With eagerness, I invite you to read Joining Jesus. Come, turn its pages and explore the God who lives and breathes in the worlds beyond church buildings. Travel across North America with Moses and Christopher as they tell you story after story of Luke 10 people meeting Jesus in their neighborhoods. Your imagination for God will surely grow. And the way you live the Christian life will be lastingly changed.

David Fitch

Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary

Amidst the flood of books that wrestle with the shape and nature of faithful Christian witness in a post-Christendom context, Joining Jesus stands out for its attention to the ordinary and everyday ways in which Christian leaders have discovered and discerned new ways to be church in their neighborhoods. Following what Chung and Meehan call “Luke 10 people,” this book helps us to see how simple practices of attention to people and place can cultivate Christian community in surprising spaces: in living rooms and on football fields, in coffee shops and shelters, around dinner tables and with community organizations. We do not need more Christian heroes, Chung and Meehan say, but rather disciples sent out two by two capable of receiving the gifts of strangers and attending to the emerging signs of God’s future in their midst.

Scott J. Hagley

Associate Professor of Missiology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of Eat What is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context

Joining Jesus is a beautiful picture of where missional theology comes alive in missional practice. While some are wondering about the future of denominations, this book shows us where God is at work today in the CRCNA and gives us hope for the future.

Pastor Amy Schenkel

Regional Mission Leader at Resonate Global Mission

In a time when we hear so much sad and bad news about the state of the church, Joining Jesus gives us a reason to rejoice. Meehan and Chung have brought us up close to an array of creative, Spirit-led pastors and leaders and parishioners from coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada. In their stories of quiet faithfulness we see that the heart of Christ's mission for the church continues. These are stories of resurrection, of hope, and of great joy.

Scott Hoezee

Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary

These engagingly told local stories teach us a crucial universal message. When we reach out in faith--as the Christian Reformed Church has done in recent decades--to embrace communities that go beyond past definitions of who "we" are, wonderful things happen. Most importantly, we grow together as believers into a more profound awareness of who we are in Jesus Christ.

Rich Mouw

This is a book of people-stories, winsomely told by two ‘poets of the ordinary.’ The stories are the warp and woof of a living tapestry, the fluid dance of congregations with their communities. They open up fresh imagination for ‘going local’ in today’s missional moment.

George R. Hunsberger

Emeritus Professor of Missiology, Western Theological Seminary

Joining Jesus is filled with inspiring and moving stories of current disciples of Jesus who have responded to God's call to fully engage with their own neighborhoods and communities. Each story demonstrates the unique ways in which God shows up and how ordinary people are adjusting their lives in order to do life with those people among whom they live and work. The book is organized around Luke 10 giving the reader a real-life tour of Jesus' followers paying attention to those right around them, and realizing God has already gone ahead of them, preparing the soil to grow new relationships.

Rev. Dr. Martin J. Contant

Congregational Consultant and Spiritual Director

Joining Jesus is inspiring story-telling about God's local mission today, now with church-wide work through Resonate (Home and World Missions) substantially abbreviated. Here is a Canadian "First Christian Reformed" church overflowing with worshippers. Find out what happened when an author cried out “God, what do you want for me?” Learn “how to speak to a Medicine Man”. Reading Joining Jesus, I found ministry hope for the long haul in the Covid era.

Rev. John A Rozeboom

Christian Reformed Home Missions, Executive Director, retired

The beauty of Joining Jesus on mission is allowing the wind of the Spirit to take us on a journey where we are blessed and sustained by the people to whom we have been sent to be a blessing. This book is an invitation to re-imagine what it means to be the church in the neighborhood. Ethnographers Chung and Meehan walk us down the gritty streets of North Philadelphia, to the homeless in Seattle, to neighborhoods across North America, helping us to see, smell, touch, and taste what the Spirit is doing, giving hope to what God can do in our neighborhood.

JR Woodward

National Director, The V3 Movement; Author, Creating a Missional Culture and The Church as Movement

If you are interested in the future of the Church, where you look makes all the difference and this book points to such hopeful possibilities. Brimming with fresh stories, Joining Jesus will inspire you to shift your attention from old metrics to God’s activity at the local level. Highly recommended.

Tim Soerens

Author, Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church, Right Where You Are, and executive director of the Parish Collective

Moses Chung and Christopher Meehan tell us real stories of ministry and church. From page 1, and from Philadelphia to Seattle, Joining Jesus invites us to renewal and presence. Inspiring and encouraging, may it be well read in the Christian Reformed Church and beyond.

Mark R. Gornik

City Seminary of New York

We live in an age in which the incessant daily news feed threatens to overwhelm us with its constant cascade of bad news. We can easily miss what God is doing right before our eyes through ordinary people loving those around them in Jesus name. This book preaches the good news that our redeeming God has not and will not grow tired or weary (Isaiah 40: 28) It is a word of evidence-based hope we sorely need.

Joel Huyser

Director of International Teams, Resonate Global Mission

What hopeful, encouraging stories about being God's people! Through these vignettes, Chung and Meehan narrate how ordinary communities around the Christian Reformed Church are faithfully embodying the Good News of Jesus Christ. By giving attention to how particular people in specific churches and ministries are engaging their faith, they invite all of us to wonder what it could look like for us to join Jesus more fully in our own settings.

Rev. Dr. Chris Schoon

Director, Faith Formation Ministries, Christian Reformed Church in North America

What does "Church" look like? Even before a global pandemic, we were seeing the Spirit at work in creating connections and forms that expand our biblical imagination of church. Joining Jesus is a wonderful field trip and field guide to help us listen and learn about what God is doing in diverse settings so that we are encouraged and challenged as to what evangelism and discipleship can be as we follow God in mission - together!

Jul Medenblik

President and Professor of Church Planting and Leadership, Calvin Theological Seminary

I'm convinced that today we need two foundational pillars that will enable everyday churches to make the turn toward the new era of mission that we find ourselves in. First, we need more stories. Second, we need Deep Stories, those that go in-depth into the life and practice of the congregation. Joining Jesus is a collection of Deep Stories, ones that not only inspire, but also inform churches across North America.

Dr. Chris Backert

National Director, Fresh Expressions US

This collection of stories is a hope-filled inspiration, especially during challenging times of a pandemic. It shows the power of the Holy Spirit alive and strong in churches today when they intentionally reach into communities where they join God already at work there. By the grace of God, ordinary people do the extraordinary.

Ida Kaastra-Mutoigo

World Renew Executive Director, Canada

As a practicing urban practitioner, Meehan and Chung didn’t manufacture a success book on evangelism nor yell to us to try harder winning folks for Jesus. In this book, the author invited us on a tour in cities where a mosaic of faithful leaders believed faithfulness and noticing the work of God already at work. The stories Meehan and Chung shared were encouraging and truly accessible to anyone looking for missional “good news”.

Dr. Reginald Smith

Director of Diversity, Christian Reformed Church in North America

An inspiring collection of real-life stories of missional Christians joining the Holy Spirit’s work in diverse contexts – from inner cities to campus ministries – Joining Jesus is both a living commentary on Luke 10 and guidepost to faithful context-specific mission in today’s world. Chung and Meehan are good travel companions for readers journeying into the world of missional faithfulness.

Shiao Chong

Editor in chief, The Banner, official magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.