Put simply, the church finds itself in a post-Christendom era, and it had better do some serious reflection or face increasing decline and eventual irrelevance.

You plant the gospel. You don't plant churches.

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.

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.

The fact is that if Jesus's future kingdom is secure, those who trust in its coming will enact it now.

Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.

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