If you could only choose between those two, which would it be?

Seth Godin introduced this question to me in his recent audiobook, Leap First.

If you choose safer, the odds are, you'll choose comfort, security, repetition, boredom. But, you'll be safer. If you select better, the odds are, you'll experience adventure, threat, challenge, experimentation, risk. But, things might be better.

Most of people, most organizations including churches, most groups will choose safer. Why? Because the risk of standing out, the vulnerability of exposing yourself is too great, if we choose better. Better means, "holy cow, I'm out there and someone might criticize me or judge me." Yup.

Irony is that in the church today, where most people are choosing safer, it's having the opposite effect. The choice for safer is yielding smaller churches, with more fragile structures, and diminished mission capacity. In the NeXt Church, the church that is being born, we need better. Which means risking, experimenting and exposing. As we risk and try new things, something happens, people are attracted to this new bold adventure.

Other bishops ask me if I'm concerned that our emphasis in New England on experimentation is leading to problems. I say, "No. If anything I'm dissapointed we haven't had bolder experiments with more failures. Cause the only way forward into the church God is birthing is through the new adventure of discipleship."

What new BOLD thing will you do this year?