“You plant the gospel. You don’t plant churches.”

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

In a world that demands service we position ourselves as servants.

If a can opener no longer has the capacity to open cans, what is it?

We will have to take risks, to chance failure, to be willing to walk away from the familiar paths that have brought us to this point.

Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God’s eternal purposes for his world.

A retreatist spirituality is not a spirituality that can, or will, transform the world in Jesus’s name.

Our preferences for stability and security blind us to the opportunities for adventure when they present themselves.

Building community for its own sake is like attending a cancer support group without having cancer.

We have to assume now that all mission is cross-cultural.

Put simply, the church finds itself in a post-Christendom era, and it had better do some serious reflection or face increasing decline and eventual irrelevance.

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

All their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension.

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

I found out the hard way that if we don’t disciple people, the culture sure will.

It not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective.

Go among the people. Don’t assume you know what church looks like.

As a teenager I was very clear that I wasn’t in the church just to toe the line, but I saw there was a capacity within Christianity and the bible not to fall into line but to question the status quo, that’s what kept me in the church.

However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.

I want to be able to open up the really good treasures of the Church and Christianity to people.

I think it’s hypocritical and inconsistent for us to attack this one group of people over any other group of people that are within our churches today.

As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church’s role in losing people.

I’d signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England.

That level of expectation that I’m going to be conservative is really disappointing, but it is how many people think about clergy and the church

Within the membership we have 270 or so members within the network of Exodus whether that’s a local member ministry, a counselor or one of our members of our church association.