If we are going to make the change from community to communitas, and not just end up with an unsustainable adrenaline-junkie culture, we must have a sophisticated process to form people into adventurer-disciples.

In order to develop a pioneering missional spirit, a capacity for genuine ecclesial innovation, let along engender daring discipleship, we are going to need the capacity to take a courageous stand when and where necessary.

Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God’s eternal purposes for his world. Renewal means more than reinventing ourselves; it means rediscovering the primal power of the Spirit and the gospel already present in the life of the church—reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them.

The safety-obsessed church lacks the inner dynamic to foster profound missional impact in our time.

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

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

If we could be freed from our aversion to loss, our whole outlook on risk would change.