Monday Matters: Finding God In Your Workplace is a new book by Australian author Mark Bilton. As the title suggests, the book promotes the view that all of life, in particular our work life, matters to God.

Unlike other recent books which outline an overview of the Bible’s teaching about work, Bilton takes an approach similar to the Biblical book of Proverbs – lots of little snippets and observations about work and God’s purpose for it.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a logical flow and order to Monday Matters. Bilton considers 6 purposes for work – Work to Provide, Work to Grow, Work to Serve, Work to Witness, Work to Create and Work to Worship. Our favourite was Work to Grow where Bilton explores the way that God uses our work to shape and refine us to become more like Christ. Here Bilton connects business transformation with personal transformation – that is, God might sometimes need to refine us before He can use us to do great things for Him in our work life.

Bilton is careful throughout the book to continually affirm the importance of the local church. Sometimes books which focus heavily on Monday can be accused of downplaying Sunday. However no one who’s read the book could accuse Bilton of this. Instead he shows how Sunday and Monday connect, explaining, “Sunday is a wonderful opportunity to come together in corporate worship, to listen to the word being preached, to be built up, to have fellowship with one another, to minister to one another, and to be released again into the workplace where we work out our faith and ministry”.

There are however a couple of weaknesses to this book. Like Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavour, Bilton focuses primarily on the white-collar working world. In fact we’re not sure if there were many, if any, examples of how the material he outlines relates to what’s traditionally called blue-collar work. This is a bit of a shame, but it is also understandable – Bilton’s work experience is primarily in the business world!

Another minor weakness is that it doesn’t provide that Biblical framework about work which some might appreciate. However other books do that well making Monday Matters a good complement to them.

Monday Matters is a simple, practical book to help stimulate your thinking about why your work matters to God. You can find out more at mondaymatters.net or listen to a recent interview with Mark Bilton.

Andrew Laird is a pastor and journalist who writes regularly about work at distinctdisciples.com