Often, we experience life as unrelated components resulting in feeling disintegrated at the core of our being. We long to feel whole, to be an integrated self. In Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World, Jeff Haanen shows how we can seek deep spiritual health rather than be formed by our culture which influences us to live fragmented lives. He encourages us to live our inner and outer lives with integrity, both oriented towards God. He emphasizes the work of inner transformation that leads to external transformation, including how we view and participate in our work.
Jeff Haanen founded the Denver Institute for Faith & Work — a community of conveners, teachers and learners offering experiences and educational resources on the gospel, work and community renewal. He led the Denver Institute as CEO for ten years before stepping down in 2022. His milestone achievements include launching their first gathering of Women, Work & Calling in 2016 and Business for the Common Good in 2017. Jeff has published cover stories for Christianity Today in October 2018 and February 2019. Apart from his book Working from the Inside Out, Jeff has also published An Uncommon Guide to Retirement: Finding God’s Purpose for the Next Season of Life. Jeff graduated from Valparaiso University and has a Master of Divinity from Denver Seminary. He is also a Financial Modeling and Valuation Analyst. Today, Jeff works with servant-leaders in positions of influence in business, investing, and higher education who want to embody “love God and love your neighbor as yourself” in their work and arenas of influence. He lives in Denver with his wife and four daughters and enjoys the outdoors and travel.
Discussion Guide
Chapters 1-3
1. To what extent do you resonate with the notion of "fragmentation"? Do you feel your own life to be compartmentalized, with different auto-responses for each compartment? e.g. friends, family, church, neighborhood, workplace, leisure, lifestyle, etc.
2. Do you feel like your "Christian life" and your "work life" run on parallel paths, or are there ways that your faith influences what you do at work/how you do your work?
3. When you consider your work, what aspects bring you joy and what aspects feel like drudgery?
4. How do you respond to the author’s idea that different kinds of people need to hear different aspects of the Christian understanding of work emphasized? i.e. those who mostly find joy in work, need to learn about how sin impacts their work, and those who find work to be mostly drudgery need to hear that their work can be meaningful and bring joy.
5. “Our workplaces shape our desires, our desires shape our habits, and our habits shape our characters.” (pg 37) Whom am I becoming because of what I’m absorbing from my culture, including the culture at work?
Chapters 4-7
1. How do you respond to the reasons given below that necessitate theological reflection?
a) We are not immune to being shaped by our secular work culture (where the world is explained exclusively in human terms/ where every God is worshipped).
b) We need to be spiritually formed in our attitudes/habits so that we can push back.
c) As those in academia and the professions, stewarding our minds is part of our calling.
2. If thinking well is a nonnegotiable part of our Christian life, which of the following practices is the most difficult for you? What steps can you take to incorporate this habit?
Make space in your schedule and in your home for clear thinking.
Choose your reading diet wisely.
Take risks based on what you know to be true.
3. Think about your academic discipline/profession. Begin working through your field of study/job from the framework of the Biblical drama.
a) What is good about my discipline/profession that I can support and get behind?
b) What is broken about my discipline/profession that needs redemption?
c) What might it look like if the brokenness of my discipline/profession was healed and restored?
d) How might God be calling me in my current work to bring part of his healing and restoration?
4. How do you respond to the following theological truths?
a) God creates. Part of the way we image God is by creating good work.
b) There is no hierarchy of work — paid/unpaid work, secular/sacred work.
c) Our good work in some way will be included in God’s Kingdom.
5. What Sabbath rhythms will you build? What will you say no to? What will you say yes to?
6. Consider the hotel housekeeper who sees his work as a calling to offer hospitality (rather than seeing it as "just" answering phone calls or cleaning rooms). How can you describe your vocation that goes beyond responsibilities or a job description?
Chapters 8-10
1. How do you respond to the ideas stated below, which the author says are foundational to personal change?
a) “Change begins when we choose neither rebellion nor resignation but consent to God’s presence inside of our suffering.” (pg. 105)
b) “Join a high commitment community characterized by emotional and relational vulnerability.” (pg. 106)
c) Evaluate our ideas, stories, worldviews, habits, culture, etc., and reframe everything through God’s salvation history. (pg. 108)
2. How would belonging to a high commitment community help you to grow? What are your feelings about belonging to such a group?
3. How do you respond to the idea that part of your calling is to translate your faith to language your colleagues can understand? (pp. 116-117)
4. From the postures listed in pages 117-118, where does your institution stand in its attitude to matters of faith?
5. “What are the distinctive activities or beliefs you want to champion at your organization as a Christian? And what are the practices or policies you must refuse as one ultimately committed to God’s Kingdom?” (pg. 121)
6. How do you respond to the author’s main premise that transformation is an "inside out" process — beginning with our interior life and spilling over to our exterior life and civic life?
7. Throughout the book the author gives snapshots of professional vs. working class perspectives that are very different.
a) How has learning about these different attitudes been helpful to you?
b) As professionals, how can we steward our relative power to helping others in our spheres of influence to find joy/satisfaction in their work?
