For the first time we in the West are living in what has been called a "post-Christendom era." Most people throughout the Western world have seen what the Church has to offer, and they have found it to be wanting. The current credibility gap has made it hard to communicate the gospel with clarity and authenticity. Paradoxically, this is the case even though it is currently a time of almost unprecedented openness to the issues of God, faith, and meaning. This is a time when the need for, and relevance of, the gospel has seldom been greater, but the relevance of the Church has seldom been less. If ever there was a time for innovative missionary effort in the West, it is now.
This raises enormous challenges for God's people in the West. The Shaping of Things to Come explores why they Church needs to calibrate itself, rebuilding itself from the roots up. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch build their case around real-life stories gathered from innovative missional projects from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and England. These spirited experiments of Gospel community serve to point out just how varied a genuinely incarnational approach to mission can, and indeed needs to, become. They present vital nodes of missional learning for the established Church as it seeks to orientate itself to the unique challenges of the twenty-first century.