This is a book about the present and future of the church in our present challenging context; a secular age, decline, stretched resources, complex and fragmented communities requiring diverse missional approaches.

Weaving together parable, storytelling, travelogue history and poetry, Paul Bradbury journeys from rural Norfolk to inner-city London, from a radical missional community in Lincolnshire, to a traditional village parish in Dorset, to explore what the church looks like today, and how local parish communities are wrestling with the tensions between the value of inherited church, and the need to look to the future.