It was a cold fall day in Minnesota. The leaves were beginning to fall, and I could hear the wind scattering them across the street. But when I looked out my window, I was dismayed to see that my yard still had an august charred-brown look.

So I turned on the sprinkler and my then 2-year-old daughter happened to spot it out of the corner of her eye. Even though it was only about 60 degrees outside, she dropped her sidewalk chalk and sprinted toward the water with her arms flailing and a look of absolute delight on her face.

I grabbed her just in time and explained that it was much too cold to run through the sprinkler. I talked her through the cause and effect of wet clothes and a cold breeze, but it just didn’t seem to compute. All she cared about was the present.

All of this got me thinking about risk.

When you are a kid, you haven’t figured out how to eliminate risk from your life yet. Kids run through sprinklers on freezing cold days, play football in the mud without realizing they don’t have a change of clothes, and jump into ponds without thinking what might be in the water.

But adults have risk elimination down to a science.

Adults don’t go anywhere or do anything without thinking about what they might need, what it will cost, or what the consequences could be. Soon all of the planning that goes into risk removal gets to be too much work and they just sit in front of the TV and live vicariously through someone else’s risks.

I understand that risk removal is an important lesson kids need to learn, but when it comes to my faith I want to be more like I was when I was a child. I want to be willing to take risks for God.

Although I’ve only officially been a church planter for a few days, I have been thinking a lot recently about risk: the risk of starting a church without a permanent location or even an office; the risks of raising funds in a downturn economy; and of course the risk of targeting a market that is not at all interested in my product (people who are far from God).

But to follow Jesus is to go on an adventure, and adventure always involves risk. I want to be willing to jump wholeheartedly into the arms of Christ, to give everything away, to hold nothing back.

To think less about the consequences, the costs, or wet clothes on a windy day.

Paul Stewart is the Lead Pastor of The Gateway Church, a brand new faith community forming in downtown Des Moines committed to seeking a renewed approach to Christian spirituality and the teachings of Jesus. Paul graduated from North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is married to his high-school sweetheart, Jessica, and has three beautiful children: Sophia, George, and Evelyn.