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.

Nowadays we raise our children in a cocoon of domesticated security, far from any sense of risk or adventure.

A retreatist spirituality is not a spirituality that can, or will, transform the world in Jesus's name.

There’s no such religious force in the West as powerful as consumerism.

Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase "missional church" lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity.

Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles, expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture. And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting, all their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension.

Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress.