We are living in a time when we are forced to question everything we know about what it means to be a church.


Our world is becoming more fiercely anti-Christian. Our traditional freedoms are closing off. And when we do meet, our meetings are struggling to be effective in producing real discipleship. To society, we have become all but irrelevant.


It is imperative that we revisit what God says about who and what the local church is, how it is to be led and how it is to be organised.


When God speaks of the church, he is not talking about what we have created. What we have constructed from the word 'church' as we have redefined it, programmed it and locked it in an auditorium has nothing in common with what Jesus and the apostles had in mind. It is time to rethink. To rebuild.
Drawing on three decades of experience teaching church leaders in oppressed and persecuted nations, Ray Barnett brings a loving but far-reaching challenge to the modern church based on all that Scripture says about who we are and what we are supposed to be doing. The Gathering is a standard reference point for all church leaders and members who have the uncomfortable feeling that we may have lost our way.