Go to Church, Change the World: Christian Community as Calling - Softcover

Gerald J. Mast is Professor of Communication at Bluffton University. He is the author of Separation and the Sword in Anabaptist Persuasion (2006) and co-author, with J. Denny Weaver, of Defenseless Christianity (2009). He has also co-edited a number of volumes, including Teaching Peace: Nonviolence and the Liberal Arts (2003) and The Work of Jesus Christ in Anabaptist Perspective (2008). A graduate of Malone College, he received a PhD in rhetoric and communication from the University of Pittsburgh. Mast was born and raised in Holmes County, Ohio, with deep family roots in the Amish and conservative Mennonite communities. Throughout his life, he has remained affiliated with the Mennonite church and is a member of First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, Ohio. He currently is vice-chair of The Mennonite magazine board and editor of Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History.

A commonly expressed view is that "You don't have to go to church to be a Christian", or even "You don't have to go to church to be spiritual". We have in this culturally normative and usually unchallenged response, an ongoing reaction to the long experience of Christendom in which to go to church was all that was required because everyone was a Christian by virtue of the political settlement. Because going to church was a political requirement and later a social norm, now that these requirements are gone and "religion" has been privatised it is assumed that there is no need for any communal expression of faith. Challenging that commonplace, or even the assumptions underlying it is indeed a big ask because it tends to bring into play the memories of that political and social compulsion.

In tackling this issue, Mast lays out his Anabaptist cards on the table in the first chapter. Jesus cannot be possessed or accepted. Jesus can only be followed as he moves through not only our history, but also the history of the world. That is, we are called to the way of discipleship that has profound social implications. "The truth of Jesus Christ incarnate is a social truth not a disembodied fact."(p.31) Discipleship is not about an individual privatised spiritual quest.

In tackling this issue, Mast lays out his Anabaptist cards on the table in the first chapter. Jesus cannot be possessed or accepted. Jesus can only be followed as he moves through not only our history, but also the history of the world. That is, we are called to the way of discipleship that has profound social implications. "The truth of Jesus Christ incarnate is a social truth not a disembodied fact."(p.31) Discipleship is not about an individual privatised spiritual quest.

This is a book that is accessible, recounting stories and anecdotes that earths the discussion and referring to Scripture to make its case. Mast covers all the ground that you might expect from a conventional evangelical account: reading scripture, baptism, giving and worship. It is, however, different in the direction it takes us. Here we have an account that does not reduce everything to a pious religiosity distant from the world in which we actually live. Mast's account is grounded in actual social and economic relationships. It points us to a countercultural community of discipleship which has substantial implications for social and economic life - what and how we consume, decision making, and engaging in seeking the welfare of society.

According to Mast, the call to discipleship is a call to participate in a community and how that community lives out its discipleship matters for the shape the world takes.

The book is structured to encourage its use in study groups with discussion questions for each chapter. Given that many of the books used in churches in Australia are of US origin and assume that cultural and social context I have decided to not worry about my disclaimer about the limitations of the book for those reasons. The case Mast is arguing is sufficiently challenging to make that particular difference fairly irrelevant.
--Doug Hynd, On The Road Journal