Those of us with too much invested in the way things are will never embrace the revolutionary cause required for wholesale change.

But the standard churchy spirituality doesn't require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees.

Our point isn't to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.

Go among the people. Don't assume you know what church looks like.

If we could be freed from our aversion to loss, our whole outlook on risk would change.

Most churches don't have the resources for these tricks and inducements but are still bound to the imagination that church happens on a Sunday in a building.

It's not so much that the church has a mission, it's that the mission of God has a church.