Review: Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are

Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are by Tim Soerens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We're living in a strange time, a historic time, simultaneously keeping distanced from each other due to a global pandemic while at the same time developing a national consciousness about continued racial inequities, and our attitudes toward these things largely depend on politics. I think America has never been more polarized, but then again, maybe my sheltered upbringing kept me from seeing it.

At any rate, we are definitely living in a historic time. Most churches are not meeting in person, or if they are, people are being told to wear masks and to socially distance. No hugging. Some churches are adamantly defying the laws, declaring church an "essential service."

In this book, Soerens challenges our western association of church with a place, a place where go, a place where we hold meetings, a place where we meet with other Christians. As a result, he concludes, Christians should not be discouraged when they see church attendance decreasing and the number of "nones," those people affiliated with no church, increasing. Instead of asking how we can get more people into our buildings, he contends, we should be asking, "How do we embody news that is so good it draws the attention and longing of our neighbors? At the moment of when so many of our neighbors seem to be most in need of a local church, do we have the imagination and clarity of vision to answer the ancient call to be the people of God who are blessed to be a blessing (see Genesis 12:2-3)?" (8).

The church, contends Soerens, is the body of Christ, groups of people committed to following Jesus, doing what he did, which was to watch where God was at work and then doing that. How can we do that? By questioning "our default settings in how we pay attention to God at work in our everyday lives and how we have been conditioned to view the church as a timebound and static event" (9).

This book is timely. Church services are no longer "timebound and static event[s]" and the pandemic is challenging the way many of us we view church and the purpose of church. How can we join together as the "visible church" in a way that blesses our neighborhoods and gives glory to God? What are my neighborhoods? What is my role? Who are the other Christians in my neighborhoods? How do I join with them?

I'm still mulling this over and asking God what this means.

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