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

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

Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus.

But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.

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

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.

There is no doubt that to walk with Jesus means to walk on the wilder side of life.