There’s no such religious force in the West as powerful as consumerism.

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

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.

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.

Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase "missional church" lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity.

This submission to the threshold of a cross is at the very root of our following Jesus; it changes the game completely.

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