Working from a place of rest, Tony Horsfall

REVIEWER: Ali Hull

BOOK: Working from a place of rest: Jesus and the key to sustaining Ministry
AUTHOR: Tony Horsfall
(BRF, July 2023) 

Tony Horsfall has been writing books to encourage Christians, particularly leaders, for many years, and this one is a revised and reissued version of a previous book. It is definitely worth a read.

His main thesis is that Jesus models a different way of working, that is not only counter-cultural in the sense that it goes against the way the western world works, but it also goes against the way the church tends to act in the Western world as well. Because as far as idolising hard work and overcommitment is concerned, the church and the Western world tend to be in lockstep.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Taking the John 4 story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well as his foundation, Horsfall explores what made Jesus different, his security in his identity and his ability to say ‘No’ – there is even a list in the back of occasions when he did so! He points out that we tend to believe the Protestant work ethic is God-ordained, piling pressure upon pressure, either upon ourselves or each other. Our measure of success is ‘numerical growth’ which leads, he believes, to greater pressure on those who work for the big successful churches – both to ‘keep producing results’ and through an ‘unacknowledged perfectionism’.

But at the well, Jesus stopped. He rested.

He was tired and stopping was okay. Not only was it okay, it turned out to be fruitful. Stopping, says Horsfall, is a discipline – whether we want to do it or not, we need to intentionally build it into our lives, in order for our ministry to be sustainable. ‘As Christians,’ he writes, ‘we have a strong theology of work but virtually no theology of leisure’, and he sets out to reset the balance a little here, exploring what leisure does, the different types of leisure, and why it matters. But he goes beyond that, to point to a new way of working – allowing God to work in and through us, finding our security in him, leaving the results to him, and developing the spiritual disciplines necessary to integrate resting and working.

Reviewer: Ali Hull
Ali Hull has spent nearly thirty years working with words, as a writer, editor and writing coach. Now the Book Editor for Preach magazine, her ‘to be read’ pile is approaching frightening proportions.