“Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.”

“The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, "But how has the church done that?" * By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.*By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.* By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.*By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything.”

“Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.”

“In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.”

“The problem in the church today is that we treat God's glory as a by-product and the missional activities of the church as the primary thing when the opposite is what Scripture demands. We don't proclaim the gospel and feed the poor and shepherd the flock in hopes that God's glory will be the by-product of those activities. We seek the revealing of the glory of God through the methods He prescribes so that His glory is revealed in the church. When that happens, the lost are converted, the poor are fed, the saints live in unity, and much more, all as by-products of God's manifest presence in the church.”

“Most of what is wrong in horizontal church flows from attempts to get green apples interested in Jesus. Green apples are very articulate about that they do and don't want in church. They don't want to hear about money, because that is one of their idols; they don't want to be told about sin, because that assaults pride; no interest in pressure to decide for Jesus, because that threatens their autonomy. Sadly when church becomes what green apples must have or they won't come. It ceases to be what it must be for God to attend. Church needs to be offensive to green apples or it can be helpful to those who are ripe.”

“When we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play in the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.”