My thoughts:
This was on my wish list of books to read because the topic seemed interesting. I was intrigued that there was a connection to Bonhoeffer's writing. This book did not disappoint. I knew from the first chapter that this book was going to be thought-provoking and probably challenge ideas about church gatherings (and non-gatherings). I am still thinking about this book and trying to connect the ideas to practical life in my own context. I think this book will continue to shape and challenge me far beyond reading and reviewing.

Who is this book for:
This book is for everyone. However, I think this book is especially needed for church leadership. If you are a large church or small church, this will help you think through why you meet and how you can refocus the time. I think this book is especially needed for people starting new ministries (think church plants or new youth programs). I also think this book is needed for online ministries. Churches panicked during the pandemic, and they began meeting online and have continued. Many still need to understand how to meet online in a way that brings community rather than isolation.

Critique, Questions, Comments:
While the author does mention online ministry, I think they did so elegantly. They don’t seem to be the biggest fan, but they also didn't bash it like other books on the topic. The book isn't about online communities only, so I think they did a decent job in their brief mentioning of it.

Every Lent, many churches and small groups take up Bonhoeffer's Life Together to investigate what it means to be the church of Christ on earth. From Isolation to Community covers substantially the same ground, but in greater depth, and to good effect.

In the first portion of the book, Wentz explores the impact of "regnant isolation," since "in many cases, churches are organized not as a community in opposition to isolation but as an organization that amplifies it." Communion, worship, exhortation, and study, as practiced in today's church, are examined in turn and found (rightly) to be infected with isolation, focused on the individual's benefit and thus accepted or rejected according to their judgement. Communion is handed out in individual packets, worship is lead by a band, sermons delivered by a charismatic speaker, and bible studies focus on introspection. Why even gather together when the result is that we remain isolated?

This is, as Wentz admits, an "old, old story." And that is the key point. Similar to the Eastern Orthodox view that original sin was a turning away from God and only by achieving union with God can we be healed, isolation is seen (by both Bonhoeffer and Wentz) as our sinful tendency (compulsion?) to "construct a world without God, with others only as accidentally there."

The second portion of From Isolation to Community covers approaches to recognizing and overcoming the corrupting nature of isolation through corporate dedication to God. Here, Wentz brings into focus the why as well as the how, discussing the unwitting impact of reordering or even abandoning the time of greeting, the effect of limiting communal scripture reading to those with sonorous delivery, and dispensing with common prayer. As far as solutions go, there is nothing earth-shattering here, no new revelations, only the reminding of forgotten practices and their careful application in common. We need to be reminded of these practices every generation or so: praying the Psalms, Lectio Divina, communion focused on Christ, seeing scripture as the living Word, and confession. These are habits and approaches that belong to the entire church (visible and invisible, local and catholic) but have fallen out of favor. The tide does appear to be turning when a dedicated evangelical press such as Crossway produces a volume like Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Worship patterned after the Liturgy of the Hours.

Unfortunately, the book suffers at times from academic-speak. A sample:

"In The Emergence of Sin, Matthew Croasmun helpfully explicates how cultural patterns of sin reflect and shape the wills of the ones who sin; this notion of sin as shaping us helps us to name how church cultures of isolation are born out of -- and shape -- the ways in which we view the gift of Christians gathering together in deficient and limited ways."

Comprehensible, but unwieldy. Contrast the above with more powerful passages such as:

"[T]he fight against isolation and the refusal to capitulate to its logic are nothing less than a fight against the principalities and exalted powers!"

My hope is that From Isolation to Community escapes from academic circles and is read more widely, especially alongside Bonhoeffer's Living Together. At the very least, those using the latter book for group study will find much here to provide background and depth to the discussions.

This review is made from the standpoint of a Christian layperson with years of non-academic exposure to Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox theologies and practices. Although unwieldy in places, there is much value here for the layman.

This was an interesting book on several levels. My initial thought was that the author was referencing the isolation of the current pandemic and would talk about how to get folks to come back and attend in person … that is not what this book is about at all and that caught me by surprise. Instead, the basic idea was this: “It is isolation that better describes the complex way in which sin divided human beings from God and one another, distancing them from the goodness and benefit of the God who is our source and from others, through whom we receive these good gifts.” Being separated from God as a result of sin is not an entirely novel idea; however, adding separation from others into that same equation was new for me and it was a profoundly beautify way to view what we need out of community. Even more interesting was how isolation can be seen as either a misplaced emphasis on the individual (or individualism) or an emphasis on conformity with a crowd (tribalism). The former is fairly come to see in the US and the later I have frequently encountered with tween students that never want to do anything that makes them stand out in the crowd. I other words, I felt that I knew exactly what the author was talking about. With the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Guide, the author reviews a lot of the habits found within our church communities that also suffer from these two issues and tries to come up with proposed solutions.

Chapter 1 explored the nature and origin of isolation within the Christian Communion, with Chapter 2 and 3 tying that isolation to our fallen state (in other words, such is normal and to be expected) and why this is a problem. The most important mistake that I recognized here that is common to many churches is the drive to survive and grow that at times seems counter to the true mission of the church. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 start the process of what we need to do in order to over come this problem; mostly this seems focused on community prayer and action (service) … “to ask not only what we do but how we do it if in fact church practice is about being knit into one body in Christ and overcoming the isolation that is regnant in creation” breaking everything down into communal/common life, provide life and mission/ministry and is in my opinion the heart of the entire book … but was also short on specifics. I must admit to a bit of a struggle here as the analogies and repetition began to blur a bit for me; however, I still came away with what I believe is a good general understanding of the way forward. Most interesting was the exploration of the “days apart” concept and how that should be structured to reinforce the “days together.” Chapter 7 covers confession and communion with a surprising recognition that even within Protestant traditions, confession is important (just not necessarily to clergy). “Without the common confession of faith, we are only a body who knows how to judge in a way that divides, but without confession of sin, we are not a body that is willing to be healed.”

Over all this is a book to come back to as you slowly gain better income into the concepts that it contains and begin to put them into practice.

<spoiler>
Introduction - Naming Our Problem: Isolation and the Human Condition
Part One - Isolation and the Structure of the World
- 1 Life in Isolation, Then and Now
- 2 The Church and the Practice of Isolation
- 3 The Logic of Bodily Community
Part Two - The New World of Christian Community
- 4 Renewing Common Life
- 5 Restructuring Private Life
- 6 Renewing the Shape of Ministry
- 7 Life Together Made Visible
Conclusion - After Isolation, in Isolation
</spoiler>

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#FromIsolationtoCommunity #NetGalley