How’s everybody doing out there?

I mean after your church service this Labor Day weekend.

I’ve given up trying to get my church to talk about a Christian view of the work-world and have stopped for the most part moaning about being a businessperson excluded from the prayers, even on Labor Day. I hope you servants of God making a difference in your vocations and callings, job-sites and work zones, got a least a mention at church this week. Because what you do matters, to God and for the common good.

We even sang a song I hate. The morbid “Come Labor On” ought not even be in the Presbyterian hymnbook, if you ask me. If you know it you know it has ugly lines like saying we ought not ever rest (a bit of Pelagianism, perhaps?) and one which minimizes our personal pain. Worst, it presumes that the “work” from which we dare not rest is evangelism and mission — you know, “the Lord’s work.”  I think even conventional missionaries might think it is a bit much, but for those if us who don’t do that kind of work, it is insulting.

(For an excellent and detailed study of relating work to worship, by the way, and the need for liturgy and worship design to related to our various vocations, we recommend — in words much better than mine! — the outstanding Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy by Matthew Kaemingk & Corry Wilson (Baker Academic; $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60.)

So if you are among the many who want to take Labor Day with some sort of theological rigor and thank God for our jobs, and for those workers who serve the common good, I offer this handful of recent titles and the reminder that here at BookNotes we have shared bunches of columns naming titles to show how God loves our work. (Last years Labor Day BookNotes column was a fun one, including a bunch of work-themed memoirs.There were a lot of links to previous lists, too.)  There are a handful of classics I mention often and I do hope you search through our BookNotes archives to see the reviews I’ve done to help move the needle on this important conversation.

Before a couple of shout-outs for a handful of new books about this theme, I’ll invite you to listen to the latest Labor Day “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast — you can watch it at Youtube here or listen in podcast style at Apple or Spotify. I name three very different books on work — one pretty easy to read but a foundational one, Work That Makes a Difference by Dan Doriani; another is deeper and reflective on blue-collar work and the trades (Shop Class as Soulcraft), and thirdly, one about the spirituality of virtue and vice in the workplace by Paul Stevens, Taking Your Soul to Work. And THEN I list three more, fun memoirs about people and their jobs. So I cheated a little, talking about six titles. Thanks to my CCO pal Sam Levy for hosting me and setting up that discussion.

And while I’m sharing Happy Labor Day links, here’s a lively 45-minute video of a presentation I gave a few years back at the Colorado Christian Business Alliance out in Denver — it’s pretty good, I think. I hope you like it, or at least don’t cringe. I get pretty fiery at times, surprise, surprise.

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I remember in the late 1970s hearing Jackson Browne sing “The Load Out,” at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, his song about the roadies who help the rock star and his band, lugging gear, setting up and tearing down, behind the scenes, night after night, as they were recording the Running on Empty album, released later that year. It’s a long story but I hung out with some of those very roadies after the show, watching them work and exercise their own craft with precision.

Even then I wondered why church music — either contemporary Christian pop songs or the old hymns — so rarely mentioned the ordinary work-a-day world.

Check out the wonderful collective of artful indie-folk musicians under the name The Porter’s Gate and their worship album called Work Songs for a  good step in the right direction. This link is to the album at the streaming BandCamp site but they have very well-produced videos for most of the songs, too — for instance, here’s You’re Labor Is Not in Vain and Wood and Nails (featuring Audrey Aussad and Josh Garrells.) None are too direct about work, really, but with titles like “Establish the Works of Our Hands” and “We Labor Unto Glory” you get the drift. (“Father Let Your Kingdom Come” by Urban Doxology and Liz Vice is a blast and “Every Father, Every Mother” with Madison Cunningham might make you cry.)

Remember that line from Luther, about how the men making the beer barrels and the women milking the cows are as important to the Kingdom of God as are the priests and nuns?  He and the other 16th century Reformers were busy focusing on the most urgent need of the day — recovering the gospel of grace through faith alone — that they didn’t work out all the societal implications of their doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” and their redemptive vision of the restoration of all things. But the sweeping claims of the Reformation certainly unleashed a dynamic into Western history that, to this day, we’ve yet to fully work out, and that is exploring a Christian view of work.

Again, we here at the bookstore stock books on faithful Christian thinking and creative, redemptive practices, in engineering, health care, journalism, policing, education, law, the arts, counseling, urban planning, medicine, the performance arts, banking, various sorts of sciences, sports, the culinary careers, special education, political life, creative writing, social work, and, of course the trades. (And yes, pastoring and Christian ministry jobs, too; we have plenty of books about those callings, as well.) Not to mention unpaid jobs, the obvious work of parenting and homemaking, caregiving of the sick and the vocation of retirement. With the popularity of great new books like the lovely You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful by Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos Press; $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59) maybe people will be inspired to think again about their various callings and particularly their jobs.  I hope some of these will be of use.

So give that “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast a listen and share it with your friends. I love telling about these kinds of books and we hope others will find it helpful, informal as it is. We really would appreciate it. Thanks for caring.

HERE ARE SOME (MOSTLY) RECENT BOOKS ABOUT THESE THEMES. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ll start here even though it is not that new. As I’ve often said, it is a delightful idea for a book and very well executed — there are chapters on work and play, hobbies and delights, coping with hard, hard stuff. From raising chickens to grieving well, from coping with wayward children to going to movies, from doing home repairs to grand parenting, this collection of mostly short pieces is fabulously interesting and exceptionally edifying. In a fun way.

I mention it also for other reasons. First, our late friend Calvin Seerveld has a deep, intriguing essay on knowing. As only a philosopher and art-lover would, Cal shares how to know well. He described ordinary knowing and a more complicated kind. He talks about the relationship of knowing God and knowing oneself. Any curious thinking about anything — this week about work and labor and marketplace ministry — should be informed by this kind of Godly awareness.

Second, if I may toot my own horn just a tiny bit, I have a chapter in here on working in retail. I’m not so much talking about the joy of talking about great books and hearing the rewarding replies of those who enjoyed a good read, but, rather, the nitty-gritty of sales, paperwork, ordering inventory, managing staff, and all that other behind the scenes stuff. It was an honor to write it and I hope it helps anyone who enters a retail shop to imagine what’s really going on as we try to offer good customer service. Anyway, it’s my little piece about working Coram Deo in a small family retail business. Thought you’d want to know.

Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact Missy Wallace & Lauren Gill (Redeemer City to City) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Maybe your church isn’t having these conversations at all. This would kickstart some stuff, for sure. Or, more likely, your church isn’t averse to blessing congregants by commissioning them into full-time Christian service right in the jobs they’ve got — most pastors and leaders have some intuition that most of us spend most of our time at workplaces that are not the church building. So if your leadership is (a) unaware of this movement to talk about church members serving God in their careers and jobs or (b) is interested but not sure how to go about developing such a mindset and becoming a center for “galvanizing” folks, then this book is the one you’ve got to read.

Missy and Lauren have been active for a long time in several sorts of teaching and learning communities, exploring the theological foundation for the faith and work movement. But here they offer strategies to overcome the common obstacles to an integrated vision and offer practical guides for “understanding and addressing brokennes in individuals and systems. They offer “a roadmap for implementing the principles of faith and work within your church and city.” The tools and resources in Wallace & Gill’s Faith & Work are very helpful and we couldn’t be happier to have a book like this to recommend.

This book should be required reading for every church leader who believes the people of God are called to live out their faith in every sphere of life — including their work.

 

— Dr. Michaela O’Donnell, director the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, and author of Make Work Matter: Your Guide to meaningful Work in a Changing World

Five Mere Christians: Binge-Worthy Biographies That Show You How to Glorify God in Your Work Jordan Raynor (Harvest House) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I know we have promoted Jordan Raynor’s other good books, especially his excellent 2024 release, The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You’re Not Sharing the Gospel) and his great picture book for kids, The Creator in You. He gets this full-orbed vision of imaging God in all we do, including our vocations and callings, our employment and our jobs.

This new book is fabulous, fun, frisky, even. He, with some help from a co-author named Kaleigh Cox, offers upbeat biographies of five “mere Christians” (nod to Lewis) and especially unpacks in these stories how that person saw their vocations as holy callings, how they related faith and their field, how they understood their work as Kingdom service.

The five people explored are Mr. Fred Rogers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ole Kirk Christiansen, Hannah More and C.S. Lewis. These dynamic and fascinating people were called to the work of children’s television, civil rights and labor activism, becoming the founder of LEGO; there are great chapters on the playwright, poet, and educator involved in the British abolition movement, and, of course, the Oxford don and writer of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work Elaine Howard Ecklund & Denise Daniels (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve been a fan of Denise Daniels in the faith and work movement for years. She is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Wheaton College and wrote the very impressive Working in the Presence of God which was about spiritual practices for everyday work. Elaine Howard Ecklund is amazing, too — she is a professor of sociology at Rice University — where she has done research on a number of relevant topics. (She is perhaps most known for her studies of how scientists think about religion and about how people of Christian faith think about science. Her major scholarly publications are on Oxford University Press but some of the implications of all that is in the fabulous Brazos Press title, Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear.) Anyway, both of these women are sharp scholars, respected leaders, and great communicators. This ends up being a really, really great book, at once serious and enjoyable, breaking some new ground and very insightful. I really hope you check it out.

Working for Better is research based; they have conducted a “first-of-its-kind” set of research projects to form a data-driven approach to the challenges of foster faith at work.” As the publisher informs us, this book “presents results from the most comprehensive set of studies to date on religion in the workplace.” In a way, it is ground-breaking.

They look at how the Christian faith can be influential in the workplace and identify. Five key tensions arising from changing demographics in American culture, and suggest practical applications, no matter who you are or where you work.

This is what Curtis Chang (author of The Anxiety Opportunity) calls,

“a fresh vision of how to integrate faith with work, one that expands beyond tired categories of evangelism, ethics, and excellence. Working for Better points the way forward with a thoughtful combination of theology, data, and narrative.”

When Work Hurts: Building Resilience When You’re Beat Up or Burnt Out Meryl Herr (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

You know the old adage of not judging a book by its cover. I don’t know, but I’m guessing this publisher’s designer was going for a cheery, self-help look, not wanting the topic to seem too dour. The author is upbeat and hopeful and she is writing about faith-filled resilience, so I get it. (But, please — designers: skip this goofy italics font, especially if you’re using it so consistently in the interior. It looks like a mess.)

Maybe that’s the point: our workplaces are often hot messes, scrambled and busy and not tidy. This topic has plenty of heaviness, and When Work Hurts has adequate gravitas, honestly describing the discouragement many of us face.

As it says on the back,

We might get discouraged, disillusioned, or devastated by our work. We may experience trauma or harassment on the job, or we might have experienced work loss by getting fired. If you’ve been beat up, burnt out, or brokenhearted by work, you’re not alone.

Have you been there? I have. And it’s awful. When one knows the presence of God with you and Christ for you in these situations, it is, on one hand, a lighter load, since the Triune God is there. But yet, it seems to me, that when one has convictions about the significance of work in the Christian scheme of things, when you believe your job matters, it is even more painful with it goes bad. It is emotional and complicated and that this book names “vocational pain” is really something. I highly recommend Herr’s approach  — thinking about the biblical story of the ancient Israelites in their journey through file, return, and rebuilding, “as a framework for navigating work loss.” Well done!

One reviewer says “this book is a simple and profound gem for the many moments when our lives are not.” Yes!

Amy Sherman has written two outstanding, detailed, meaty works that should be part of any core library on these things — Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good and  Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society. She notes:

“No one who’s dealing with disappointments, oppression, confusion, or toxicity at work will feel alone again after reading this book.”

There are some helpful suggestions to process the information at the end of each chapter. Thoughtful and wise and theological astute as it is  it is brimming with positive ideas and helpful tools to use. There is nothing like this in print. Thanks be to God.

Why Your Work Matters: How God Uses Our Everyday Vocations to Transform Us, Our Neighbors, and the World Tom Nelson (Brazos Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

If you’ve read any of our older, archived BookNotes about faith and work, the first edition of this book comes up as often as any. It was called Your Work Matters and it told, among other things, the story of a good pastor in a healthy church that came to realize he was failing to equip his congregants to serve God in their work in the world. Tom called it “professional malpractice” by preaching and teaching and leading his church as it the Kingdom of God was all about the church. Once we saw the talents and passions of his parishioners and encouraged them to think faithfully about their callings in the world, things really shifted. Anyway, that book is classic and vital and this is a considerable updating (enough to warrant a new publisher and new title.) As much as we liked that first one, we are very happy to celebrate and promote this new one. It offers a grand theological story and “exploring recent developments in how we work, how God shapes our lives through work, and why our work matters for eternity.”

There are prayers and discussion questions, too, making this an incredibly useful books to go over with friends in a small group or class. Hooray.

The Conversation on Work edited by Ian O. Williamson (Johns Hopkins University Press) $17.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.36

This is part of the “Critical Conversations” series b Johns Hopkins University Press, a set of paperbacks which are drawn from a website where scholars present papers, journalists revise them for the general public, and all sorts of good conversations ensue. This is a top-flight conversation, collecting all kind of good articles from around the globe. It includes big picture stuff about the changing face of work in these days, it includes details about who runs what and why, it has lots of focus on choosing a career – I suppose this is used in college career centers and the like. There is a whole bunch of pieces about the role of technology (robotics and AI)  in work, these days. The Conversation on Work has a lot about how work is changing and many contributors speculate about the jobs of the future.

Editor Ian Williamson is the dean of the University of California School of Business and he is to be commended for this well organized set of essays on the intricacies of the workplace.

Go Forth: God’s Purpose for Your Work: An Eight Week Bible Study (Redeemer City to City) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

Very handsomely designed, expertly done, inviting conversation on key Biblical texts that point us to a robust vision of the all-of-life-redeemed worldview that would undergird any call to social engagement, cultural reformation, and certainly the call to work in meaningful ways. Yes we are called tow work and yes, the places we work and the entities we work for are broken, distorted by sin and ideology, damaged by idols and foibles galore. But God equips us and sends us to be agents of goodness. Do these 8 lessons on your own, with a group at church, or, better, with some interested folks in our workplace. Fabulously interesting and well designed. Kudos, especially, to Lauren Gill and Charlie Meo.

The Missional Disciple: Pursuing Mercy & Justice at Work: A Six Session Course (Redeemer City to City) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I love what it says on the back cover: “As disciples of Jesus, our workplaces are often our primary places of mission. Yet we sometimes fail to recognize two key dimensions of our work — mercy and justice.”

This study course is designed around short videos presented by leading practitioners and theologians of the faith-in-the-work-world movement. It has case studies and lots of stories and great examples, even as it is honest about how hard it is to think well and serve creatively in many job sites. There are case studies from the commercial arts, education, filming, finance, and the hospitality industries. If you want to consider the work-world aspects of the vocation of being missional or ponder new ways to serve the hurting, this study is sure to help. We are so thrilled to stock it.

The Missional Disciple is an immensely helpful resource for the church.I encourage you to read this book with a small group of friends and expect to be transformed!  — Tish Harrison Warren, author, Liturgy of the Ordinary and Payer in the Night

If very Christian considered how the can better love their neighbors on the margins, steward their power, and be a restorative presence in their workplace, it would be nothing less than transformational. This course show us how to do just that.  — Timothy Keller, founder, Redeemer City-to-City, author of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work

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