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Reviewed by Patricia Farris, Senior Minister, Santa Barbara United Methodist Church, Santa Barbara, CA. Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith by Diana Butler Bass Personal and academic interests combined to take Diana Butler Bass on a journey to find vital mainline churches, where authentic spiritual community is creating transformational Christianity. Traveling across the country to study and engage in the life of fifty congregations, Bass employed various kinds of participant-observer qualitative research, interviews, open-ended surveys and Sunday visits wherever possible, to profile the life of these vital communities of faith. Pastors and laity alike who fear that church growth can only come in the South, in evangelical congregations, in politically conservative congregations, in the suburbs, at a huge campus, with a charismatic male pastor-entrepreneur—or whatever misinformed stereotype intimidates and oppresses--will find comfort, inspiration and challenge in these pages. In contrast to the oft-repeated eulogy for the mainline church, Bass describes wide-ranging vitality in congregations large and small, ranging from 2500 to 35 members, urban, suburban and rural. United Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, UCC, and Lutheran congregations were studied in depth. Growth, sometimes numerical, is defined primarily in terms of spiritual vitality and authenticity. All, Bass maintains, “have found new vitality through an intentional and transformative engagement with Christian tradition as embodied in ten vital faith practices”—discernment, hospitality, testimony, healing, contemplation, diversity, worship, reflection, beauty, and justice. All engage in creative ways with Christian tradition free of rigid traditionalism. In these congregations, Bass finds not a program for church growth, but faithful people honoring their past and their tradition in ways that open to a changing world. Bass describes Americans as nomads, as people who move frequently, live far from the places they grew up and from relatives, far from the congregations and neighborhoods that raised them, or were never at home in a Christian congregation, experiencing a kind of “spiritual unmooring.” Hospitality becomes critical, as to invitations to healing, beauty and engagement with the world that connect with people on deep levels in ways that draw them into the presence of the living God. Christianity for the Rest of Us is not a guidebook or cookbook. The examples and portraits here of various aspects of life in these vital congregations are intended as “for instances” of what can happen when new life is given freedom, space and support to thrive. It will look different in every place, and Bass is clear that it must grow authentically and organically from the identity of the congregation. Pastors and laity alike will be inspired to pray, to breathe, to dream, to imagine, and to follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit. For as Bass’s research clearly shows, that Spirit continues to hover over the church to call forth life out of our ambiguity and anxiety. The main requirement, it seems, is to focus not on decline but to embrace change and the promise of newness of life as if we believe in resurrection power. Now there’s a recipe for church growth that makes sense!
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