The seven ‘facts of life’ presented at the beginning of this chapter built up into a rather depressing picture of the local church in context.

For lovers of the church in its traditional role as a venerable institution respected by society, this could be worrying.

But perhaps we should not be so concerned. The church is not the only grand institution to be rejected in modern society. And there are responsibilities, roles and opportunities in plenty for new expressions of the local church in this changing situation, many of them presently unfulfilled.

For those prepared to see that God is at work - and wants his church to be at work - in the world of today, the feeling might be more of challenge than depression. There is room for experiment (with its risk of failure); and above all there is room for hope.

There is also a continuing role for some kind of over-arching institution. It is needed to hold together our new experiences of being the church within the wider Body of Christ and to keep us in tune with the faith once delivered to the saints. It is needed so that, when Christ's disciples discover that God is with them in some unexpected corner of life, this new work of the Holy Spirit is not overlooked or discounted.

What is needed in fact is a renewed form of ‘episcopé’ - the oversight traditionally provided by bishops - but adapted to embrace a level of diversity far greater than we have inherited from our denominational past.

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However, there is a more immediate problem. A picture of the local church in context will not be complete until we have learned to see ourselves as others see us.

And the problem is this: our behaviour as institutional churches in the face of change has allowed those outside the churches to build up an image of us which seriously inhibits us from getting on with the work that God wants.

How other people perceive us is all part of the network of communication that is already happening whether we like it or not between the local church and those outside its gates.

And the central issue is really all to do with those gates: Are they, metaphorically, ‘locked’ or are they wide open and accepting of all who want to come through?

Are we, in other words, ‘An Open Church or a Fortified Camp?’.

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