Healing Our Broken World, Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill (Foreword by Willie James Jennings). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Summary: In a world with deep racial, gender, national, and political divides, the authors propose nine formative practices churches can pursue enabling the church to have a healing presence in the world.

We live in the midst of a world with terrible brokenness, pretty much wherever we look. Hostility between ethnic and racial groups. Violence against women. Gun violence. Political discord. Relational brokenness. The deep ache so many who sense that life just isn’t the way it is supposed to be. Often our churches, even when they seem to be thriving, reflect the wider divides and brokenness of the surrounding society.

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill have seen all this in their respective communities but are not in despair. Out of their experience of working with various church groups, they believe there are nine practices that both offer a roadmap for transformation, and enable God’s people to be a transformative presence in the world. These are:

1. Reimagine Church as the new humanity in Jesus Christ
2. Renew Lament through corporate expressions of deep regret and sorrow.
3. Repent Together of white cultural captivity, and racial and gender injustice, and our complicity.
4. Relinquish Power by giving up our own righteousness, status, privilege, selfish ambition, self interests, vain conceit, and personal gain.
5. Restore Justice to those who have been denied justice.
6. Reactivate Hospitality by rejecting division and exclusion, and welcoming all kinds of people into the household of God.
7. Reinforce Agency by supporting people’s ability to make free, independent, and unfettered actions and choices.
8. Reconcile Relationships through repentance, forgiveness, justice and partnership.
9. Recover Life Together as a transformed community that lives out the vision of the Sermon on the Mount.

Willie James Jennings, in his Foreward, emphasizes the importance of implementing these practices in diverse communities. He writes, “The crucial matter today for Christian discipleship is not what you practice but who you practice with.” In the practical suggestions Kim and Hill offer, the practices themselves take people into the diverse community Jennings commends. In “reimagining church” groups using this book are encouraged to serve other groups in your community and visit Christians from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In “renewing lament” groups are encouraged to gather for nights of shared lament with a mix of genders, ages, and ethnicities. In “repenting together,” groups are encouraged to spend time among the marginalized, and then reflect on what the Spirit is convicting them to repent of, and then form accountability groups to act in ways that express changed hearts, In the chapter on “relinquishing power,” the authors challenge people to stop organizing all-white male slates of speakers or panels at conferences and other events.

Each chapter grounds these transformative practices in biblical principles illustrated from the authors’ personal ministry experiences. Each chapter concludes with a number of practical suggestions that might be implemented by a small group working together. These include both study and action items. I would observe that this is not a chapter-a-week book for groups to read. If a group seriously engages each chapter, they probably need to take a month to several months on the action steps in each chapter. Often the action steps direct to other readings or studies.

That makes the questions at the end of the book for groups a bit puzzling. They seem to assume a single week of discussion on each chapter. The “nine practices accountability form” in the second appendix suggests that groups might study through the nine and begin to shape their lives around the various practices. My sense is that a group that is serious about pursuing these practices and living them out ought to think in terms of a year to several years of working together.

Actually, that could be quite an experience that moves far beyond socializing, a dip into scripture, and prayers that life would “go smoothly” that characterize many small groups. The challenge to lament is likely foreign to most in majority culture, but common among ethnic minorities. Practicing hospitality that goes beyond those “like us” would be transformative in many communities. Finding ways to seek and advocate justice, particularly for those who may not be part of our communities, will open us up to people we might not otherwise meet. The subtitle of this book speaks of “revitalizing the church and renewing the world.” These practices have the potential to do just that, if we dare.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.