This is yet one more of those challenging books which gives you hope for the future of the Christian faith.
Doherty diagnoses one of the problems facing the church as being individualism in society (is that post-modernism by another name or one symptom of PM, I ask myself). He finds a solution in the Celtic model of community and goes on to point out that a successful community needs to be inclusive, realistic (in what it tries to achieve), contemplative, to have the capacity for healing and converting and have a spirit (the spirit of peace and love). The question he poses is whether the church can rediscover the ability to be a community which relates to people. Now, I wonder what you think! His suggestion is that churches need to accept the idea that this is what God wants it to be, to accept our need of God, to restore our teaching ministry and to know our Bibles!
For me, all this has made me think about the relationships within the Circuit and particularly in the leadership. Are we a community? I think not - more like the Roman model of "I'm the boss and this is how it is going to be, and you lesser mortals had better accept it." No wonder we are getting nowhere fast - if the leadership cannot get it right, what chance for those who are daft enough to still look to us for the solution!
