Review: Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work

Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work by Tom Nelson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The primary thrust of the book is this - full-time ministry work is as important as secular vocational work. Unfortunately, he spent too many pages of text harping on the same point. And at the end of everything, I was not convinced.

Tom Nelson’s writing style does not resonate with me; I struggled to remain interested in the unfolding narrative. While he uses a mix of personal accounts, real-world examples and Scripture, his use of the biblical text is problematically eisegetical (meaning he highlights many passages and isolates the biblical text out of its context to fit what he wants it to say along the lines of the topic he is on, often missing the main theological principle of the passage and instead engaging in a works-righteousness application of "be like Boaz" or "be like Joseph"). Perhaps the only part of the book that was of a better quality would be chapter 9's "Facing challenges at work."

A quick glance at the other helpful Goodreads reviewers' takes would yield the advice to avoid this book if you have read another on this topic. For better reads on the topic of work, look at Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavour or William Taylor’s Revolutionary Work.

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