Working from the Inside Out, Jeff Haanen. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, (Forthcoming December 12) 2023.

Summary: In a disintegrating world, outlines how five dimensions of inner transfornation can, in turn, transform our outer world of work and our life in society.

It is hard to read a book in recent year that doesn’t speak to personal struggles with despair, the divisions of our public lives, and the fragmentation and disintegration so many of us feel. Work often feels that way. We are urged to “bring our best selves” to our work. But how is that even possible? Jeff Haanan, who founded the Denver Institute for Faith and Work believes that a faith that transforms us from the inside out offers hope for the reintegration of our work life and life in society.

He believes transformation is grounded in five principles:

1. Seek deep spiritual health: Haanan invites us to become self-aware, to understand the desires that motivate us, and to cultivate consistently the spiritual practices that nourish our delight in God.
2. Think theologically: He treats theology as the story that frames our lives and appeals for a commitment to taking time to think well and clearly, no matter what job we are in.
3. Embrace relationships: Healthy relationships involve the ability to differentiate while staying connected. We can grow relationally through feedback like 360 reviews. In our Zoom age, Haanan stresses the importance of face to face meetings and paying attention to each other.
4. Create good work: Good work recognizes that we long to create as those in the image of the Creator, stewards gifts well, including workplace conflict, and practices sabbath, setting limits on our work.
5. Serve others sacrificially: Reconciling all things including redemption with God, our lives, our relationships, our systems and structures, and our created world.

Haanan devotes a chapter of the book to each principle, illustrating each with workplace stories.

The final chapters develop how this plays out in work and life. Haanan explores how change happens and how the various factors of suffering, community, feedback, and our spiritual disciplines all work together. He tackles the subject of translating faith into the workplace, and how the life of love weaves through and requires the five principles.

One of the things I like the most of the book is the sidebars on professional versus working class perspective. So often, this is lacking in faith-at-work discussions. For example, early in the book he contrasts the workplace identity that is so important in the professional class with the communal identity focusing on family among working class, who view a focus on workplace identity as narcissism. He also draws on the work of Tracy Matthews who founded Attune with its focus on both self-understanding and spiritually attuned workteams. Having gone through Attune training this spring with Matthews, I would affirm the value of this work in pursuing shared spiritual health in teams. Even good teams can get better.

The subtitle of this book, “a brief guide to inner work that transforms our outer world” is so accurate in summarizing this book. Haanan offers a brief and memorable rubric that business leaders can use in their personal contexts. The numerous stories show the connection of inner and outer in practice and how the life that integrates faith and one’s daily work is possible, even in our fragmented, divisive world.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.