#76 Church for Monday: Equipping Believers for Mission at Work

by Svetlana Papazov

Church for Monday book encourages believers to act in an entrepreneurial manner and partner with God in his working the world. It demonstrates through many examples, how the church is uniquely designed to model Creator God, the Ultimate Entrepreneur. It makes the case that a church equipping for Monday is a missional church that fosters the creative streak placed in every one of us, practices corporate public faith,innovatively contextualizes the gospel for the postmodern world, and seeks holistic spirituality by uniting worship on Sunday to mission on Monday.

This type of church, called Church for Monday, have grown in the awareness that as the gap between practicing Christians and the unchurched has dangerously widened, the 8-to-5 window (the work day), has become a mission field as important as the 10/40 window (a geographical are a with high concentrations of unreached people for Christ), because at work is where the majority of the unchurched spend the majority of their waking hours.

This book asks: "What type of church prepares for that type of world?" and offers the local church a practical re-tooling to equip believers for the workweek on Monday, regain relevance in the lives of the lapsed and non-Christians in its community, and re-establish the Church's witness in the public arena.

#77 Joy and success at work

by Mark McClain

“I can’t wait to get to work!” When was the last time you felt that way? Have you ever?
Mark McClain has and still does. He and his leadership teams have focused on creating companies that make the quality of their employees’ work experiences of equal importance to the quality of the solutions those employees create. With Joy and Success at Work, McClain has produced a manual that shares how he and his teams have done it―and how you and your team can, too.
Speaking directly to the lack of fulfillment that too often accompanies work―with generous portions of humor and irreverence―Mark McClain deconstructs the modern business environment, then puts it back together.
Shot through with pithy tales from his own experiences, Joy and Success at Work is Mark’s honest take on what team building can be, and done right, what it produces: Great places to work that support people’s broader lives, rather than sucking the life out of them.

#78 Emotional Intelligence 2.0

by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

In today's fast-paced world of competitive workplaces and turbulent economic conditions, each of us is searching for effective tools that can help us to manage, adapt, and strike out ahead of the pack.

By now, emotional intelligence (EQ) needs little introduction—it’s no secret that EQ is critical to your success. But knowing what EQ is and knowing how to use it to improve your life are two very different things.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 delivers a step-by-step program for increasing your EQ via four, core EQ skills that enable you to achieve your fullest potential:

1. Self-Awareness

2. Self-Management

3. Social Awareness

4. Relationship Management

#79 Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses and Astronauts Tell Us About God

by John Van Sloten

A Walmart greeter, a nurse, and an astronaut walk into a church…

They each bring with them their own exhaustions and exasperations, their own uncertainty about whether and how their work matters to God. Good news: All work matters to God, because all work reflects some aspect of the character of God. God created the world so that it runs best when it mirrors Him, and we ourselves find the most fulfillment when we recognize God behind our labor.

John Van Sloten offers a fascinating and innovative reflection on vocation: Our work is a parable of God; as we work, we are icons of grace.

#80 Fabric of Faithfulness

by Steve Garber

All kinds of important choices are made during the college years. Young men and women explore what they really believe about the nature of the world and the purpose of life. They choose their work. They build friendships and often choose to marry. They develop goals and adopt habits that may last a lifetime. Yet late modernity is not a welcome environment for emotional, intellectual and spiritual formation. Society is increasingly fragmented. And the educational system itself, fragmented and specialized, may disintegrate more than it integrates.

How do parents, professors, campus ministers, youth pastors and others help students, during one of the most eventful and intense periods of life, learn to connect what they believe about the world with how they live in it? Steven Garber vigorously engages just that question in this revised edition that includes a new chapter on what he has learned about lifelong formation in the years since the book first appeared. Drawing on the history of ideas, ethics, sociology and popular culture, he offers must-reading on the critical lifework of making sense of life.

#81 The Fabric of This World

by Lee Hardy

An in-depth historical, philosophical, theological--and practical--exploration of work from an evangelical perspective. Hardy discusses several historical views of work from the ancient Greeks onward, highlighting the Christian concept of vocation as articulated by Luther and Calvin; these expositions lead to practical applications regarding the personal issue of career choice and the important (but often neglected) social issue of job design.

#82 Fruitfulness on the Frontline

by Mark Greene

Daily life may never be quite the same. In this horizon-expanding, spirit-lifting, heart-warming book Mark Greene serves up a liberating view of how God can and does work in and through us in our daily lives. Whether you're a student or retired, at the gym or at work, at the school gate or in the supermarket, here is a fresh and original framework for fruitfulness which will open up a host of possibilities to make a difference for Christ among the people you naturally meet in the places you find yourself day by day. Brimming with true stories, the combination of fresh Biblical insight, humor, and practical steps will not only spark your imagination; it will enrich your sense of wonder at the greatness and grace of the God who not only gave his life for us, but invites us to join him in his glorious, transforming work. And who helps us as we do.

#83 The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work

by Darrell Cosden

Does a person's day to day work have any ultimate value from the perspective of Eternity? Should our work be seen as a discipline through which we connect spiritually with God and others? Is ordinary work the primary way that people can participate in God's mission to make all things new? What is the heavenly good of earthly work? In this book Darrell Cosden takes us on a spiritual and theological journey of discovery exploring these questions. Creatively, constructively, and sometimes provocatively, he shows us that the heavenly good of earthly work really makes the gospel good news for ordinary people by offering the possibility of a genuinely purpose-full Christian life.

#84 It’s About Excellence

by David W. Gill

It's About Excellence: Building Ethically Healthy Organizations   For too many businesses and their leaders today, business ethics is just about staying out of jail. "Litigation, indictment, and penal system avoidance" is not just the first but the only reason they think ethics is important. It's about "damage control." It's not by accident that these damage control ethics programs are generally under the guidance of legal and compliance departments.   Of course companies need a damage control, crisis management, trouble-shooting component in their ethics and management toolbox. But if that's all there is, something of critical business value is missing. 

It's About Excellence tells the larger story. Ethics is about identifying and pursuing excellence and business achievement. It's about getting clear on an inspiring corporate mission and vision, building a value-embedded culture, and pursuing principle-guided practices. Ethics is not a patch-and-repair add-on here; it's something woven through the whole organization, created and owned by the whole workforce.

#85 Whatever You Do: Six Foundations for an Integrated Life

by Luke Bobo

We all long for our lives to have meaning and purpose, yet we live in a segmented way — our faith is separate from our work, home is separate from church, and more. As whole persons, this is not the way God designed us to live. Instead, our lives should exhibit coherence in all areas as we seek to flourish in our personal lives, within our communities, and churches.

Whatever You Do explores how we can pursue a more integrated faith and life through six important theological areas that provide a scaffolding to help us live meaningful lives, which is a fundamental human longing. As humans, we long for truth and understanding of the world around us. Scripture provides us with a foundation for how to "live, move, and have our being," as Paul writes in Acts, which leads to our own flourishing, the good of our neighbors, and the glory of God.

While the six theological foundations are not exhaustive, they cover a wide range of biblical themes that are essential for a Christian worldview. These foundations include the Bible's Big Story, God's Mission, Personal Wholeness, The Goodness of Work, Economic Wisdom, and the Local Church. These six authors examine how the themes of Scripture influence and shape every area of our lives, including our work.

#86 What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done

by Matt Perman

Productivity isn't just about getting more things done. It's about getting the right things done--the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. In our current era of massive overload, this is harder than ever before. So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity?

When we take God's purposes into account, a revolutionary insight emerges. Surprisingly, we see that the way to be productive is to put others first--to make the welfare of other people our motive and criteria in determining what to do (what's best next). As both the Scriptures and the best business thinkers show, generosity is the key to unlocking our productivity. It is also the key to finding meaning and fulfillment in our work.

What's Best Next offers a practical approach for improving your productivity in all areas of life. It will help you better understand:

• Why good works are not just rare and special things like going to Africa, but anything you do in faith even tying your shoes.

• How to create a mission statement for your life that actually works.

• How to delegate to people in a way that actually empowers them.

• How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you.

• How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day.

• How your work and life can transform the world socially, economically, and spiritually, and connect to God's global purposes.

By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God's purposes and plan, What's Best Next will give you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do. This expanded edition includes a new chapter on productivity in a fallen world and a new appendix on being more productive with work that requires creative thinking.

#87 Joy at Work

by Dennis W. Bakke

In Joy at Work, Bakke tells how he helped create a company where every decision made at the top was lamented as a lost chance to delegate responsibility--and where all employees were encouraged to take the "game-winning shot," even when it wasn't a slam-dunk. Perhaps Bakke's most radical stand was his struggle to break the stranglehold of "creating shareholder value" on the corporate mind-set and replace it with more timeless values: integrity, fairness, social responsibility, and a sense of fun.

#88 Leadership as Art

by Max Depree

Leadership Is an Art has long been a must-read not only within the business community but also in professions ranging from academia to medical practices, to the political arena. First published in 1989, the book has sold more than 800,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. This revised edition brings Max De Pree’s timeless words and practical philosophy to a new generation of readers.

De Pree looks at leadership as a kind of stewardship, stressing the importance of building relationships, initiating ideas, and creating a lasting value system within an organization. Rather than focusing on the “hows” of corporate life, he explains the “whys.” He shows that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality and the last is to say thank you. Along the way, the artful leader must:

• Stimulate effectiveness by enabling others to reach both their personal potential and their institutional potential

• Take a role in developing, expressing, and defending civility and values

• Nurture new leaders and ensure the continuation of the corporate culture

Leadership Is an Art offers a proven design for achieving success by developing the generous spirit within all of us. Now more than ever, it provides the insights and guidelines leaders in every field need.

#89 Leadership as a Lifestyle

by John Hawkins

Shows how personal spirituality and spirituality in the workplace can be both substantive and practical. Hawkins draws from his years of entrepreneurial experience and organizational leadership to provide instruction that is both credible and insightful to people who want to rethink and redirect their leadership in their marriages, families and careers.

#90 The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations

by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

The Leadership Challenge is the gold-standard manual for effective leadership, grounded in research and written by the premier authorities in the field. With deep insight into the complex interpersonal dynamics of the workplace, this book positions leadership both as a skill to be learned, and as a relationship that must be nurtured to reach its full potential. This new sixth edition has been revised to address current challenges, and includes more international examples and a laser focus on business issues; you'll learn how extraordinary leaders accomplish extraordinary things, and how to develop your leadership skills and style to deliver quality results every time. Engaging stories delve into the fundamental roles that great leaders fulfill, and simple frameworks provide a primer for those who seek continuous improvement; by internalizing key insights and putting concepts into action, you'll become a more effective, more impactful leader.

#91 Person Called You

by Bill Pollard

Bill Hendricks goes beyond personality types to explore and explain the fullness of human giftedness and the concept of personhood. Using the “Discover Your Design” test, The Person Called You provides a specific, comprehensive, and accurate understanding of the phenomenon of human giftedness from a Biblical perspective. It moves past the limited scope of other gift discovery tests to look at each person’s unique God-given designs and motivations. This book helps the reader understand their deep uniqueness as a human being and purpose in life from a variety of angles –work, marriage, parenting, education, and one’s relationship with God.

The Person Called You is for anyone who knows they aren’t quite where they ought to be – and not quite where they will flourish best – and wants to who they were created to be. It’s a presentation of hope – hope that there actually are answers to some of life’s most perplexing questions.

#92 Workplace Grace

by Bill Peel and Walt Larimore

You can take your faith to work in appropriate, engaging ways. Workplace Grace offers a simple, non-threatening approach to evangelism. Whether your work takes you to a construction site, a cramped cubical or the corner office, every Christian plays a significant role in the Great Commission. Between Sundays, you can be a pipeline for God's grace in the most strategic mission field in the world: your workplace. Workplace Grace is for Christians who are not gifted evangelists, yet they want to make a spiritual difference at work and see their coworkers and friends come to faith in Jesus Christ. After adopting Workplace Grace strategies, Christians who once felt awkward sharing their faith now say, "A load of guilt has been taken off my shoulders." "I never knew sharing my faith could be so simple." "I can do this!”

#93 The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

by Stephen M.R. Covey

Stephen M. R. Covey, widely known as one of the world’s leading authorities on trust, asserts that it is “the most overlooked, misunderstood, underutilized asset to enable performance. Its impact, for good or bad, is dramatic and pervasive. It’s something you can’t escape.” Thankfully, it’s is also the thing that can dramatically improve your personal and professional success.

Why trust? The simple, often overlooked fact is this: work gets done with and through people. The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in every transaction and every relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction. It specifically demonstrates how to establish trust intentionally so that you and your organization can forego the time-killing, bureaucratic check-and-balance processes that is so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

This 2018 updated edition includes an insightful afterword by the author which explores ten key reasons why trust is more relevant now than ever before—including how trust is the new currency of our world today.

#94 Spirituality Inc

by Lake Lambert

For many Americans spirituality and business seem to be polar opposites: one is concerned with lofty questions of ultimate significance, the other with mundane matters of the daily grind. Yet over the last two decades the two have become increasingly linked, and as the barriers between them are broken down, many see this as a revolutionary shift in American business culture.

Lake Lambert III provides a comprehensive examination of the workplace spirituality movement, and explores how it is both shaping and being shaped by American business culture. Situating the phenomenon in an historical context, Lambert surveys the role of spirituality in business from medieval guilds to industrial "company towns" right up to current trends in the ever-changing contemporary business environment. Using case studies from specific businesses, such as Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby, he analyzes the enhanced benefits and support that workplace spirituality offers to employees, while exposing the conflicts it engenders, including diversity, religious freedom, and discrimination issues.

The American workplace today is experiencing dramatic upheaval and change. Spirituality, Inc. offers important insights into the role of religion in this transformation. With employees seeking new ways to strike a proper life-work balance and find meaning in their everyday lives, spirituality in the workplace is a trend that will become increasingly important in the American business landscape. Spirituality, Inc. provides a critical overview of this phenomenon that does not ignore the movement's many positive contributions to the workplace, yet does not overlook the potential for abuse.

#95 Work: The Meaning of Your Life

by Lester DeKoster

Our daily work - whatever our job is - gets the largest single block of our lives. But time on the job is for too many of us time at the rat race - with the rats winning. Is this "it"? I used to think so, but one day two things dawned on me together: 1) if life is to have a meaning, I would have to find it, not hope to create it for myself; and, 2) living must get its meaning, first of all, on the job because that's the drain down which the best hours of every week dribble away. I write this little booklet so you can share, if you want to, in the discovery that it is daily work, whatever your job, that gives meaning to life, not because you will now decide to put meaning there but because God has already done so. Come see.

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

by R. Paul Stevens and Alvin Ung

Instead of regarding work as a diversion from the spiritual life, R. Paul Stevens and Alvin Ung are convinced that it is an arena and an incentive for spiritual growth. However, they acknowledge that this is not without its challenges.

Work in Progress examines life in the workplace through an innovative exploration of both the seven deadly sins and the ninefold fruit of the Spirit. This approach provides a framework to reveal how the Spirit has given Christians powerful gifts to overcome struggles the face in the challenges of daily work in a globalized world. The authors interact both with one another and with the wisdom of great spiritual writers of history in order to draw out real-life dilemmas and to suggest practical tips for becoming vibrant disciples in the workplace.

In addition to filling a critical need for a resource on spiritual growth at work, Work in Progress has an intercultural approach ― the authors are from Canada and Malaysia ― that is particularly dynamic and engaging.

#97 Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

by General Stanley McChrystal

In this book, McChrystal shows not only how the military made that transition, but also how similar shifts are possible in all organizations, from large companies to startups to charities to governments. In a turbulent world, the best organizations think and act like a team of teams, embracing small groups that combine the freedom to experiment with a relentless drive to share what they’ve learned.

Drawing on a wealth of evidence from his military career, the private sector, and sources as diverse as hospital emergency rooms and NASA’s space program, McChrystal frames the existential challenge facing today’s organizations, and presents a compelling, effective solution.

#98 Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

by Gino Wickman

Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you?

All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations—personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical.The Entrepreneurial Operating System® is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. More than 2,000 companies have discovered what EOS can do.

In Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses—and you can too.

For an illustrative, real-world lesson on how to apply Traction to your business, check out its companion book, Get A Grip.

#99 Vision to Results: Leadership in Action

by Jim Fischetti

As a leader, your job is to make your people and your organization better. It’s safe to say you have no intention of leading a stagnant organization, yet organizational decay can creep in and go unnoticed unless you’re actively working to combat it. What begins with a few missed goals and declining productivity can evolve into a widespread malaise that robs your people of their passion and causes them to create uninspired work. For every organization in this situation, the real culprit is a lack of vision. If leaders want their people to achieve results that will drive the organization forward, each employee must understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. In Vision to Results, Jim Fischetti teaches you how to create an actionable vision for your organization that brings everyone’s role into sharp focus, as well as implement a continuous accountability system that addresses problems before they arise, keeping your organization healthy for years to come.

#100 Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

by Studs Terkel

Perhaps Studs Terkel’s best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless snapshot of people’s feelings about their working lives, as well as a relevant and lasting look at how work fits into American life.