This is a soft book, a quiet and thin book to be read in a single sitting or all-together with a group in your congregation before meeting to discuss it. A story is told, of Englewood Christian Church on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis, Indiana, and how they went from being a 1980s megachurch to a much healthier congregation of about 200 who learned to talk with one another. Smith writes: “We had no idea where the journey of conversation would take us, but we committed to the slow and often messy work of talking together.”
White flight to the suburbs and industrial decline led to so many congregants leaving weekly worship, and then membership, at the once-large church. Smith then narrates the changes that led to the church finding new ways to survive — and shows how many of these efforts were spurred on by what might seem ordinary: regular Sunday, organized, evening conversations around difficult subjects.
This story and the lessons learned — there’s the feeling throughout that learning and lessons are as ongoing as they are lively — will benefit many concerned about what it means to be church and to practice hospitality when differing opinions on certain subjects make this feel impossible. Smith summarizes well: “Amidst a nation that is sorting itself into homogenous ghettos and finding civil dialogue impossible, a community is talking across deep divides and orchestrating a movement of transformation in its own neighborhood.”
Interspersing the narrative are helpful paragraphs of advice for congregations such as when Smith warns against relying too much on voting; it can be “a way of avoiding conversation,” he explains. “Do we have spaces in which people can have meaningful discussion of an issue before it is voted on, or venues in which minority opinions can be heard and thoughtfully and prayerfully considered?”
