“Worship that is in some way divorced from mission is counterfeit worship”

Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.

The missional church is not a new trend or the latest new technique for reaching postmodern people.

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.

A powerless church has nothing for the devil to counterfeit.

We fear not the truth, even if it be gloomy, but its counterfeit.

The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.