This book seeks to encourage by provoking theologically. It was written for all who want to take responsibility for their Church. So it addresses all the baptized. In the current crises of the Church, it forcefully advocates a hopeful realism. The individual impulses of the pointedly arguing systematic theologian Gunter Thomas (Ruhr-University Bochum) fit together like pieces of a puzzle to form a picture: take God's vitality seriously; discover oneself as believer in God's world adventure; boldly acknowledge to live in an unredeemed world; and above all as a church testify to faith, love and hope with audacity. For that is what God is all about in his world adventure. Only if Christians occupy their unique place in the drama of God can a double liberation take place: the liberation from a manic overestimation of their public relevance and the liberation from a crippling exhaustion depression that is slowly spreading after years of reform and in the face of bleak prospects for the future.