Interestingly, it's as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey, the embodiment of the very adventure that all people in every epoch have desired.

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.

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

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

Unless the church is equipping believers to embrace the values and vision of the kingdom of God and turn away from the materialism, consumerism, greed, and power of the present age, it not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective.

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

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.