Where is the church headed today in the west?

How will/can it become His Church, His Body again? For several years now, I have been trying to understand what and/or how Jesus’ wants us to be His Church, His Body, in our western world? It seems that the global Christian community is doing a better job of this, and maybe it’s living in desperate circumstances that prompt it? It’s been clear, at least to me, that denominations and traditional church models are failing to live out Christ’s command and commission, especially in Europe and the United States. We (Patti and I) have found semblances of what looks more like Jesus’ church in the various parachurch ministries we’ve encountered and been part of over the last two decades; Young Life, YWAM, etc. In addition, grass roots efforts to bring about collaboration between different churches in our community seem headed in the right direction? However, I sense that in order to see real change, a Kairos paradigm shift must happen? Others have expressed this more succinctly than I can, and below are links to “movements”, people and articles that articulate what Patti and I have been “hearing” in our own hearts, especially over the last three years. Simple Church - some links, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_church http://www.appleseedministry.com/ http://www.simplechurchjournal.com/2012/09/h2h-conferences.html http://housechurch.org/about.html http://www.dawnministries.org/where-we-work/north-america http://www.cmaresources.org/about\ http://www.site.house2house.com/news-a-resources/organic-church-blogs People: Roger Thoman, Frank Viola, Wolfgang Simson, Neil Cole & others. Articles: http://www.simsonwolfgang.de/html/15_theses.html http://www.simsonwolfgang.de/FF2E-2ApostolicMigration.pdf other links: http://www.piercedhearts.org/theology_heart/life_saints/francis_assisi_life.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton