Faith and Work News ~ Links to Interesting Articles

• Writing Music for God’s People: A Conversation with Matt Papa, Songwriter. On this episode of the Working with Dan Doriani podcast, Dan and Matt Papa discuss the reasoning behind writing hymns for worship, the inspiration for writing “His Mercy is More,” and the ability that songs like “I Set My Hope (Hymn for a Deconstructing Friend)” have to connect with us emotionally.
• Work Well with All Types of People. In this podcast, Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk with their colleague Ann Westrate about how understanding each other’s gifts has enhanced their work as a team. They discuss how much the Working Genius assessment helped them understand why what might be easy for one of them is hard for someone else. Understanding what different gifts are represented in a team can enhance morale and strengthen relationships. We all have gifts, but none of us has all the gifts.
• Loving God the Most: Working for God Instead of Work as God. Wes White writes “One of the greatest blessings that humans can enjoy in this world is to be able to do work that blesses oneself and others and glorifies God.”
• Called to Lead. My book Called to Lead: Living and Leading for Jesus in the Workplace is available in both a paperback and Kindle edition. Read a free sample (Introduction through Chapter 2).

Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:

• More links to interesting articles
• The Top 10 Faith and Work Quotes of the Week
• Faith and Work Book Review ~ When Work Hurts: Building Resilience When You’re Beat Up or Burnt Out by Meryl Herr
• Quotes from the book Working Blessedly Forever, Volume 1: The Shape of Marketplace Theology by R. Paul Stevens

• Let’s Get Real About the Battle Between Flesh and Spirit at Work. Russ Gehrlein writes “Let me summarize what God’s Word teaches us about this unrelenting internal battle between flesh and spirit, focus on where it might manifest itself at your workplace and mine, and offer some practical solutions to be able to stand our ground in the power of the Holy Spirit to remain true to the purposes God has called us to in Christ.”
• A Leader Worth Following. My new book A Leader Work Following: 40 Key Leadership Attributes and Applications to Masteris available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. Read a sample of the book (found under the book cover in the above link).
• How Should We Tailor Our Prayers in Each Phase of Our Career? Russ Gehrlein writes “Do you pray about your work? I know I do, every day. As we go forward in 2025, let me reflect on prayer a bit.”
• What (Christian) Leadership Looks Like. Guy Richard writes “How can we be Christ-like leaders who give ourselves away for the good of the ministry (or business)?”
• How to Publicly Thank God After a Work Win. Miranda Carls responds to the question “How can I thank God professionally and tastefully in a business scenario? For me, it became an important topic this morning as I was writing a post for LinkedIn about my promotion. I struggled to figure out the best way to effectively bring God into the announcement in a way that didn’t seem trite or insincere.”
• What Coach Joe Kennedy’s Story Teaches About Courage at Work. Jacqueline Isaacs writes “Coach Joe Kennedy never set out to make headlines. He wasn’t trying to launch a national conversation or become the face of a major legal battle over religious liberty. He simply wanted to live out his Christian faith and not have to leave it at the door when he went to work as a high school football coach.”
• Tim Keller on the Purpose of Your Job, Your Life and the Universe. In this excerpt from his book Tim Keller on the Christian Life, Matt Smethurst writes “According to Keller, work is not merely a way to earn money or a strategy for self-advancement or a necessary evil to fund truly important things like ministry. Work is a divine calling through which we honor our heavenly Master and love our neighbor in tangible ways.”
• What Does Christ’s Finished Work Mean for Our Everyday Work? John Pletcher writes “Take heart! Christ’s finished work on the cross and his triumphant word, tetelestai, supply all the grace we need to press on, work hard, and finish strong.”
• What’s Missing in the Calling Conversation? Arianna Molloy writes “Calling is about communication between the called, the Caller, and community.”

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Top 10 Faith and Work Quotes of the Week

• Work is inherently good and a way we reflect the image of God. Jeff Haanen
• Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are. John Wooden
• Caring for the spiritual nourishment of the next generation is a way to think about a deep vocation in retirement. Jeff Haanen
• The pattern for work: rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that helps the world thrive and flourish. Tim Keller
• Learning in retirement can be preparation for a new job, career, or volunteer position that flows from a God-given calling. Jeff Haanen
• What if you’re struggling under an unfair boss or a tedious job that doesn’t take advantage of all your gifts? It’s liberating to accept that God is fully aware of where you are at any moment and that by serving the work you’ve been given you are serving him. Tim Keller
• Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. John Wooden
• You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you will lose yourself if you say work is the meaning of your life. Tim Keller
• We are most happy when we are doing and being what God created us to do and to be. Stephen Nichols

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FAITH AND WORK BOOK REVIEW:
When Work Hurts: Building Resilience When You’re Beat Up or Burnt Out by Meryl Herr. IVP. 196 pages. 2025
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It would be hard to find someone who has not experienced hurt at work, be it a poor performance review, being passed over for a promotion, relationship conflict, etc. Experiencing hurt with our work can also often carry into other aspects of our lives. In this helpful book, Meryl Herr looks at the various ways we can experience hurt at work and what we can do about it. As she does, she walks us through the story of the Israelites from the fall of Jerusalem, their journey into exile, and back home again. She spends the majority of time in what  the Hebrew Scriptures treated as a single book: Ezra-Nehemiah.

The author writes about what it looks and feels like when work beats us up, burns us out, or breaks our hearts. Along the way, she introduces us to several people who have experienced all types of work hurt, including herself. At the end of each chapter, she includes a helpful “Work Hurt Clinic” where you can revisit some of the main ideas and begin to apply some of the practices.

Among the many aspects of hurt we experience with our work that she addresses in the book are disappointment, disillusionment, despair, displacement (vocational, relational, spiritual), vocational discernment, everyday faithfulness, our sense of calling, toxic workplaces and bosses, courage, exploitation, oppression, burnout, overworking, and hope.

The author tells us that disappointment at work is an everyday experience for most of us. This is a helpful book to help us with the hurts we experience with our work.

Here are 10 of my favorite quotes from the book:

• Work isn’t supposed to be fraught with so much disappointment and despair. God designed work to be a delight.
• Difficult circumstances don’t necessarily negate a calling. But they may propel us into a season of discernment in which we have to locate our calling, our sense of purpose, buried in all the rubble.
• To work for the common good doesn’t mean we work for the flourishing of only ourselves and those like us. We work for the flourishing of the whole world.
• Flourishing in moments of displacement is possible. Everyday faithfulness is key.
• To engage in vocational discernment is to attempt to perceive or gain clarity about your vocation, or calling. The goal of vocational discernment is direction, not certainty.
• Sometimes, the best way to recover our sense of calling is simply to show up to the work that’s right in front of us.
• Regardless of how we experience the job market, we learn from the Scriptures that God is with us always, honoring our work of everyday faithfulness and achieving more than we could ever imagine.
• As Christians, we serve others through our work because God has loved us and commanded us to love him and to love our neighbor.
• The essence of calling is that God invites us to follow him and partner in his redemptive work in the world.
• Hope is more than wishful thinking. Hope is believing and watching for God to fulfill his promises. It is future oriented.

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Faith and Work Book Club – Won’t you read along with us?

We are reading through Working Blessedly Forever, Volume 1: The Shape of Marketplace Theology by R. Paul Stevens.  In this volume, the first of three, Stevens explores the shape of marketplace theology, its posture and methodology. Marketplace theology is the science of working blessedly forever.

This week we look at Chapter 9: Blessing the Workplace. Here are a few helpful quotes from the chapter:

• Virtues are the qualities of a person’s character or a corporate cultural character that indicate an appropriate awareness of what is right and commendable behavior.
• Organizational leadership is not simply leading individual people in an organization. Leaders must work with the whole—culture and systems included.