Book Review: Giving Church Another Chance {finding new meaning in spiritual practices}

I've had Todd Hunter's new book, Giving Church Another Chance, hanging around my house like a stray pet for several months. I finally cracked it open on the threshold of my recent trip to Cambodia. It ended up becoming my mainstay of reading during my trip. I read it at 30,000 feet in the air flying over the Pacific Ocean and I continued to read it while staying in Phnom Penh and then later in Krati, a central province of Cambodia along the Mekong River. It was superb timing. Read my review and you'll see why I say that.

This is the second book  I've read  by Todd and I like it more than his debut title, Christianity  Beyond  Belief. (I usually refer to authors I review by their last name, but I've met Todd and his family and have even been to his home. We share mutual friends, so he is not just an anonymous author but someone I'm loosely connected to)

This book is in part autobiographical for Todd. In writing about the life of church he also tells about his life with church, from his early days with Calvary Chapel and later the Vineyard church movement, to how he became unchurched for a time and now finds himself in the current of the American Anglican stream.

From the earliest pages of this book, Todd presents the idea of being part of church life as a spiritual practice and the need he discovered in his life to repractice this spiritual discipline.  This language is helpful, I believe, in defining what many disillusioned Christians are wrestling with in how to have a relationship with the Church in any of her many forms.  Todd lays out his thinking that spiritual formation for the Christ follower is enriched when the follower is connected to other believers in a tangible way, aka being part of a church.

Todd takes time to tackle some of the issues of church that have led to the epidemic of throngs of people abandoning church practice in order to preserve their sanity (and their faith in God!). He addresses somewhat succinctly the issues of modernity and post-modernity with the American followership of Jesus. His steady voice attempts to reason with the angst-ridden faithful that spiritual life with and in church is not only possible, but spiritually practical.

The goal of repracticing Christianity is to move our spiritual experience from a mere system of beliefs and unsatisfying church routines to a newly conceived way of life and empowered living rooted in the spiritual practices of church. The goal isn't to become more "religious," as that term is negatively used today. The goal is "life, life and more life," and alignment with God's creation intention for humanity. page 36

For Todd to lay down his message for Giving Church Another Chance, he had to obviously spend some time defining what he means, and doesn't mean, by Church, a word which has unfortunately become a loaded, negative term that for many people has come to mean an out-of-touch-hypocritical-judgmental-archaic-hierarchical institution.

Todd defines for readers what he means by church. Not a building or a denomination or even a system of beliefs played out in rote ritual Sunday after predictable Sunday. To compel readers to give church another chance, Todd builds his case that a right understanding of what church is about in the first place?

The issue is not so much the contemporary nature of the church but it's connection to God's purpose for the church. If we are to be living within God's story, and if God's story can be likened to a map, a narrative or a piece of music, then we should be asking, What map are we on? What narrative are we living in? or What music are we playing? These questions will lead us to to see that church is mainly what happens outside of its meetings.  page 44

Todd builds upon this simplistic message  of  Be Church by aptly using the biblical metaphors of ambassadorship. Ambassadors are connected to embassies, he points out,  but their presence in their host country is how they serve and how they represent their home country. All Christians, reminds Todd, are Christ's ambassadors; churches than are meant to serve as embassies, places where ambassadors may gather, and than scatter, so as to serve the place they find themselves in. It is the incarnational message of the gospel - referred to today as being missional.

As someone who has wrestled with forms of church for the last several years, this book resonated with me as Todd described the dissatisfaction many of us have experienced with all-things-church. It was spot-on timing for me to be reading it while on my trip to Cambodia. Now I'll tell you why:

The missionary I traveled with took me to a remote area where she has been a catalyst in church planting. All the house church leaders and other Christians of this area were gathered together for a day of training with Joni, about 20 people in all.  They sang songs indigenous to their culture and Khmer language in worship of God;  those who were literate had their Khmer  bibles with them and they all listened with great earnestness as Joni taught.

In one segment of the day Joni was empowering them about communion. With their animist culture, there is not a context for what communion is. Some of them had heard rumors  that Christians have a ritual for "drinking blood."  For many of them, this was their first time to learn what communion is about and what it means. The key leader in this area together with Joni decided that rather than they facilitate the elements for taking communion, one of the house church leaders ought to do it instead. This way, it would be clearly modeled that anyone can minister communion. Not just pastors.

It was a clumsy communion service. The man who led it read from his bible with authority and confidence, but when it came time to the practicality of "take the bread and the cup" it got a little bumpy. The people conferred out loud about how to proceed. Joni gave a little direction, careful to not take over driving. A cup of juice was passed around, small pieces of dry bread dunked one by one as the cup made it's way around the circle. The brother leading the communion service became confused when everyone had dipped their bread and he picked up the cup to also drink from it. "You don't need to drink from it since we've dipped already," he was told by some of the more bolder ones who seemed a little practiced at communion.

 Right then, in the open air of this communion service, an ancient practice rooted in the very embryo of the  birth of the Church, I felt an overwhelming sense of connection and understanding of church as I have never perceived before. Here, in this place of simple church life, where witch doctors curse Christians and hostile idol worshipers sometimes threaten violence to pastors and their families, where there is no electricity, where many followers of Christ are discovering the reality of God and his son Jesus within the context of their culture, I saw as it were,  the Church in a new light.

I nearly cried as a wave of shame and gratitude swelled up inside of me. Shame at how petty my complaints about church life in America suddenly appeared. I have a smorgasbord of churches to choose from to suit my liking, but here in this remote jungle, these brothers and sisters have only one another. That's it. No denominational lines. No competitive, territorial church down the dirt road to suspect of "stealing their people," no conferences filled with powerful speakers to pump them up for whatever the latest hot tip from heaven is about. They are The Church here in this place, for one another and more importantly, for the villages and communities they reside in.

It was fitting that I finished reading Giving Church Another Chance during our time in this provincial countryside. It was as if the Holy Spirit was using Todd's book to soften the cynical crust on my soul towards human constructs of church, while simultaneously dropping me into the fellowship of a group of people who are simply Church. Without one another, many of them would not thrive in their spiritual formation. They inspire one another, which in turn, helps them to inspire others around them to come to a knowledge of Jesus.

This is the mission of the Church. It always has been. Remember what Jesus said to Peter when Peter announced, "You are the Christ, the Son of God?"

Jesus said to him, "Upon this rock the church will be built and the gates of hell will not prevail."  The rock is not Peter, it's a not a man or a human construct of any kind. The church is built, or developed, upon the revelation of Jesus Himself. This is the spiritual formation that is unique among Christ followers and is the spiritual formation that Church both is and is imparting.  We form  and inform one another.

It was most definitely a timely read for me. The fire of love I have always held for Church since the day I was born (spiritually) into it, is burning a bit brighter for having read this book. Books are ideas, messages, from an author to a reader. This reader listened to what the author had to day and as a result I love Church more ever before. Todd Hunter's devotion to her and the simplistic church life of rice farmers in central Cambodia has done this for me.

Giving Church Another Chance is not a perfect book. There are sleepy parts and redundancy. But the overall message is one of encouragement and practical engagement. I recommend it for those readers who wrestle with this beauty known as Church as I have. It might give you a renewed point of view as it has me.

Addendum:  I need to add one last mention about this book - my friend Denie!  I've known Denie since I was 16 years old. A mutual friend of ours, Vivian, introduced Denie to Todd and his wife Debbie. They lived in the same area of Boise, Idaho, or at least for a while until the Hunter's returned to their native southern California. Denie has been serving Boise's homeless each weekend by providing food and friendship. She's had a few helpers come and go, but the Hunter's, inspired by who she is and how tenacious she is with the city's poor, came along side to support her ministry. It was an answer to prayer! Todd gives a bit of a shout-out to Deni towards the end of his book on  pages 150-51:

The past few months our church in Boise has been feeding a hundred homeless people every week. My wife and a couple of others take turns cooking, and a few of us serve the meals and hang out with the women, children and men living on the street. Our participation was spurred on by Denie, a woman we met through a mutual friend. When we are with the homeless I see Jesus in the eyes of Denie. She knows most of the people by name; she gives them all big hugs and tells them that she loves them. While I am always happy to serve food and have light conversation, I am aware that Denie has something I just don't have.

These are kind words for my good friend, Denie, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that Todd's church has been doing this feeding every week. Denie has always been the one to lead the charge with or without the company of others or Todd's church. It has been a tremendous blessing that he and his wife and friends came along side Denie, a HUGE blessing, but I think the way it is written may give the impression that this is a church-led endeavor when it is not...at least not a traditional church. This is a perfect example of Denie herself Being Church to those she befriends with food and friendship in the park each Saturday.  She is one of the most missional people I know. She did not wait for a church to give her the thumbs up;  she listened to the Holy Spirit and began showing up. However, I have seen and she will tell you herself that having other believers join with her makes all the difference. This again is a prime example of how we form and inform one another about Christ in the fellowship and spiritual practice of church.

For more about Denie, check out her blog at www.denietackett.blogspot.com