I Am Not a Machine;” “The Lord of the Sabbath.”
—A key quotation: “We’re not as important as we think. The Sabbath is a day to embrace this reality, to let it sink in, to own it, to celebrate it.”

EVERY GOOD ENDEAVOR: CONNECTING YOUR WORK TO GOD’S WORK, by Timothy Keller, with Katherine Leary Alsdorf.

—The author’s purpose: “Why do you want to work? . . . Why is it so hard to work? . . .How can we overcome the difficulties and find satisfaction in our work through the gospel? The rest of this book will seek to answer those three questions in its three sections, respectively.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Design of Work;” “Work Becomes Fruitless;” “A New Conception of Work.”
—A key quotation: “All work now becomes a way to love the God who saved us freely; and by extension, a way to love our neighbor.”

JOB-SHADOWING DANIEL: WALKING THE TALK AT WORK, by Larry Peabody.

—The author’s purpose: “For anyone willing to take the time to mind it closely, each incident Daniel lived through in the workplace will usually pay off with multiple nugget-filled layers. No, you’ll never be a Daniel. But will you dare to let him mentor you?”
—Sample chapter titles: “Calling: Working in the World Wholeheartedly;” “Ruling: Tending God’s Earth;” “Discipline: Staying Spiritually Fit.”
—A key quotation: “As you face on-the-job pressures, you and other Christians there need more than a smile and nod on the weekend from believers you hardly know. If possible, you need to find and network with each other at work. Daniel did.”

KINGDOM CALLING: VOCATIONAL STEWARDSHIP FOR THE COMMON GOOD, by Amy L. Sherman.

—The author’s purpose: “. . . the glorious vision of Proverbs 11:10 . . . requires at least two big things. First, it means that many churches need to have a more robust, comprehensive view of what they should be aiming at missionally. . . . Second it means that churches need to take vocation much more seriously.”
—Sample chapter titles: “What Does a Rejoiced City Look Like?” “Integrating Faith and Work;” “Deploying Vocational Power.”
—A key quotation: “. . . the vast majority of these [spiritual gifts] assessments don’t help congregants to see how they can apply their spiritual gifts in the context of their daily work or in volunteer service outside the four walls of the church.”

WORK MATTERS: CONNECTING SUNDAY WORSHIP TO MONDAY WORK, by Tom Nelson.

—The author’s purpose: “. . . my prayerful hope is that some of the fog in your mind may clear, and you will experience a more integral, seamless faith. I pray that your calling to a specific work may bring with it a new dynamism of heartfelt joy and purpose.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Is Work a Four-Letter Word?” “Work Now and Later;” Work and the Common Good.”
—A key quotation: “Much of our daily work is caring for our Father’s world and those who call it home. We make things. We fix things. We care for things. We serve others. What you do here is not a waste. . . . Your time here in our Father’s fallen world is a preparation for an eternity of activity and creativity in the new heavens and new earth.”

GOD AT WORK: THE HISTORY AND PROMISE OF THE FAITH AT WORK MOVEMENT, by David W. Miller.

—The author’s purpose: “In an era when membership in mainline denominations has plummeted and churches are radically rethinking how to reach out to people, it is my hope that study of the Faith at Work movement will highlight and encourage further exploration of both the need and the opportunity that is knocking at the church’s door.”
—Sample chapter titles: “Response of the Church and the Theological Academy to FAW;” “Analyzing and Understanding the Faith at Work Movement;’ “The future of the Faith at Work Movement.”
—A key quotation: “Whether conscious or unintended, the pulpit al too frequently sends the signal that work in the church matters but work in the world does not. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that workers, businesspeople, and other professionals often feel unsupported by the Sunday church in their Monday marketplace vocations.”

HOW THEN SHOULD WE WORK? REDISCOVERING THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF WORK, by Hugh Whelchel.

—The author’s purpose: “The purpose of this book is to explore the Biblical intersection of faith and work, attempting to understand the differences between work, calling, and vocation and how they should be Biblically applied in our daily lives.”
—Sample chapter titles: “The Cultural Mandate;” “The Reformation View of Work;” “Primary and Secondary Callings.”
—A key quotation: “Work in different forms is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible, more than all the terms used for worship, music, praise, and singing combined.”