Imagining a New Old Church

Via Prodigal Kiwi comes a mention of The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church
by Diana Butler Bass. This extract comes from the introduction:

Too often, whatProtestants read about their tradition is ultimately unimaginative — the same tired story lines about conflict, about liberal and conservative divides, and about mainline decline. Contemporary mainline Protestants have believed these stories, allowing their self-understanding to be colonized by storytellers outside theirtradition whose work is sometimes driven by agendas that benefit from stories of conflict and decline. By believing others’ stories
and not having the confidence to imagine their own narratives, mainline Protestants have often fuelled the cycle of conflict and given into the temptation of spiritual despair.