The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.
Whether we like it or not, we are all on a journey, a Quest if you will, every day of our lives, and the path we must take is full of perils, and our destiny can never be predicted in advance.
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, it not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective.
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.
A missional theology...appl ies to the whole of life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture.
When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God's purposes in and through his people.
In order to develop a pioneering missional spirit, a capacity for genuine ecclesial innovation, let along engender daring discipleship, we are going to need the capacity to take a courageous stand when and where necessary.