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For any organization to have an impact, it needs a radical product. The church's radical product is revolutionary people—real followers of Jesus Christ, whom I describe in a previous book, Real Followers: Beyond Virtual Christianity (Abingdon, 1999). As churches take seriously Jesus' call to discipleship, their memberships change from consumer mind-sets to missional movements of God whose members demonstrate both personal and social holiness.

When I used to hear the word church, I thought of something innocuous, boring, and bland. Christianity was nothing more than "nice-ianity." But once I started reading the New Testament, I discovered that Christianity is anything but nice. It is extreme. Everywhere these people went, scandal, fear, and violence followed them. Theirs was a radical faith!

Think about the Christmas story, especially the unprecedented, supernatural way Mary became pregnant. If you were Joseph, shocked to hear that your fiancée, Mary, had a baby in her womb, would you believe the dream in which an angel of the Lord appeared to you? The angel said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:20).

Everything within Joseph told him that the best thing to do would be to divorce Mary quietly. Instead, he acted on an intuitive sense of the Spirit. He took a huge risk in how he followed God.

Fast-forward thirty years or so. The disciples, riding in a small boat on the Sea of Galilee and battling fierce waves and winds, saw Jesus walking calmly across the water. They were all terrified. Most of them couldn't recognize him, and thought it must be a ghost. Only Peter got out of the boat and walked on water because his faith told him that it was Jesus out there.

Peter was the only one who risked. He chose to block out the voice of the storm. Instead, he focused on Jesus, who said, "Come." Peter did the impossible because he responded to the voice of Jesus instead of listening to the crashing waves and the fearful cries of others. He only got in trouble when he began to look at the raging storm rather than look into the eyes of the one who had said, "Follow me" (Matthew 4:19). Still, Peter was not a failure because he looked down and began to sink. If anyone failed, it was the eleven who stayed in the boat, waiting to see if it could be done.

That same risk-taking shows up in dynamic people throughout history. Imagine, for example, growing up in eighteenthcentury Europe, when slavery was a long-established, virtually unchallenged tradition. Everyone around you said that slavery was normal, natural, unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary. Yet a Christian named William Wilberforce saw the unseen and took a faith risk. In 1789 he led a campaign against the British slave trade. He continued to champion the impossible. In 1807 the impossible happened: Great Britain abolished the slave trade in the British colonies. In 1833 an act of Parliament called for the emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire.

Here in the United States, a man named Millard Fuller believed he could change the face of housing for the poor in America. He founded an organization called Habitat for Humanity, which has built more than one hundred thousand homes around the world for people in need—all "because of Jesus," he says. "We are putting God's love into action."¹

Even our fantasy world applauds the idea of taking risks to do the impossible. In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana steps out onto a bridge that isn't yet there, or at least doesn't seem to be there. Instead of falling to his death, however, he rests his foot on something solid but heretofore unseen.

God has chosen you, called you, gifted you, and promised a fulfillment of your life mission. God would not create you for failure. Your success is based on your willingness to risk stepping out and obediently following God. All of us experience seasons of doubt and frustration; unLearning leaders step out of the boat anyway.