To start with I need to disclose that one of the authors, Charles, is the pastor of my church, a man I respect and admire for his commitment to our small congregation of misfits and for his fearless search in finding new ways to seek the kingdom of God. I’ve also been lucky enough to meet Elaine, and she is as wise and kind and zen as you’d hope she’d be. All that to say — this review is honest but also totally biased because I like these people, and I want to like the book. And though I am not a church leader, so not the main audience for the book, I do find it valuable to learn about trauma, the different theological readings of trauma in the Bible, and how we as a church can heal some of the hurt that the church itself has caused.

The book is broken into three parts. The first is a section of interviews Charles did with members of our church and other friends about their spiritual abuse and trauma. He then uses these stories as an entry into summarizing the definition and history of trauma and spiritual trauma. Though the prose is academic and reminiscent of a textbook at times, Charles is able to explain complex theories of how society acts and thinks without losing any nuance by using the real-life examples of his friends’ stories to illustrate these principles. When Elaine takes over in Chapter 4, her lyrical style compared to Charles’s more scholarly writing is a bit jarring, but the two make it clear who is writing which chapter, not attempting to make it read as if written by one pen. While Charles has been explaining the origin of trauma, Elaine has us feel trauma in our bodies and in the earth through her vivid imagery.

While the first section focused on the more clinical aspects of trauma, the next centers on the theological implications, particularly focused on Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, seeing him as an “empathetic witness”because he survived spiritual trauma himself. Charles’s chapters do the heavy lifting of theological research, grounding the idea of trauma-informed evangelism in the vast and varied experience and thoughts of the marginalized and traumatized. Some of this section reads like a dissertation, but distilling all the thoughts on the crucifixion in a few chapters is not an enviable task. Still, I found this information fascinating and vital to the project of the book.

The last part of the book is its heart and, therefore, the best of the bunch. I can practically hear Charles’s energy and passion speaking to me through his words. Charles uses what we learned in the first two sections to help us see that a new vision for evangelism is needed. Both Elaine and Charles address how harmful the evangelism of the past has been. I, myself, have had conflicting feelings about evangelism for much of my life. Before reading this book, the word itself gave me the creepy crawlies, thinking of how evangelism has been used to commit genocide and domination. Even when I was attending a more conservative church, I felt a degree of discomfort about befriending people with the aim of converting them. This new vision for evangelism has no ulterior motive. It is a new posture, fully Christ-like — loving people where they are with no expectations for what they should believe or how they should behave. It assumes that people have been hurt by the church, so the church should listen to that hurt, and allow its only witness be the life of the church itself. To many, this may not seem like evangelism at all. And in the traditional use of the word — it’s not. But I do believe this new trauma-informed evangelism is the future of Christianity, one that cares more about the well-being of all people and less about being right or wrong.

I particularly loved the chapter about flipped hospitality where the church must put itself into the vulnerable space of being a guest rather than a host. I also so appreciated the chapter titled “Contemplative Evangelist” about the importance of doing the inner work necessary for holding the trauma of others. The discussion about self-differentiation and kenosis (i.e. having a sense of self and then emptying that self) was fascinating and personally helpful to me. Overall, I think this is a book every church leader should read. It is well-researched and gives new imagination to what evangelism could be. Each chapter also includes a discussion guide, which would be helpful as groups work through the book together.