The Bible is not an antiquated text. The scriptures are the text that will lead us into the future.
God has given us an imagination, and our imagination is really the principle tool from which all creativity and artistry comes from.
My primary assessment would be because American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent, so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them.
How many people just get up on Monday and do the same thing they've done every single Monday - go to work and just turn on route automatic and no longer have any meaning in their life?
From the beginning, our community has been focused on people outside of Christianity. But that emphasis means that a lot of hard work is represented in every person who is baptized.
The bulk of our community is probably between the ages of 20 and 34.
I've worked in the business world and, as a futurist, the whole 20 years that I've led at Mosaic.
I know it sounds crazy, but as soon as Christians start telling non-Christians how to live their lives, we've lost the Christian faith.
I love what Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Jesus all said - that love is really the driving principle of the creative act. In fact, they would say that great art is always inspired by love.
While we would love to have no criticism, probably if we had no critique, we wouldn't be doing anything meaningful.
If you come at the Bible as if it's a document of encyclopedic information, you've pretty much killed any kind of life change in a seeker and unbeliever.
I hope my greatest contribution will be to try to extract principles of truth that will cause us to live our lives in a more effective way and to advance Jesus' purpose in the world.
Wherever and whenever God is moving in a new and fresh way, there emerges a new song!
There is something powerful about singing to God as an act of worship, but it is time to reframe our perspective and our language to genuinely encompass all of life as worship.
So much of what comes out of the faith community seems so dour and somber, and we want to say, 'Hey, we're real people. You can be a person of faith and really enjoy life and laugh.'
It is the creative and enterprising spirit of people that is indispensable. Everything else is supplemental.
We're a part of the insurrection, trying to turn Christianity upside down. We're an experimental church: God's research and development arm.
The Bible has been trapped in modernity. Everything has to work perfectly. And if everything doesn't fit in a Lego-oriented functionality, then we don't deal with it as Christians.
I think the opportunity to bring together the people in the world of politics, business and entertainment and have an opportunity to listen to their best learning and thinking is a great opportunity.
The system of Christian celebrity was not a good space for me, and it was brutal on my kids - my son in college was frequently confronted by people railing against me as a heretic.
