Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith

There has been much hand-wringing in the past couple of decades about mainline Protestant church decline and what to do about it. Many of the attempts to curb this trend have been to emulate mega-church programs by offering full-service, entertainment style worship and programming. Sensing the possibility that an alternative vibrancy existed outside of this entertainment model, Butler Bass conducted a major grant study among progressive churches across the country. Bucking the trend pieces and conventional wisdom that only conservative churches are growing, the surprising results of the study revealed just the opposite. Christianity for the Rest of Us both describes a phenomenon and offers a how to approach that will reach a ready-made, mainline Protestant book buying audience eager to remain authentic to their own tradition while still in need of guidance about how to do that. This is a hopeful book that reflects real, grassroots reporting from an author who is attracting significant attention by both church leaders and the religion media.