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 PrintableVersion DeepPassion, character, communitySubterraneanDEEP This book presents a vision of church from two leaders of a growing inner-city Anglican church in London. The book comes from talks given on the topic and so has a chatty and story telling feel to it. The underlying thrust of the book is that the church needs to have depth in all that it does. This call for depth comes from C.S. Lewis’s comment that he preferred ‘deep church’ (although there is no discussion of what he meant by that). Chapters cover our passion for God, the use of our minds, the importance of Christian character, the fact that we are physical beings, and the need for immersion in our communities. In each of these five areas of church life there is a discussion around six dimensions: worship, word, history, action, mission and leadership. This framework is interesting and can result in insight, but often feels a little forced and inconsistently applied. The great strengths of this book are its positive tone and encouragement in seeing churches grow in these areas. The Bible is seen as central, proclamation evangelism is stressed, as well as practical care of the community. Numerous helpful practical comments are made on church life and many encouraging stories are told with lessons learnt. The weakness of the book is that it assumes a great deal. There is no discussion of what church actually is or how we should define its aims. This ironically means that the level of discussion is not very ‘deep’. This is only a reflection on the origin of the material but does lead to some vagueness and (to my mind) occasional mis-steps in application. Perhaps the greatest consequence of not defining church is that most of the application involves calls for individuals to change in their Christian life. I think reflection on the fundamentally communal and family nature of church would have resulted in more profound applications to church life as a community. In summary, a book that will provoke helpful discussion especially on practical changes in church life, but one that needs to be read with more thorough undergirding on the theology of church. Graham Beynon,
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