How to Be a Christian without Going to Church: The Unofficial Guide to Alternative Forms of Christian Community
Ebook
Overview
As many--young people especially--leave the traditional church in droves, they often still long for a genuine Christian community in which to practice their faith and share their spiritual journeys with others. They want to be faithful but struggle to find a place where they flourish.
Whether they’ve already left the church behind or are merely considering it, readers will find here both heartfelt encouragement and practical steps for finding or creating a community of faith that honors God and offers rest, love, and communion with other believers. Author Kelly Bean broadens our definition of church to include many alternative forms of Christian community. With true stories of those who have given up on church and what they’re doing now, this book is also helpful for pastors and churchgoers to help them understand why people leave the church--and what might be done to help them stay.
From the Back Cover
God is moving. And just might be somewhere you haven’t looked . . . yet.
What happens when the church no longer nurtures, feeds, or challenges you? What do you do when the thought of leaving breaks your heart--but staying hurts more?
Kelly Bean has been there. For anyone seeking genuine Christian community, she offers both heartfelt encouragement and practical suggestions for finding or creating a community of faith that honors God and offers rest, love, and communion with other believers. With true stories of those who have faced these questions and found a way forward, this book shows you how to be faithful in a place where you will truly flourish.
"Kelly’s book is a significant gift, gathering into one place the real-world brilliance and experience of fellow travelers who are asking the question of church."--Wm Paul Young, author of the New York Times bestseller The Shack
"Bean speaks with both the integrity and authenticity of one who has suffered in the course of arriving at her summations and conclusions. I could wish that every Christian today would read this one."--Phyllis Tickle, author of The Age of the Spirit and The Great Emergence
"Kelly Bean is a wise, whimsical, and revolutionary iconoclast. This book will call some to leave what is really not church, and it will call others to reengage the meaning of being a redemptive church."--Dan B. Allender, PhD, professor of counseling psychology and founding president of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
"For those who struggle with church as they know it, this book can awaken imagination for all that Christian community can be. Kelly Bean writes with a wise, gentle, honest, and persuasive voice that we should pay attention to."--Mark Scandrette, author of Free, Practicing the Way of Jesus, and Soul Graffiti
"Despite her provocative title, Kelly Bean loves the church. This book will help those struggling to remain in institutional churches, and those who’ve left, to understand the challenge we all face today and to set some markers for the road ahead."--Michael Frost, author of Exiles and The Road to Missional
Kelly Bean served as pastor/cultivator of Third Saturday Organic Community, which gathered in her living room for twenty-four years. She is coplanter of Urban Abbey, an egalitarian intergenerational intentional community in north Portland, Oregon.