Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church. - Alan Hirsch

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

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

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.