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The Responsive Church: Listening to Our World: Listening to God

Author:	Nick Spencer and Graham Tomlin
Published By:	IVP (Leicester)
Pages:	148
Price:	£7.99
ISBN:	1 84474 099 4

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This book asks a vital question: “What puts people off Christianity?”

The authors seek to engage in a process of “double listening” to answer this - listening to what the world outside the church is saying and listening to God through his Word and Spirit to better respond to that world. Four core topics are identified for this process; God, Christianity, Christians and Church.

The two authors each contribute a different strand to the process. Spencer’s role is to process a large body of questionnaires and interviews that he has conducted (Some of this material has previously been available in the pamphlet Beyond Belief, London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, 2003). There may not be many surprises in his findings - an underlying suspicion of serious Christians, church is boring, people are largely ignorant about the main tenets of the Christian faith - but it is good to have them backed up with statistics, percentages and non-attributed quotes from interviewees. I was struck by one of Spencer’s own summaries to add to my quotation collection, “God’s silence in the area of suffering, when seen through consumer eyes, becomes a cosmic example of bad service provision” (p.37).

Tomlin’s chapters should prove more interesting to the non-statistician, although I find that he writes without passion or persuasion about how the church should respond to the findings. There is a plea for churches to offer those outside of it genuine opportunity for encounter with the Christian God (ch.2), a good argument for a revival of culturally sensitive apologetics (ch.4) and a robust concern for the doctrinal, moral and spiritual formation of people (ch.8).  However, the examples don’t inspire - there’s a rather perfunctory commendation of ‘Alpha’, a call for better recognition of the arts and a need to invite open questioning and engagement from people. Some examples of good practice and more practical suggestions for how to respond to the issues would have been helpful.

The subject is an important one and the statistics highlight that, but this book did not move, challenge or inspire me to go out and address the issues.