What happens when a church, with its own story of salvation, becomes involved in the secular 'salvation' of community regeneration? What can it offer - and what must it learn? What are the crucial questions arising from such an encounter?
'Sam Wells has written of an exhilarating ministry experience,' says Bishop Laurie Green, author of Urban Ministry and the Kingdom of God and Chair of the National Estate Churches Network. 'He tells the story of early challenges but leaves us with the sense that the risks of engagement in "community regeneration" can provide defining moments for a local church that wants to be true to its God and to the Christ who sacrifices all to attain for us the most profound regeneration.'
The Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is Dean of Duke University Chapel, North Carolina. Previously he served in parishes in North Tyneside and East Anglia, where he was closely involved in the local New Deal for Communities programme and in setting up the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpitt Development Trust, the first such organisation in the East of England.
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