Regarding the entrenched, traditional religious practices of his own day, maintained without question for their own sake regardless of their relation to human needs, Jesus famously observed that old wineskins cannot contain new wine. Snyder evokes that image in this serious, well thought-out and biblically informed analysis of how little biblical warrant actually exists for much of our current traditional pattern of church organization and life, how miserably that pattern fails to fulfill the divine intention for the Church, and what a new, more biblical and more genuine community of faith might look like in practical terms. Writing from an evangelical perspective, Snyder's vision clearly has affinities to that of Rick Warren in The Purpose -Driven Church (see my review of that book). Where Warren emphasizes evangelistic outreach, Snyder emphasizes nurturing and supportive fellowship, though neither neglects the other's area of emphasis; the two books are thoroughly complementary, not contradictory. Though this one was written more than thirty years ago, it's every bit as relevant --or more so-- today than it was in 1975 - from Amzon