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

More important, Christian community is not something about which we can arbitrarily make decisions — it is not an optional extra.

Interestingly, it’s as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey, the embodiment of the very adventure that all people in every epoch have desired.

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.