In just over a month I’ll be moving and the mass of books on my shelves poses a challenge. Many I’ll need, some I’ve read and want to keep and others I haven’t read and want to keep and then there are those books that I haven’t read and don’t think I’ll keep but would still like to read. So I’ve been trying to choose those off my shelves, starting with all the smallest so I can get through more of them. I know I’m not going to get all that far with this, a bit like pecking at a mountain, but every book read is one less I’ll be taking with me to Sweden.

So I start with this one by Steve Chalke and Tom Jackson. Faithworks is an initiative designed to encourage churches to engage with their communities and this book showcases eight such churches. Each chapter is essentially an extended interview with either the church leader or project leader and so it reads easily enough, it’s conversational and engaging as each one recounts the story of the church. The range and scope of the activity includes debt counselling, training, youth work, homelessness, poverty, domestic abuse, family breakdown and more. These projects are getting under the skin of our societies most intractable problems.

There are some common themes, personal encounter with those in need, the struggle for funding and then seeing breakthrough. It’s challenging, inspiring and encouraging stuff and even though the book was written in 2001 (and therefore much will have changed) the basic principles of community engagement remains.

What was interesting was that in at least 6 of the 8 stories there was a very clearly defined geographical community, in the UK these are churches and projects based in housing estates (much like our own Hope Church) and that made me wonder whether city churches could have a similar impact. These projects could transform communities whereas other projects would transform individual lives. That’s not ad, of course, but it’s an interesting question. It was also interesting how much was achieved by, in most cases, quite small churches (less than 100) although there’s no doubting the phenomenal amount of work, faith, vision and energy required.

For churches looking for role models this book remains a helpful pointer, despite its age, and shows some of the church at its best in terms of impacting the local communities in which the church is found.