





































Ecclesial Futures
2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

111
Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef15513

DOI: 10.54195/ef15513

B O O K  R E V I E W S

Benac, Dustin D. 2022. Adaptive Church: 
Collaboration and Community in a Changing 
World

Waco: Baylor University Press.
ISBN 9781481317085

Reviewed by James Butler

There have been a good number of books which reflect on the changes in church seen 
over the last couple of decades in the development of fresh expressions, missional 
communities, missional church and pioneering, but few books have explored the 
wider networks and the enabling of these new communities and churches. This is 
exactly where Dustin Benac’s book Adaptive Church focuses. Through careful and 
extensive qualitative research with two such “hubs” in the Pacific Northwest of the 
United States of America it identifies how they enable the imaginative environment 
for adaptive change to occur. The focus on this region, made up of the states of 
Washington, Oregon and Idaho, is because of its post-religious landscape. In the 
midst of changing social and religious commitments Benac identifies a history of reli-
gious entrepreneurship in the region and in this book he explores what this atmos-
phere of innovation and entrepreneurship can reveal about the future of church in 
the United States. He frames the organizations he looks at as ecclesial adaptations 
which can help churches to navigate the complex situations they find themselves in 
within contemporary culture.

The book is made up of four parts and each of those parts has two chapters. The 
first part has chapters introducing each of the organizations, which Benac refers to 
as “hubs”; chapter 1 looks at the Office of Church Engagement and chapter 2 intro-
duces the Parish Collective. Part 2 looks at organizational structures with chapter 3 
identifying the primary challenges facing the hubs and their developing collaborative 
approaches. Benac then turns to explore his idea of hubs, distinguishing them from 
a megachurch or denomination, and exploring the webs of connections they make. 
Chapter 5 opens part 3 with a practical theological account of the hub’s aim of “reim-
agining church”. He then offers a “theological redescription” of the work of these 



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hubs by engaging with Bonhoeffer and Luke-Acts in chapter 6. Part 4 develops the 
account of practical wisdom looking at the way different modes of leadership comple-
ment each other in bringing about organizational change. Chapter 7 is perhaps the 
most important in terms of contribution presenting an expansive typology of leader-
ship providing a framework for churches to think about the different skills, gifts and 
collaboration required for adaptive change. The final chapter looks to the future of 
church, exploring the “possibilities beyond certainty” and the way these hubs help to 
sustain these possibilities.

The key word within the book is “adaptive” with Benac drawing on and developing 
Ronald Heifetz’ theory of adaptive change as his lens for understanding the practice 
of the hubs. Heifetz discusses two types of challenge: technical, where the problem 
is known and the obstacle is primarily resources; and adaptive, where the problem 
and solution are unknown, where the obstacles are often the received values and 
practices and where the change needed is structural and systemic. They require 
more imaginative responses and an ability to explore new possibilities. Benac gives 
the example of the question “What is God up to?” as one which invites new imagi-
native possibilities. In reading the hubs through this lens of adaptive challenge and 
change he provides a fresh way of engaging with these new churches and communi-
ties, and the ways these “hubs” can support and enable change.

I was particularly drawn to part 3 where he engages with imagination and develops 
a pneumatological account of church and adaptive change. He expands Dykstra’s 
account of ecclesial imagination showing how the practice and outlook of these 
hubs extend the account of ecclesial imagination to include the wider community 
connections made by churches across these hubs. Following this he engages with 
Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and Luke-Acts to describe how church has always faced 
adaptive challenges and has changed. Benac describes his work as “redescription”, 
making implicit connections between the practice of these hubs and the theological 
accounts. He sees Bonhoeffer and Luke-Acts as demonstrating the kind of adapta-
tions that are happening in these hubs. Through them he identifies the significance 
of the church as a theological entity and the work of the Spirit in adaptive change. 
He uses these sources to offer a theological rationale for the adaptive church he is 
calling for, a church which “creates structures for connection, belonging and possi-
bility”. This could be helpfully developed further by drawing more fully on the theo-
logical insight from practice to push these accounts further in into developing an 
ecclesiology of adaptive church.

The turn to leadership in part 4 develops a “practical wisdom” for the adaptive 
church describing leadership in six modes of being with. In helping hubs, like the 



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ones in the study, to respond to adaptive challenges, this chapter is key. It provides 
practical ways in which the diversity of leadership can be recognized in an intercon-
nected way. Benac’s focus is on cultivating the conditions for imagination and adap-
tive change, and how they can take root and grow.

While I find the theological accounts in part 3 fruitful for my own thinking there is 
scope for integrating them more fully into the practical wisdom section of the book. 
I found myself asking what difference these accounts of imagination and the Spirit 
made to the leadership model proposed. I also would have liked an account of why 
leadership was the focus of the practical wisdom, particularly given that in my own 
experience of these kinds of churches and communities it is often lay and focused 
on the quite ordinary and everyday nature of faith. Perhaps this highlights the differ-
ence between the US and UK contexts and demonstrates that although there is 
much that is helpful in this book, there is always some work to be done to make 
the connection and adaptations between contexts. All that said, I found it a stimu-
lating and enriching book, one which challenged my thinking and provided helpful 
concepts to explore the ecclesiology of such communities. For those looking for an 
ecclesiology of church drawing on these new communities, this book provides rich 
starting points for developing such an ecclesiology weaving together helpful ideas 
of adaptive change, imagination and theological redescription. For those working 
in the kinds of hubs, networks and organizations that are the focus of the book, the 
practical wisdom and conceptual frameworks developed here will provide important 
and enlightening ways to reflect on and develop their work. I think this book and the 
work of Benac more widely is making a welcome and generative contribution to the 
development of church in post-religious contexts in the US and Europe.

About the author
James Butler, University of Roehampton, London; Church Mission Society, Oxford
James.Butler@roehampton.ac.uk

mailto:James.Butler@roehampton.ac.uk

