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100 proven ways to transform your community

In the thick of it

100 PROVEN ways to transform your community
By Steve Chalke with Anthony Watkis
Kingsway. 272 pages
ISBN 1 84291 119 8

The is an easy-to-read (and use) book, designed to encourage local churches to get involved in social action within their community and make a real difference in the lives of many outsiders. It briefly details 100 practical projects, all set up to meet real social needs.

The projects are arranged in 11 categories according to the kind of problem they are seeking to address. These are: health, drugs and prostitution, homelessness, youth, family, counselling and mentoring, employment, debt and economic hardship, housing, recycling and the environment, community and town planning.

For each project information is provided about its aims, together with details about how it works practically and some ideas about future plans. Helpfully there are also notes about where the funding has come from - key questions for churches to ask themselves if they are considering a similar scheme in their area, and contact information for each project.

This reviewer had mixed reactions to the book. On the one hand many of its 'stories' of practical, self-denying, Christ-honouring love are encouraging and deeply challenging. I found myself asking whether we as a church have responded to deep social problems in our area with indifference or patronising words when we could have offered real practical help. Evangelicalism has a distinguished history of compassionate social care for the vulnerable in society, and the 'Faith-works' organisation, which encourages and aids projects like these, is rightly attempting to build on that tradition.

Yet, on the other hand, the book left me with some deep concerns. There is a real danger of the church seeing itself primarily as an organ of social provision and losing sight of its unique role of spreading the gospel. While Christians must show profound practical love for their fellow citizens, nothing must deflect us from seeing and responding to their ultimate need for salvation in Christ. It was disturbing to hear some of the projects in the book stress that they are 'non-proselytising organisations' - a horrible expression that suggests much more than a willingness to help others irrespective of their attitude to the gospel.

Equally disturbing is the book's inability to distinguish between evangelical, Catholic and ecumenical projects. Mixed schemes may provide real social help, but they do not normally serve the gospel. They certainly make a mockery of the claims on the back cover of the book which speaks of 'great ideas reflecting great theology' and this book as being 'an indispensable tool for all who want to take the GREAT COMMISSION seriously' (capitals mine).

Graham Heaps,
pastor of Dewsbury Evangelical Church - a church struggling to hear and obey the Lord in a town dominated by materialism, apathy and Islam.