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.

Truth is narrow, but grace is wide.

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

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

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

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.

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