by Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson

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review by Joe Ginder

WHO WOULD NOTICE if the people of your church disappeared overnight? I'm sure family members would notice. But would the community? Sometimes I get the feeling that community leaders in my area would prefer it if evangelicals would disappear overnight! We're not valued; we're managed or tolerated.

Yes, but we're different, we claim. We have different values, so of course the unbelieving, militantly secular community doesn't value us! But in what ways are we different? Consider rates of divorce, abortion, substance abuse, etc. Just how different are we? In important ways, on a large scale, the statistics don't support our claim. What's missing? Why is our holiness not standing up under inspection?

At least one aspect of evangelical culture that contributes to this is our separateness. Now, I'm all for being in the world but not of the world. (You know the line.) But I confess that I often find it exhausting to remain engaged with a world that seems to be moving in directions so diametrically opposed to Christ's teaching. It's easy to retreat into an evangelical ghetto, where we do things "our way" in the safety of "us" while our communities spiral downward. Being not "of the world" easily leads to gathering in embattled Christian clubs that we mistake for churches.

Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson, in their book The Externally Focused Church, have an important message for us. As God's people, become an asset to your community! Take Christ's ways out into the neighborhoods, school, and non-profits around you—and you'll discover that Christ's ways open people to his message. Rusaw and Swanson's message and style is simple. Their tactic in this book is to share stories of real churches that reached into their communities to make themselves valuable in ways that honor Christ. Actions speak louder than words; this is a book about action—Christ's love in action.

The chapters of the book are pretty evenly divided between those intended to convince us of their message and those that give practical advice on how to start. Having lived and ministered in the inner city for some time now, I get the sense that the stories are sometimes more about cheerleading than about giving an accurate depiction of the difficulties one encounters in implementing the externally-focused ideas. Perhaps that's what we need. In any case, it does not keep the stories from being effective. I found myself thinking over and over again, "We could do that!" The reading is easy, the ideas provocative.

So far, I've mentioned only making the church valuable in the community. However, that's far from communicating the extent of Rusaw and Swanson's message. And frankly, I think that while the time seems to be right among evangelicals for promoting community involvement, that the key idea hinges on where the outward meets the inward. I heard Roberta Hestenes say it this way, "Any focus on Christian discipleship which persistently ignores or neglects the poor is a defective discipleship. Any spirituality which persistently neglects or ignores the needs of the poor is not a truly biblical spirituality. It is not a Christian spirituality following Jesus... This passion that God has for the poor runs through the scriptures so pervasively that you almost have to be willfully blind not to see it."

Simply put, Rusaw and Swanson report that in churches where God's people work together to express Christ's love outwardly into the community, people grow spiritually. Of course (and the authors wouldn't claim otherwise), mere human action is not the issue. It's the combination of truth (which includes ideas and content) and love (putting the truth into action) that matters. What Rusaw and Swanson offer is a practical primer on how to take the truth of what we believe as God's people and put it into action in our communities. The result has been disciples and changed communities open to the gospel, to the glory of God. What are we waiting for?

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