PIC No. 12:
• Title: God Loves Your Work: Discover Why He Sends You to Do What You Do
• Author: Larry Peabody
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock (March 18, 2022, 194 pages)
• Management Bucket #8 of 20: The Culture Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 12 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—short reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
Pastoral Malpractice Confession
ATTN: PASTORS! Turn to page 103 and read Pastor Tom Nelson’s confession. He shares this transparent testimony in a video: “About ten years into my ministry, I stood before my congregation and confessed to them . . . I’d come to the conviction that as a pastor I needed to confess my pastoral malpractice . . . For the first ten years of my ministry . . . I had failed to help people connect Sunday to Monday . . . I had failed in my pastoral vocation to equip people for all of life.”
That’s the shocker in the important new book, God Loves Your Work, by Larry Peabody. In his early twenties, the author noted “the occupational pecking order” in many churches. (Example: On Mother’s Day, his church honored the mothers of missionaries and pastors. But other faithful mothers of teachers, plumbers, architects, and truck drivers—no recognition or orchids for them!)
Peabody is on a mission to “close the divide” between the church’s “two-tiered thinking” about the absurd unbiblical belief that the Christian’s life is lived in two arenas: sacred and secular (his short history of how this happened is insightful). Bad theology teaches: Sunday is sacred; Monday is secular.
The author serves as the adjunct theology-of-work professor for Bakke Graduate University. Over the last eight years, he has conducted his online course for graduate students from Vietnam, Singapore, Guatemala, Brazil, Canada, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, the U.S. and other nations. Wow.
Peabody quotes Pastor Nelson further: “…I had spent the majority of my time equipping my congregation for what they were called to do in the minority of their lives. This majority-minority disparity is rampant across the pulpits of America. It is fundamental that we need to address this Sunday-to-Monday gap.”
ATTN: CHRIST FOLLOWERS! Read this book and you’ll fortify your workplace calling. Study this book with family and friends. Using memorable stories, case studies, and a fresh consideration of the theological/biblical context for why your Monday-to-Friday work matters to God, Peabody’s enthusiasm for this movement is contagious. (Example: Chapter 11, “Embodying Truth” gives a three-point outline for “Embody.”
• Empathize
• Emplace
• Empower.
(That’ll preach—even on Monday!)
If your view of work aligns with Johnny Paycheck’s rant, “Take This Job and Shove It,” I urge you to read this book. The bibliography, as you’d expect from a prof (who also served in government, churches, and the marketplace) is spectacular. Ditto the quotes from notable thinkers:
• Martin Luther: “The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but my making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
• Tim Keller on the responsibility of a Christian pilot: “Land the plane.” Why? “So it can take off again.”
• Eugene Peterson: “I’m prepared to contend that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.”
Imagine! What if the next generation of Christ followers entered the workplace with an authentic theological/biblical understanding of why “God Loves Your Work!”
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Culture Bucket (and other buckets/core competencies):
• Monday Morning Atheist: Why We Switch God Off At Work And How You Fix It, by Doug Spada and Dave Scott (read my review)
• God in the Marketplace: 45 Questions Fortune 500 Executives Ask About Faith, Life, and Business, by Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby (order from Amazon)
• Balancing Life's Demands: A New Perspective on Priorities, by J. Grant Howard (read my review)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for God Loves Your Work: Discover Why He Sends You to Do What You Do, by Larry Peabody. For more book reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting. (And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.)
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