‘It may well be the case that the best response to the ‘adaptive challenge’ that we currently face is to revert to being a transitional and liminal Jesus movement again as we struggle towards the birth of a new paradigm. But the principle remains: the Jesus movement of the early centuries was restorative, and I think that what it produced was bigger than the movement itself.’

Christendom in Europe and in the America’s for that matter, carries a lot of baggage from the past. There will always be many markers that point to some of the unsavory moments of our collective Christian history. With our history continuing to discredit us, it will be difficult to create a critical institutional impact on postmodern society.

Any approach to church-planting will necessitate that we work from the ground up. This will by nature require a more ‘radical early church’ approach, that will challenge and stir a society that has largely become indifferent to Christianity. It was mentioned that a ‘entrepreneurial’ approach to a missional church was required. I like the word entrepreneurial in the sense that it will require a business mindset to be very intentional to whom the gospel message is directed towards. When we consider our community and how to prenetrate it with the gospel, we need to determine how best to develop a strategy that will manifest the most success, and then build on that success.

‘Now we have a chance to re-invent ourselves - not as an imperial city this time, but perhaps as an organic, incarnational, postmodern movement, in which diverse communities discover the full potential of the creative Spirit within them as they live out and tell the biblical story as a witness to the reality of the one true God.’

In this age it is community that reaffirms who we are as people. It is community that reaffirms our beliefs and strengthens our place as image bearers of God. As we reinvent ourselves it is community that allows our full potential as God’s people to be manifested.