ABSTRACT
The project carried out in the 1990s to develop a missiology of Western culture originated out of The Gospel and Our Culture Programme. The latter was initiated by the British Council of Churches in the early 1980s in response to mounting concern that the churches in Great Britain, as well as Europe, were facing a crisis of historic proportions. Adrian Hastings masterfully described the situation confronting the churches in England at that time. During 1976 a redundant Church of England building was demolished every nine days. This large-scale closing of local parish churches hit disproportionately hard the inner-city parishes. Many of these churches had been built in the nineteenth century for a population that had long since moved on. During the years 1971–74 the Methodist Church closed 493 churches and continued to close about 100 local churches each year until the mid-1980s. 1
