The local is where it is at, getting on with the job at hand, finding out what God is doing is in the community and going with that. However is there truly the freedom to do this with the creative imaginative responses that faith demands or are we just kidding ourselves that we are free.
Faith is not faith in the seen otherwise it is not faith but a known, there is no need for a leap in imagination, or the risk of a step of faith. Yet as Christianity has been bombarded by the enlightenment culture we have been socialised, institutionalised into seeing faith as an arrival towards a certainty rather the first of many risky steps. This leads to a pre-disposition towards the need for models, towards a lack of risk and ultimately a lack of missional imagination.