Every Job a Parable by John Van Sloten

Every Job a Parable
What Walmart Greeters, Nurses & Astronauts Tell Us About God
John Van Sloten
ISBN 978-1-63146-548-2
Nav Press
Pbk, £12.13, 208pp

Publisher's website here







John Calvin stressed that the everyday activity of Christians has religious significance. The first and third verse of George Herbert’s poem ‘The Elixir’ expresses this insight:

Teach me, my God and King,
 In all things thee to see;
 And what I do in anything
 To do it as for thee.
A servant with this clause
 Makes drudgery divine;
 Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
 Makes that and the action fine.

We spend ten times more hours at work than we do at church. And yet most of the sermons in church are about church and church activities. However, not at John Van Sloten’s church. This book arose out of a sermon series he did looking at different vocations and what they can tell us about God. Van Sloten is a church pastor, before that he has worked as a real estate developer. In this book, he draws upon his own experience in the workplace as well as conducting extensive research into other people’s jobs, by visiting them in their workplace.

Van Sloten provides a succinct summary of this book: it is about ‘understanding how Jesus is speaking directly to you (via your personal experience of work) and how he is speaking through you (to the broader world)’. What he wants to do is to ‘kindle a new kind of vocational imagination’. To this end, he develops a lectio vocatio - a seeing of God in and through our work. And the end of each chapter is a short series of exercise that will help to shape this.

He sees jobs as parables and draws biblical insights from a wide range of careers. What is God saying to you and others through your job? This is an important question and one that this book sets about to answer. He also explores how we can be icons of grace in our work. Here he applies some insights of Rublev's work 'Holy Trinity' and applies them to the workplace.

Obviously not all jobs or careers are covered, for example no mention of undertakers or the unemployed, but there is an extremely wide range covered - almost fifty of them ranging from accountant to Walmart worker.

For many a job is a way of earning money and not much more; ministry is something done in church at the weekend. And for others church is where there is ‘a tacit obligation to turn up, sit up, pay up and shut up’. This book will help with a paradigm shift, it shows that God is concerned with our daily job and, not only that, is able to speak in an through it.

As someone commented to Van Sloten: ‘I think I see what you are doing. I’ve spent my entire life connecting the Jesus of the New Testament to the Jesus of the Old Testament. You are connecting the Jesus of the New Testament to the resurrected Jesus today.’ This is exactly what this book does. It endorses jobs as ministry. Van Sloten shows that God speaks through our careers.

It is an important book. It provides a model for pastors in relating church to work, and for labourers in whatever field to show that God is working in and through our labours.

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.
The book will be released in June.