Consider what it takes for successful businessmen and businesswomen, effective entrepreneurs and hardworking associates, shrewd retirees and idealistic students to combine forces with a creative pastor to grow a "successful church" today. Clearly, it doesn't require the power of God to draw a crowd in our culture. A few key elements that we can manufacture will suffice.

Let me introduce you to Jesus.

We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

The primary purpose of prayer is not to get something, but to know Someone.

Craig Bellamy's got pace, but he's also rapid as well

We do not follow a health and wealth savior. We follow a homeless and wounded Savior.

We act, though, not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ, and he will do it when he returns. But until that day, we do with an undivided heart whatever God calls us to do.