Tom Nelson is the lead senior pastor at Christ Community Church in Kansas City. His book Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work is one of my favorite books on integrating our faith and work. In his latest book The Economics of Neighborly Good, he asks “When it comes to faith, work, and economic integration, how are you and your church doing? Are you thoughtfully addressing the Sunday-to-Monday gap?”

Here are 25 great quotes about work from the book:

1. A primary way God designed us to love our neighbors is for us to do our work well, and from our work to have the capacity to be generous to neighbors in need.
2. Doing our work well matters to God and to our neighbor. The best workers make for the best neighbors.
3. Whether our work is paid or not paid, our work is to glorify God, honor others, and add value to their lives.
4. We may retire from our paycheck, but we never retire from work. We never retire from the privilege and responsibility of neighborly love.
5. Fruitfulness means adding value and bestowing honor to others in and through our work.
6. To minimize our unique creativity is to diminish the God who designed us in his image. Each one of us has the capacity to be creative and to reflect God with our creative output.
7. Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation.
8. Being productive in our work within our economic system—flawed and imperfect as it may be—is an important way we bear God’s image and love others
9. No matter what our vocational calling is, whether our work is paid or not, our contribution of productivity is a vital manifestation of the flourishing, fruitful life from which we serve and love others.
10. We don’t worship our work—that is idolatry. But from the beginning our work was designed to be a primary way we worship God.
11. As people see our work and the kind of workers we are, as well as the ways we add value to others and how we care for the neighborhood, they will get a powerful glimpse of who Jesus is and why he matters so much to our broken world.
12. Are you living as salt and light in your vocation? Are you doing good work, whether or not that work brings a paycheck or other financial reward? Are you stewarding well your vocational power and influence?
13. We must also remember common-grace talents and spiritual gifts operate not only within the church on Sunday but also within the workplace on Monday. We not only walk in the Spirit, we work in the Spirit.
14. Christian leaders and pastors will find they are being more effective in the stewardship of the spiritual formation of congregations when they grasp that a great deal of spiritual growth takes place in the workplace and everyday economic life.
15. How much more creative, innovative, enjoyable, and productive would our workplaces be if the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—were regularly evident instead of deeds of the flesh?
16. If we are going to help rebuild the ruins of our communities and cities, an essential requirement will be for pastors and Christian leaders to cultivate a mindset to work within their congregations and the broader community
17. While an increasing number of pastors are teaching members of congregations that their work matters, all too few share the same commitment to highlighting the importance of job creation in their communities and cities.
18. Not only is getting a job important, so too is growing in job skill and personal productivity. Increasing personal productivity enables us to find greater job satisfaction as well as add greater value to the economy, enhancing the common good.
19. Productivity is not merely doing things right, but first and foremost doing the right things for the right reasons.
20. Encouraging not only a strong work ethic but also personal work productivity is an important component of discipleship into greater Christlikeness.
21. It is not just that work matters, how we do our work matters too.
22. If we are serious about pursuing the common good, we will see that a primary work of the church is the church at work.
23. Every local church has a vast potential for promoting the common good in and through each congregant’s vocational calling.
24. One telling sign of resurrection power in any local congregation is that Sunday worship is understood as being closely connected to Monday work and the economy.
25. In a time when the local church is often marginalized, opportunities for neighborly love, gospel impact, and positive cultural influence are brimming with possibilities—if we are willing to engage the world of work.