REVIEWER: John Griffiths

BOOK: Church Beyond Walls: Creative Church in Public Spaces

(Canterbury Press: 2023) 208pp, paperback

This book is inspiring and irritating in equal measure. It is the detailed account of a series of Christianity-themed art installations, set up mostly in Brighton where the author is a visitor, but also at Greenbelt Festival as well. The book sets out its case for engaging with non-churchgoers and building community participation. Martin Poole is dismissive of Fresh Expressions as new ways of doing church when his own interest is in finding new ways to believe in God and to follow Jesus. Hence this maelstrom of creative activity.

I picked up the book because of the use of audio soundtracks on spiritual trails, something I have also experimented with. But where the Beyond team seem to me to break new ground was by inviting collaborations with beach hut owners and retailers where the content of the artwork that was put together was left to the contributor. This is something I imagine many churches would be nervous of doing, but which led to artistic choices that would either never have been considered by the Christian community, or which the leadership might attempt to control. If you are looking for fresh inspiration for articulating and expressing the Christian faith, then this book delivers. It breathlessly lists the activities and the considerable efforts the team made to set up and protect what amounts to installations and performance art in contested public spaces.

What we never find out, however, is how many people these installations engage and what happens as a result? What do people understand? One of the principal challenges of an ageing church struggling with the limitations of people and resources is to find what connects with the culture and what does not. This vital question is never answered. Setting up a surfboard as part of a cross as part of a ‘Blessing of the Surf’ ritual makes sense if it does something tangible to address the felt spiritual needs of surfers. Otherwise it is just more activity.

This book has, positively, encouraged me to reflect on what we do inside our church services: how much is helpful? How much is mumbo jumbo? How much is frankly cliché? Church outside Walls challenges us to review how we communicate and what we communicate.

Reviewer: John Griffiths is a preacher and a lay reader in the Church of England currently somewhere on a narrowboat cruising around the canals.