The author discusses the failure of the Evangelical Church to address social justice concerns and suggests means of cultivating a ministry to all people in their church's area--not just the people of the same socioeconomic status as the church core. The author is more familiar with the urban church setting than the rural or smaller town church, and his ideas seem best-fitted to more densely-populated areas. A few concepts extend to either. Unfortunately the author did not always back up his ideas with Scripture nor answer the inevitable opposite arguments that could be made. Most readers will question the way they've done some things, but whether or not they will change the way things are done remains to be seen. The book offers questions for group study, so it might be a useful Sunday School or midweek study with the right teacher. ( )

Summary: Develops the idea that the pursuit of justice for Christians begins in and flows out of their communities as they learn to practice God's shalom in every aspect of their church life.

There is a great deal of discussion about the pursuit of justice, particularly in public settings in some Christian circles. The problem is that these conversations are often "echo chambers" preaching to the converted while significant portions of the church is either indifferent or even hostile to these conversations. They are relegated to "justice teams" or even forced to begin their own "parachurch" organizations. Some question their gospel fidelity. Adam Gustine thinks this won't change until justice, which he equates with the shalom of God, the wholeness of life shared by all of God's people, flows through and out of the life of our local congregations.

The first part of his book develops an ecclesiology for justice, a way to think about justice in the church. The four chapters in this section first of all focus on what it means to be "the people of God," thinking in terms of "we" rather than "I" and practicing justice, not as an outreach strategy, but as a way of loving God and one's neighbor. Gustine challenges us to think as exiles in American culture rather than natives and that the church is meant to be a prophetic alternative to the American way of life. That alternative way of life is a mañana way of life that allows a vision of God's future for his people to shape the way we live in the present, kind of like demonstration garden plots. Finally, along the lines of gardening, he invites the church to pursue the flourishing of the physical communities in which we are situated. Perhaps the challenge here to our commuter, big box model of "doing" church, is that he envisions a parish model in a particular place where we worship and live.

Part two of the book then looks at the practice of justice in the warp and woof of congregational life. First of all, Gustine talks about what it means to be a church that includes and empowers the "low ground" people in a "high ground" world (referring to the reality that in most places, those who have means and power live above flood-prone low ground areas where the poor live). He challenges us to radical hospitality that welcomes the "other," whoever that may be in our setting, talking about the food pantry "guests" who had a hard time truly sensing they were full participants in his church. He believes that the practice of justice must be integral to our discipleship efforts, and critical to this is helping people to gain awareness of their own social location, and think of the kingdom implications of their particular place in society. Finally he contends that justice ought shape worship, moving us beyond the "Pleasantville" of "just praising the Lord" to confession, repentance, and lament, expressions rarely heard in most white evangelical contexts, but much more common elsewhere.

The book concludes with a conversation on power, a critical issue in the practice of justice in churches. He engages with Juliet Liu and Brandon Green, two other pastors of churches who have joined him in the pursuit of "just church." Then in his epilogue, acknowledging that he hasn't discussed "public justice," Gustine briefly gestures toward some of the tangible ways the pursuit of public justice in his own South Bend, Indiana community has flowed out of his congregational life.

Gustine puts his finger on an important issue, that we put "doing" before "being" far too often, in this case the "doing" of public justice without "being" just communities, places where the kingdom is setting things to rights across the cultural barriers of class, and gender, and ethnicity and status in our own communities. Indeed, we often are trying to care for a community as disparate collections of individuals, a bunch of "I's" doing our own justice "thing" rather than a "we," a people.

Currently, the evangelical church is deeply divided about justice, often along secular political lines justified by a veneer of scriptures we hurl at one another. Sometimes, these divisions even find their way into local congregations. Becoming a Just Church offers a path for a church to come together as a "third way" people, not beholden to political and theological outlooks of the left or the right. Discussion questions allow for group use and the author has also developed a companion Just Church Vision Retreat set of resources that church leadership teams may use in conjunction with the book (information about this pops up when you visit the publisher's website for the book).

Gustine mentions the lament of Carl F. H. Henry over nascent evangelicalism's neglect of justice back in 1947 when he wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (reviewed at https://bobonbooks.com/2017/05/03/review-the-uneasy-conscience-of-modern-fundame.... Seventy years later, we are still wrestling with an evangelicalism deeply divided around issues of justice. Might it be that the practices Gustine commends, pursued in local congregations, offer a way forward? Finding that way forward seems crucial to me--I'm not sure the American church has another seventy years to fritter away.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. ( )