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Taking Your Soul to Work: Overcoming the Nine Deadly Sins of the Workplace

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Taking Your Soul to Work: Overcoming the Nine Deadly Sins of the Workplace

R. Paul Stevens and Alvin Ung

 

 

 
As a busy layperson, I’ve struggled to integrate my Sunday faith with my Monday workplace. I know I should pack my faith along (like my lunch), but the pressures of work often cause me to forget. Taking Your Soul to Work offers a fresh perspective on this struggle: instead of feeling guilty over my failure to bring Christ to my workplace, I ought to see my workplace as the primary location of God’s transforming work in my life.

Using a conversational style directed primarily at the office setting, Stevens (professor emeritus at Regent College) and Ung (an executive at a Malaysian investment firm) tackle nine areas of spiritual struggle we face in the contemporary workplace – the traditional seven deadly sins plus two relevant additions: boredom and restlessness. They link these areas of struggle to nine corresponding positive traits – the fruit of the Spirit – and nine beneficial outcomes from giving ourselves to the renovating work of the Spirit.

The book’s 27 short, practical, example-filled chapters make Taking Your Soul to Work ideal for a breakfast discussion among friends interested in the journey of transformation.

Anabaptists have always affirmed the importance of the layperson, encouraging each of us to work hard “as working for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). While there is a richness in this heritage, it can at times overemphasize our performance. Stevens and Ung remind us that “it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:13).

As we give ourselves to his project of re-making our souls in our workplaces, we will “shine among them like stars” (Philippians 2:15).

Rod Schellenberg attends Urban Journey, an MB church plant in the Dunbar neighbourhood in Vancouver.

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