Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God’s eternal purposes for his world. Renewal means more than reinventing ourselves; it means rediscovering the primal power of the Spirit and the gospel already present in the life of the church—reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them.

But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.

We will have to take risks, to chance failure, to be willing to walk away from the familiar paths that have brought us to this point.

More data is not always the answer.

Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one's role in society, and the relation between the two.

Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people's perception of the gospel.

There is no doubt that to walk with Jesus means to walk on the wilder side of life.