Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Timothy Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf covers a topic that has been written about many times before. But Keller’s prominence as a preacher and thought leader add tremendous gravitas to the topic, for which I’m thankful.

Understanding how our work is intertwined with God’s work is a topic I’ve been working through all of my adult life. From Augustine to Schaeffer, wrestling with a Biblical understanding of work has been a topic in the Church since the beginning. For generations the thinking had not changed much, but as the idea of work has changed in the last few hundred years the understanding of work needs to change as well. Seems like every generation needs to redefine the role of work with Kingdom.

That’s why I applaud Keller putting his name to this book (though I honestly suspect Alsdorf did more of the writing). We need to be talking about this and thinking it through carefully.

That said … I wasn’t that impressed. At times the book seemed to cover the obvious — and do so in torturous detail. At other times it came to conclusions that were remarkably mundane. At least for me it lacked the sizzle of Keller’s other books.

But I still applaud the book. I might be ahead of the curve on this topic because I spend so much time reflecting on how my work builds the Kingdom. Few people take the time to do that (and I’m not bragging here … those people often do great things I can’t even imagine accomplishing … we all have our part to play).

So, a good book that is well worth reading. Not a great book, at least not to me. But others are going to find it to be very great indeed.