“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.”

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

In short, we find the faith of leap.

Christianity is an adventure of the spirit or it is not Christianity.

Expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture.

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.

Those of us with too much invested in the way things are will never embrace the revolutionary cause required for wholesale change.

We must have a sophisticated process to form people into adventurer-disciples.

Unless the church is equipping believers to embrace the values and vision of the kingdom of God and turn away from the materialism, consumerism, greed, and power of the present age.

Judgments about who belongs in the Hall of Fame are extremely subjective.

There is no doubt that to walk with Jesus means to walk on the wilder side of life.

In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.

Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles.

The appetite for adventure and risk is not exclusive to young Christians. In face.

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

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

It’s not so much that the church has a mission, it’s that the mission of God has a church.

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.

Christians need the gospel as much as non-Christians do.

The Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.

We older artists are competing with the new style of country, with their new modern style of gospel, with the young people.

Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.

I’ve always said that if I could have made a living someway in gospel music,

Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.

Religion operates on the principle ‘I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.’ But the operating principle of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.’