In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.

The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.

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.

Currently, young Christians reach adulthood bored with church experience, and with little or no sense of their calling as missionaries.

The quest for heroic adventure then is a quest for the gospel, although it might not be seen that way by everyone.

At some point preoccupation with safety can get in the way of living full lives.

If we can embrace the adventure and risk and equip our churches to lay down their lives and abandon their inherent loss-aversion, who knows what innovation, what freshness, what new insights from the Spirit will emerge.