So a working definition of missional church is a community of God's people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God's mission to the world.

Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God's eternal purposes for his world. 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—reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them.

It was C. S. Lewis who observed that there exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. So we must strive very hard, by the grace of God to keep the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it.

The gospel cannot be limited to being about my personal healing and wholeness, but rather extends in and through my salvation to the salvation of the world.

A missional church is a church that must live the dialectic. It must stay in the journey.

Only because the message concerning Jesus Christ must still go forth and find believers, and because our task is not yet perfected, does God in His patience continue to sustain us with His good gifts.

Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.

Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be.

The church must bear witness to Jesus Christ as living lord, and it must do so in a world that has turned away from Christ after knowing him.

The gospel is not to take the form of hole-in-the-corner sectarianism, it must be set forth by public preaching.

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists.

On subsequent visits I expanded further on the life and ministry of Jesus