I’m a simple person, so I boil books down to their absolute minimum. When I do that with this book, here’s what I come up with – The Missional Church is the one that asks a basic question –“What is God up to in our neighborhood,” rather than “How can we improve what we’re doing so we can attract more people to worship?”

In one of my seminars (I can’t remember which one) I shared this prayer with the group:

“God show us what you’re up to and run over us with it until we become a part of it.”

Anyone with any sense knows that Christianity is far more than any local church; it is a movement that wishes to transform the entire creation.  And one of the ways it does so is through the institutional local church. Even in the first few centuries before Constantine, local congregations began formalizing the entrance into membership.