The Body of Christ is now re-thinking the Great Commission scriptures of Mark 16:15 and Matthew 28:19-20. Instead of viewing them as commands to merely evangelize individual souls, now many are viewing the command in Mark 16 to ‘go into all the world and preach’ as a command to apply the gospel to both individual sinners and world systems. Matthew 28:19-20 is now regarded as the New Testament equivalent to the Cultural Mandate found in Genesis 1:28.

II. Kingdom leaders attempt to nurture and release world-class leaders who serve their communities. Church leaders nurture only those who serve in Sunday ministry.

Kingdom leaders understand that only 2% to 3% of those in their congregations are called to full-time church ministry. These leaders believe they are called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry which, in the kingdom, includes marketplace vocational ministry, not only ecclesial ministry. With this view, there is room for everyone in the congregation to be set apart and trained as a minister of the gospel.

III. Kingdom leaders understand and work with God’s common grace. Church leaders only understand and work with those who have experienced saving grace.

Kingdom leaders understand that God’s grace has been poured out to all of humanity so the world can function normally. Romans 13:1-7 calls civic leaders God’s ministers (diakanos or deacons). If God calls unredeemed leaders His ministers then kingdom leaders know they can also partner with political and community leaders, even if they are not in full agreement when it comes to faith and core values.

Church leaders only work with those that are in full agreement with their core religious values, thus insulating themselves from the world around them.

IV. Kingdom leaders have a biblical worldview that encompasses all of life. Church leaders have a semi-Gnostic Greek view of Scripture that regards only spiritual things as important.

Kingdom leaders know that the earth is the Lord’s and not the devil’s (Psalm 24)! They know that the Word became flesh. Thus, the material world is also sacred and something to be cultivated (Genesis 2:15).

Church leaders are only concerned with spiritual things like prayer, healing, the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, etc. These spiritual things are only really effective if they are applied to our walk with God and its concomitant love of neighbor as salt and light.

V. Kingdom leaders are working towards a new Christendom. Church leaders are only trying to produce individual Christians.

Kingdom leaders desire to interweave the principles of God’s Word into every fabric of culture so every nation and city favors Christianity and bases civic laws on biblical precepts.

Church leaders are not overly concerned with politics and economics but with adding new converts who, without a biblical worldview, will only perpetuate humanistic ungodly systems with their partial “spiritual” gospel.

VI. Kingdom leaders teach the church to embrace their secular communities before they experience conversion. Church leaders embrace people into their faith communities only after they experience salvation.

Kingdom leaders regard their cities and communities as gifts to the church and to the people who live in them. They embrace their communities in humility and send their members into their communities as servant leaders who will be the greatest problem solvers of the most challenging human needs.

Church leaders only embrace individuals in their communities after they have professed faith in Christ. Thus, they insulate and isolate themselves and their churches from the felt needs of their communities, yet are joyful as long as their churches are growing and their bills are paid.

VII. Kingdom leaders turn the world upside down (Acts 17:1-7). Church leaders restructure their local churches.

In Acts 17 it was said, when the apostles came into a community, that ‘those who turned the world upside down have come here also.’

Nowadays the typical church mindset is only concerned with what happens within the four walls of the church building. There are many churches that, if they closed down, the local community boards, police stations, and political leaders would barely notice they were gone!

VIII. Kingdom leaders articulate Christ as Lord over every culture. Church leaders preach Christ as only the head of the church.

Kingdom leaders recognize Jesus’ place as King of every secular king. This has vast cultural and political implications, and pressures the church to engage the secular arena.

Those with a church mindset only preach Christ as the head of the church and neglect Jesus’ function as King over the unredeemed world!

IX. Kingdom leaders shepherd whole communities. Church leaders shepherd only their church congregations.

Kingdom leaders understand they are called to communities, not only to local churches. Hence, they see themselves as chaplains and spiritual leaders of regions.

Church leaders feel no responsibility to their communities because they feel committed only to those who attend their Sunday services.

X. Kingdom leaders attempt to exorcise demons out of ungodly social systems. Church leaders only cast devils out of individual people.

Kingdom leaders understand that Jesus came to redeem systemic sin, not just individual sin (read Colossians 1:20).

Church leaders only feel called to deal with individual evil. Thus, they interpret passages such as Luke 4:18 as dealing with the individual poor and oppressed, neglecting the systemic reference from which it came. (Read Isaiah 61:1-4 to see that Luke 4:18 concerns redeeming and restoring desolate cities, not just individuals in need.)

XI. Kingdom leaders pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Church leaders pray for revival in their churches.

The Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11) teaches us to pray that God’s will would be done and His kingdom would come on earth. Thus, kingdom leaders have as their prayer focus the kingdom being manifest on the earth.

Leaders with a church mindset are content with only the signs of the kingdom (healing and deliverance of individuals as found in Matthew 12:28 and Hebrews 2:1-3) instead of striving for a manifestation of the kingdom in their cities that impacts the quality of life politically and economically (Isaiah 61:3-4).

XII. Kingdom leaders believe for the gospel to economically lift whole communities. Church leaders believe for greater tithes and offerings to support their building projects and programs.

XIII. Kingdom leaders gravitate toward the complexities and challenges of cities. Church leaders gravitate toward lives of isolation and inward focus.

Before the Civil War, when the American church preached the kingdom message, the church was able to draft the founding documents of this great nation, and start schools and Ivy League universities, all for the purpose of placing godly leaders in society as the future presidents, governors, mayors, scientists, artists, writers, etc. The church took the lead in cultural reform.

But after the horrible experiences of the Civil War the church lost hope in the kingdom being manifest on the earth and started to focus on the imminent return of Christ and the rapture. This resulted in American culture being lost to secularists in one generation!

This turning away from the kingdom message led to church leaders isolating themselves from the looming threats of biblical higher criticism, Marxism, Darwinism, the infiltration of non-WASP immigrants, Sigmund Freud and psychology, and the Industrial Revolution. These brought many pressures upon the nuclear family as men had to go into the cities to find work. Instead of engaging the culture and these challenges head-on, the American church started looking for escape and changed its theology! The present move of God is finally bringing the church back onto the biblical footing of the kingdom message.

XIV. Kingdom leaders equip people for life. Church leaders equip people for church life.

Kingdom leaders inspire and equip the saints to serve in their cities as salt and light, to be like Daniel and Joseph who prospered and held significant leadership roles in the midst of pagan systems and kings.

Church leaders train people to be good altar workers, ushers, Sunday school teachers, Sunday preachers, etc.

XV. Kingdom leaders honor Jesus’ dual role as Redeemer and Creator. Church leaders separate redemption from creation.

Kingdom leaders realize that the Jesus who died on the cross (John 3:16) for the sins of the world (John 1:29) is the same Jesus who created the world (John 1:3-4).

When we apply the Word of God to culture we are embracing Jesus’ ownership of the whole world. But when we preach the cross of Christ only for individual sinners and do not also apply it to the created order we separate the Redeemer from the Creator!

XVI. Kingdom leaders are forward thinkers. Church leaders long for the past.

Kingdom leaders are excited about the future advance of Christendom in every facet of life and for every nation. They are excited over the increasing influence of Christ in culture. They train believers to replenish the earth by placing godly leaders in the realms of science, art, media, education, economics and politics. The sky is the limit for them!

Those with a church mindset long for the past, when life was much simpler and everyone in a community embraced the role of Christianity in culture. They do not like the vast complexities that social fragmentation has presented because it distracts from, and interferes with, their nice and neat Sunday church attendance parish structures.

XVII. Kingdom leaders apply their faith to the earth. Church leaders are focused on escaping the earth and making it to heaven.

The Bible is essentially not a book about heaven. It is not concerned with another geographic location whether spiritual or physical. It is mainly concerned with the person of Christ and His rule and dominion in the cosmos (read Ephesians 1:9-11)! Because of this, the Bible is the most practical book about life on the earth that has ever been written! Kingdom leaders understand and embrace this reality.

Church leaders emphasize heaven since they have no real sense of purpose to give to the majority of their congregants who are not called into full-time church ministry.

XVIII. Kingdom leaders envision the building of universities with theology serving as the “queen of the sciences.” Church leaders envision the establishment of church-centered Bible institutes that avoid liberal arts and the humanities.

XIX. Kingdom leaders are entrepreneurs. Church leaders are stuck in maintenance mode, merely holding their ground until Jesus comes back or they make it to heaven!

XX. Kingdom leaders pray for revival to bring people into the church and reformation to place believers as leaders in world systems. Church leaders merely pray and believe for higher attendance on Sundays.

XXI. Kingdom leaders work for cultural transformation. Church leaders focus on waiting for the rapture.

Jesus told the church to occupy until He comes. Kingdom leaders are busy strategizing how they are going to start schools of government to train political candidates, start businesses to create wealth to expand the kingdom, and develop educational programs to break cycles of poverty for at-risk children.

Those with a church mindset do not get involved in quality of life issues because their theology doesn’t allow for it! They think it is like arranging the chairs on the Titanic because the world will soon end when the antichrist takes over!

XXII. Kingdom leaders train their children to walk in biblical dominion in society. Church leaders’ highest hope is that their children don’t fall away from the faith!

Kingdom leaders have dominion as the primary goal for their children. They don’t teach their children to get secure jobs in big companies; they teach them to become the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies! They don’t teach them how to fish but how to own a lake! They echo the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 28:10-13 that teaches believers are called to be the head and not the tail, to be above and not beneath, to lend to many nations and not to borrow!

Church leaders take a defensive posture with their children by merely praying that they would not fall away from the faith. Even many who teach apologetics and biblical worldview are stuck in the church mindset because they are only teaching their children how to defend the faith instead of also how to advance the kingdom!

XXIII. Kingdom leaders empower the poor to own the pond. Church leaders give the poor some fish.

Kingdom leaders understand how to break poverty mindsets over people by equipping them to create their own wealth. Church leaders have an entitlement approach in which they merely feed the poor instead of equipping them to start their own businesses or work in high-level positions that will enable them to be prosperous for the sake of the kingdom!

This helped the men. It showed them that I care about their callings, how they spend 50+ hours of their week, and the people they work with.

This helped me. It taught me about the unique opportunities & challenges men were facing in their different workplaces, it opened my eyes to a world bigger than our church, and it helped set new trajectories for my preaching and discipling.

This is how I did it (and how I will continue doing it once I get started in Phoenix):

-Schedule a lunch-time visit with a man in your church. The best use of your time is to make most of these visits with men who are leader types. Schedule to meet the guy at his office, not at the lunch spot.

-Once you show up have the guy show you around his workspace. If you’re naturally curious like me, you’ll quickly have 20 questions about all that you’re seeing around you. Ask your questions. Learn the man’s world.

-Introduce yourself to his co-workers. Don’t tell people you’re a pastor, unless asked or introduced that way. They will find out eventually and they’ll be incredibly surprised that a pastor looks and talks like a normal person and doesn’t spend all his time on church property.

-Once you get the tour, take the man out to lunch (if there’s a lunch place on the work campus, go there, it will lead to more learning about the workplace) and let him talk to you at length about his work. You’ll quickly discover how you can best encourage and empower the man in his calling.

-Always speak out against the “higher calling of ministry” idea if it surfaces. Three out of five times when I meet a man at his work he talks to me about how the work I’m doing as a pastor is “so much more important” than what he’s doing as a software engineer, financial analyst, etc. I always immediately crush and correct this unbiblical view of vocation. Your men need you to tell them that all work is a means of glorifying God, and that working for a church is not superior to working for Google. It’s your job to empower your men, to help them see the nobility of the work God has called them to do.

Men need pastors to jump into the fire of their work world with them and empower them to keep their eyes on Jesus and do their work in Jesus’ honor, whatever that work might be.

Also, at least for me, doing this is a whole lot of fun. It’s been a blast visiting men at their work here in the Bay Area. I’ve been able to see:

-The financial analysis &  game development sector at Electronic Arts.

-The inner workings of a Secret Service office.

-A two-person flower shop in the financial district of San Francisco.

-A small architect firm’s hip office quarters.

-A contractor’s truck-office.

-The sprawling, impressive campus at Google.

-Several software companies who do things I still don’t fully understand.

-The venture capital world on Sand Hill Road.

-Several impressive work-from-home offices.

-(And when I didn’t have a man working there, AnneMarie gave me a great tour of Facebook).

Pastors, if you’re not already doing something like this, start incorporating it into your schedule. I think you should aim for a minimum of 1 workplace visit per week. Doing this is part of what keeps my calling fresh and alive, and what keeps me connected to men and the larger working world.

And make sure you budget for this. This is just as important as your book budget. Budget funds to cover meals and mileage for these crucial visits.

(PS. I’ve written this post from an architect/contractor’s home office)

Posted on Business as Mission Network

In today’s church evangelism is singing outside in the streets , it’s events, it’s acting in shopping malls, it’s inviting friends to seeker services, it’s developing relationships with our neighbors, it’s evangelism programs, it’s lots of things. But one thing it isn’t – it isn’t about equipping the people of God to think Christianly, live Christianly and share Christ right where they are. The one place people are not actively encouraged and equipped to make a difference is the place many people spend 50, 60, 70 percent of their waking hours. The one where Christian and non-Christian have to meet. The one place where the playing field is even, where Christian and non-Christian are subject to the same corporate culture, may have the same boss, the same pressures…the one place where the non-Christian can actually see the difference that Christ can make to a life – not for a couple of hours over dinner but over a couple of years for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty hours a week. The workplace.

Are many ministers inadvertently letting their zeal for evangelism and their desire to build a strong local church distract them from asking how God might want to use their people outside the local context? There is a danger, I believe, that we will view church members exclusively in terms of how they can contribute to the local household of God rather than how they might also contribute to the growth of the kingdom of Christ, wherever he has placed them. And there is a danger that we will become too focused on getting non-Christians into church to hear the minister rather than into the kingdom of God by hearing the word.

The Church has done its research. It has concluded that fewer and fewer people know even the basics about the claims of Jesus, and so we are encouraged to build bridges to the unchurched, to go to the fringe and beyond, told that we need to learn to speak their language. Indeed we do. But the thrust of the response is to send us out on the highways and byways, to neighbors who on the whole we don’t know very well and don’t spend that much time with. Meanwhile back in the workplace, the average Christian has already built bridges and crossed them, has already developed relationships and already speaks their co-workers’ language. Warm contacts. Are we encouraging people to go and fish in pools and puddles when they are often sitting on a lake full of fish? The person who knows them well doesn’t live next door, they work at the next desk.

We need to put the word not only on the street but into the workplaces of nations. After all, that’s where you are and that’s where the non-Christians are. As you know, workplaces are filled with all kinds of people, with all kinds of problems – illness, fear of redundancy, adultery, grief, confusion, purposelessness, promiscuity, ethical conundrums, criminal negligence, racist hiring policies, dirty tricks and so on. People who need salvation. Oh, that we would encourage one another to see these little ‘villages’ and ‘towns’ as our mission fields. What a difference that would make to so many people – to be released into confident ministry just where they are. Nehemiah, Joseph, the Exodus midwives, Naaman’s servant girl, Daniel, Ester, Lydia would have approved, I’m sure. After all, when it comes to witness in a pagan environment the Bible is very clear – leave it to the workers.

Mark Greene is Executive Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.  Licc .org.     He is author of Thank God it’s Monday, the video A Vision for Workplace Ministry and 50 Ways to Support the Workers Without Going Insane. Content distributed by WorkLife.org

Many of us have gone to start churches or to be part of churches without due consideration of what this thing is all about. As a result, we accept whatever that is presented to us either by tradition or by those we assume know as we are not in a position to discern and assess correct definitions, operations and practices of church. Generally, it has become the culture of Christians to invest in something they do not even understand why it exists. We invest our lives, time and our resources without even checking if the church system we are part of is operating within the Biblically correct framework. We take the most important decision in life, that of giving our lives to Christ and then continue without checking if the “giving of our lives to Christ” is bearing any real fruit to Him and His kingdom. In fact at times we do not even care if the thing is correct as long as we can produce a successful church service on Sunday morning. We forget that Israel under Moses had “successful church services” in the form of the manifest presence of God (Pillar of Cloud and Fire) although God Himself had long judged that they would not enter the Promised Land or His purposes (Heb 3:7-19, Jude 1:5, Acts 7:39-43). The fact that God had judged them did not mean that He would not heal their diseases and provide manna for them; God did this faithfully until all of them died except for two men, Joshua and Caleb, whose hearts were set on the journey. This is what I call “sustaining presence of God” where God provides His miraculous power and manifest presence just as a way of waiting for the entire generation to die in order to raise a new generation that can possess His promises.

Definitions

Mathew 16:13-19

 Matthew 16:13-19

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  19  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” NIV

It was in Mathew 16 that Jesus revealed for the first time His intent of building an entity He called “church”. The word “church” was unpopular in the religious circles of the day. The word that was used to describe the gathering of a people for religious purposes was “synagogue”. Jesus Himself was familiar with synagogues, he went and attended synagogue meetings and sometimes even taught in synagogues, see Luke 4:16-21.

Luke 4:16-18

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

 NIV

“Synagogue” (sunagoge in Greek): an assemblage of persons. If you study about Synagogues in the Gospels and in the book of Acts, you will realise that it was basically an assembly of people (Jews) who came together to pray, worship and teach one another on the Word of God. Since the synagogue was a Jewish religious assembly, their Bible would have been the Old Testament (the Law and the Prophets). For example, in Luke 4:17, Jesus was given the scroll of prophet Isaiah.

It is important to unveil the definition of “synagogue” simply because although Jesus was familiar with synagogue operations, He did not say “I will build my synagogue”. On the contrary, He said “I will build my church (ekklesia)”. This straightaway tells us that the Lord was not simply establishing an assembly of people who would meet weekly only for religious purposes (as the Jews did within the synagogue system). The disturbing realisation is that the church has not only been run like a synagogue historically, it still operates as a synagogue even today. Church, just as ancient synagogues remains a system of bringing people together for religious purposes. In the synagogues, there was powerful evangelism taking place just as we see today (Matt 23:15). Now anybody reading this article will have to track through following articles carefully because if we read as far as this paragraph, then we will misinterpret and misrepresent what is being said.

Matthew 16:18

18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  NIV

 “Church” (ekklesia in Greek): The word ekklesia is made up of two words, “ek” which means “out” and “klesis” which means “a calling”. This word “ekklesia” was used among the Greeks of a body of citizens gathered to discuss the affairs of the state (Vine’s Dictionary). The word refers to the gathering of competent citizens of a city-state in order to decide issues regarding laws, office appointments, and public policy (Mounce’s Dictionary).

The ekklesia was therefore a political system of government and human development.

The important question here for us is, why did Jesus not say “I will build my synagogue”? Jesus took what was known to be a “secular” concept, entity and system and declared that He would build this same system to advance the kingdom of God. Ekklesia was a system of regulation and development of a city-state and so those who formed what was known as church needed to be people who were concerned with the affairs of humanity or with the human conditions of their city-state. Basically, ekklesia had a serious political-developmental role and function. When I say “political”, I do not mean “party politics”. The important question is, why are these realities not even traceable within the current identity, existence, doctrine and operations of the church? Who has defined church for us? Where did they get those definitions from?

In declaring the building of church, Jesus took what was known to be secular and unreligious; He bypassed the whole synagogue operation. This reveals the mind and the intent of God for the church.

Principles from Matt 16:13-19

• The revelation of church is preceded by a correct definition of Christ (Matt 16:13-17). The first question by Jesus was ‘who do men say that I am’. Correct definition of Christ basically means that we need to have correct revelation and doctrine in the church. Our sight of Christ produces understanding, doctrine and church operations. If we see Christ wrongly, like those who confused Him with past expressions of the Spirit (John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah) then we are not even going to see what church is all about.
• Church is built upon ‘this rock’, the foundation of revelation truth (Matt 16:18). And so the extent to which we have correct revelation truth is the extent to which we have a correct solid foundation upon which to build.
• Church is “built” (Matt 16:18). Jesus did say, “I will build my church”. This means that what I’ve just described in the paragraphs above needs to be built diligently over a long period of time. Our test of correct building is when we eventually produce a mature people that God can use to administer and govern the affairs of humanity. We have to produce the ekklesia. The idea of building must therefore emphasise to us issues of (a) having design (a blueprint) for church that must be built, (b) mobilising necessary and relevant resources (tools from God) that will help us build, (c) engaging in a long term process of building (building takes time), (d) being much more deliberate in how we build church.
• The building of church is a governmental-warfare issue (Matt 16:18). There is “gates of hades” we have to overcome. “Gates” in the Bible always represent wisdom and government. Elders sat at the gates to discuss issues of their cities and to come up with wisdom for effective government (e.g. Prov 31:23). This is the meaning behind the concept of elders in the churches. Paul meant that elders were governors of church communities (1 Tim 3). Elders were governors and senators of human civilisations and the church has reduced them to conductors of church services and builders of church organisations. Building a church service and governing human lives in Christ are two different realities. The “gates of hades” therefore means that there is wisdom of darkness that can overcome us if we are not receiving a higher wisdom from God. When we build church, we are engaged in warfare.
• Church has a clear mandate to advance the kingdom of God (Matt 16:19). According to Matt 24:14, this mandate must be brought to completion before the end comes. If this is true, how is it that kingdom realities are so distant from church processes. Why is there lack of kingdom emphasis in the church? Why has the “vision of the pastor” taken over clearly stated vision of advancing the kingdom of God in the earth? Have we considered that Christ and apostles preached that which they called “the gospel of the kingdom of God”? Why are we hearing “a different” gospel in the church today? Why are we “sermonising” the saints instead of preaching doctrine that reveals kingdom realities to believers. Have we considered what the kingdom of God is all about?

There are several principles that can be extracted from the word “ekklesia” (the called out ones):

• To be part of church means that you have been “called out” (of the world) to participate in serious kingdom business. That “calling out” is not a monastic process, i.e. it does mean we have to distance ourselves from the world. That calling out is one based on identity, mentality, ideology and value system. If church is made up of people who are called out then why is it that believers still wonder if they are called or not? What is a calling and what are we called for? Clearly, what we can say for now is that “calling” is not limited to “pastors” but to all those who are part of the ekklesia of God.
• One can not be part of church if one is still locked up in worldliness, worldly philosophies, values and ideologies. There must be a “calling out” or a “moving out of the world” process.
• To be part of church means that we have to be motivated by an advance of the kingdom of God.
• To become a functional church (ekklesia) we need to be trained and equipped (instead of being sermonised), see Eph 4:11-13. The “ekklesia of God” will not be produced through “sermons” but through training and equipping for kingdom function. This training must produce a set of competences inside the church that in turn produce people who can interact and advance the cause of the kingdom of God in the spheres where God has placed them (namely: Business, Workplace, Communities etc.). We have to be trained to function within the broader scope of the kingdom (and not simply or only in a “local church”). Many of believers have become competent in handling the affairs of their local churches but are still incapable to advance the kingdom of God into their God-given spheres

Mission of the church begins with Jesus and is outlined in the gospels

Areas we need to rethink

• Entering the Kingdom – John 3: 1-7
• Practicing the Kingdom – Matt 13:52 “Every student well-trained in the Kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.”

• Every act of love, gratitude and kindness
• Every work of art and music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation
• Every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or walk
• Every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support for one’s fellow beings – for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing
• Every prayer, all Sprit-led teaching, every deed which spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world (Wright)

by Ric Benson

The fundamental purpose of the Christian church, and therefore every local Christian congregation, is to work with God in the realization of His kingdom. It is the kingdom of God that powerfully and predominantly lies at the heart of the teaching, life and action of the Lord Jesus and it is this kingdom that pervades His parables, His miracles and His passion. Sadly the significance of this teaching has been sadly ignored and neglected by the modern church.

The concept of the “kingdom of God” (or interchangeably the “kingdom of heaven”) is found more than 100 times in the first three Gospels, twice only in John’s Gospel (although eternal life and the kingdom of God are interchangeable concepts), is the centre of John the Baptist’s proclamation concerning Jesus, is directly associated with Jesus’ presence – particularly in healing the sick, casting out demons, and as an explanation of Jesus’ ministry and teaching – and it underpinned Jesus’ public inauguration of His ministry recorded in Luke 4:18-19 ( taken from Isaiah 61)

It is impossible to understand the purpose and mission of the local church without understanding the purpose and characteristics of the kingdom of God. It is also impossible to fulfil the Great Commission – to make disciples where we are by living under God’s rule and reign (Matthew 28 and Mark 16), the Great Commandment – to impart God’s unconditional love through our lives (John 13), the Cultural Mandate – to be engaged in and with the world but not conformed to its lifestyle (John 17), the Creation Mandate – to exercise responsible dominion over the physical world (Genesis 2), or to outwork the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray which included the phrase “God’s will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”, without understanding what the kingdom of God really means.

Fundamentally, the kingdom of God is the rule and authority of God Himself being worked out on earth. In this rule and authority, God intervenes to rescue, preserve and save His people, put right the wrongs of this world and manifestly establish justice and righteousness, not through redemptive domination which is based on the use of superior counter force, but through the redemptive power of compassionate, loving servanthood as modelled by Jesus. Jesus’ kingdom, although manifesting itself visibly through the lives of those in it, is not in the present essentially a physical earthly reign of the Messiah as the Jewish people longed for, but an inner reign of God that had powerful effect in consequently transforming society. Ultimately of course the kingdom of god will result in a new earth with Jesus physically reigning.

In Jesus’ healing and exorcism ministries, in His miracles, in His forgiveness of sins, in his ministry amongst the poor and marginalized and in inclusive openness to people from all levels of society, Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom rule had begun in Him, but in His teaching, demonstrated that although the kingdom had been inaugurated in Him, it would not be fully established until His return. So in Jesus’ teaching and example of the kingdom there is an important tension between the “here and now” and the “yet to come”. Ultimate justice and righteousness will only be established by His return.

The two greatest dangers to Christian teaching and practice lie in the two extremes of teaching on the kingdom of God. One is that it will come at the end of time when Christ returns (catastrophism/future focus), and the other is that it is entirely about the here and now (gradualism/present focus).  The former teaching fails to address the current pain and needs of the world, whilst the latter projects a reliance on social action and change, or a spiritual triumphalism promising more than it delivers. These two extremes need to be held in tension for a true “kingdom” balance. In the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the church in Acts 2, the reclaiming of the earth and everything in it back to God’s original plans and purposes has been inaugurated. In the return of Christ to rule in power, the consummation of the kingdom will take place, never again to be undone.

Biblical teachings present us with six fundamental tension points or polarities that are central to the mystery of God’s reign. Understanding the kingdom biblically requires recognizing these polarities and preserving a balance in them.

1. 1. Present versus future.
      Jesus said “The kingdom of God is near” (Mark 1 :15), but also that we should pray for God’s kingdom to come (Matt. 6:10).
   2. Individual versus social.
      Jesus said the kingdom is like hidden treasure an individual person might find (Matt. 13:44), but he also said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). He talked about being born again in order to see the kingdom (John 3:3) but also described it as a feast to be shared (Luke 13:29).
   3. Spirit versus matter.
      Paul said, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 15:50), and Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). But Jesus associated himself with the healing and liberation of the Jubilee (Luke 4: 18-21) and Revelation speaks of a kingdom in which God’s people “will reign on the earth” (Rev. 5: 10).
   4. Gradual versus climactic.
      Jesus said the kingdom is like grain that grows gradually in a field (Mark 4:26-28). But he also said its coming would be like the midnight cry of the arriving bridegroom (Matt. 25: 1-6). [17]
   5. Divine action versus human action. The kingdom of God is like a returning king who settles accounts (Luke 19:11-27). It is God who rules and reigns (Ps. 99: 1-2). Yet, the kingdom is also something we must seek (Matt. 6:33), and Christians can be “fellow workers for the kingdom of God” (Col. 4:11).
   6. The Church’s relation to the kingdom; the tension between seeing the church and the kingdom as essentially the same or as clearly different. Jesus said to the Apostle Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16: 19). But he also spoke of the kingdom as future and said that not all those who worshiped him, but only those who did God’s will, would enter the kingdom (Matt. 7:21).
      . . . Any biblical theology of the kingdom will need to wrestle with these polarities.

Jesus’ teaching and ministry demonstrate that the extent and nature of the kingdom and the rule of God is all-encompassing – affecting every level and arena of human life and existence. His inaugural reading of Isaiah 61 (recorded in Luke 4:18-19), is so powerful because it announces the integral and holistic nature of the coming kingdom, which will only be fully established when the whole of the created order, so deeply affected by the fall, is healed by God’s renewal and re-creation, and “shalom” – God’s peace on a personal, interpersonal, physical and cosmic level is restored. Shalom is the ultimate goal of the kingdom. So this kingdom of which Jesus speaks and the related Gospel of the kingdom is holistic…it is good news to the economically disinherited (Luke 6:20), as well as to the spiritually poor (Matthew 5:30, good news to the socially and politically disinherited, good news to the physically disinherited, and good news to the spiritually and physically bruised and oppressed. The year of the Lord’s favour, Jubilee, isn’t just a heavenly hope, but an embodied hope on a recreated earth, of which we are the first fruits and should be about the Father’s business.

The work of the kingdom, although embracing the giving of “a reason for the hope that lies within us with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15), is not only about proselytising but about standing with God in relation to a fallen and hurting world because it is required by God and is right to do so. Such a stand then gives a powerful apologetic for evangelism and mission. The work of the kingdom emanates from living under God’s rule with integrity. This removes hidden agenda, impure motives, self-aggrandisement and self-promotion, showcasing our ideology, and the use and abuse of others for our purposes. We are not charged with “bringing the kingdom of God to earth”, for only Jesus Christ can do that, but by being an agent of the kingdom in joining God in what He is already doing through His Holy Spirit by encountering people and transforming lives.

The Gospel of the kingdom of God needs to be understood so that evangelism can be recalibrated. “Gospel”(euangelion) was not a technical religious phrase, but a secular phrase in wide use, co-opted by Christians to express what god was doing in and through Christ. The specific meaning was that it pointed to a messenger who would run (or ride a horse) ahead of the king across the hills, coming from a place of battle, entering and declaring to the city victory over enemies. It was a public announcement about a public event intended for the public realm of life…because of the victory, and announcement off the victory, the city would now have a new beginning and a different reality. The messenger would appear, raise their right hand and yell out “rejoice, we have won the victory.” So in the case of Jesus, He comes from a place of battle (in the wilderness with Satan), and enters Galilee preaching the euangelion of God…with the good news of victory…public news that has public implications for the public realm. In our case, we need to let people know that Jesus has battled the powers and principalities, has won the battle, thus providing for all who live in Christ freedom, liberty, hope and purpose, and the lifestyle of the kingdom lived by those who proclaim this message give proof of their claims thus pointing others to Christ. Anything less than this is reductionist doing a disservice to Jesus and his kingdom.

Kingdom people, kingdom communities, and kingdom mission all are engaged in announcing and demonstrating the “good news” of God’s redemption in relation to a fallen and hurting world. Such announcement and demonstration is much more than evangelism and social involvement. It is a total engagement of all we are and all we believe in with the needy world around us. It embraces what we say, what we believe, how we act, how we care, and how we relate – all of which should be firmly based on the full counsel of the Word of God and an integration of the two great commandments of loving God with all our heart, soul and mind, and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40).

Living as kingdom people and kingdom communities requires us to intentionally define and continually action kingdom principles throughout the church community and on into the world at large. Being a kingdom community calls us to engage in a balanced way in all of the following principles and implications as a way of life;

1. Submission to Christ – Lordship, obedience, faithfulness, discipleship, sacrifice
2. Worshipful living – praise, worship, celebration, thanksgiving, faith
3. Intentional stewardship – stewardship, giving, kingdom investment
4. Passionate pursuit of God – prayer, Bible reading, worship, surrender
5. Growth in Christlikeness – incarnation, fruit of the Spirit, Christ’s character and teaching
6. Biblical focus – Word-centred, teaching, theologizing, authority
7. Relationally Connect – Outreach, community, incorporation, embracing all, recognition of human dignity, neighbourliness,
8. Full Participation – commitment, sacrifice, focus, involvement, service
9. Compassionate Caring – justice, mercy, grace, love, care for poor and marginalized, active participation in causes, employment of time, talents treasure and testimony
10. Spirit Empowerment – healing, deliverance, boldness, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare against powers and principalities
11. Evangelistic Outreach – audio-visual presentation of the Gospel of the kingdom with an apologetic of the hope that lies within given in gentleness and with respect, especially to the church’s local community
12. Missions Engagement – promotion of the kingdom of God particularly to places that have not heard

Discussion starters
The following statements are provided to provoke discussion.

1. For too long the evangelical church has reduced the Gospel of the kingdom which Jesus preached, to the Gospel of salvation. Whilst the Gospel of salvation is of fundamental importance, such a limited emphasis has left many either still-born as Christians, or totally ignorant as to what life in Christ should be about and what participation in the kingdom of God requires of them.

2. In recent days, the evangelical church seems to have discovered or rediscovered the notion of the kingdom of God, and has made significant moves to realign with the broader kingdomimplications ie. Rick Warrens PEACE Plan. The P E A C E Plan is an initiative begun by Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Senior Pastor Rick Warren’s stated intention in launching the P. E. A. C. E. (or PEACE) Plan is to involve every Christian and every church in every nation in the task of serving people in the areas of the greatest global needs. The tag-line is ‘Ordinary people empowered by God making a difference together wherever they are’. P E A C E is an acronym for the stated methodology for achieving the plan: “Promote reconciliation – Equip servant leaders – Assist the poor – Care for the sick – Educate the next generation.”

3. In a so-called “post-modern era” (a reaction to the failings of the modernist era) which exhibits to a greater or lesser degree some or all of the following tenets:

(1) Self is rejected as the Centre
(2) Reason and logic is not enough
(3) Enlightenment is rejected
(4) There is no objective world
(5) There is no metanarrative
(6) Science is not the full answer
(7) The physical world is not enough
(8) Authority is not to be trusted
(9) Life is a journey
(10) Truth is relative

only an authentic “kingdom “ emphasis by the Christian church will make significant impact in our fallen and needy world. Such a proclamation will assist in removing the accusation of hypocrisy so often levelled at the church and excite people to the real cause of Christ of reconciliation, redemption and restoration of our world.

4. Jesus’ first recorded teaching is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). This teaching is timeless, radical and profound and provides the basis of living in the kingdom of God under God’s rule. Such teaching is diametrically opposed to the way the majority of Christians live and is seen by many pastors as too demanding or outdated for their congregations to entertain. Sadly, however, the Christian life as it was meant to be lived cannot be experienced until such teaching is seriously embraced. We have a responsibility as Christians to personally and corporately align with and live out Jesus’ kingdom teaching and by so doing proclaim with integrity the full message of the Gospel which will again excite people to convert and participate.

Application Questions

1. If the above statement is an accurate descrption of the Kingdom of God and associated implications and responsibilities, what needs to be done in and thru churches to more realistically advance the Kingdom?
2. Where and why has the church lost its kingdom identity and emphasis, and what can be done to realistically restore it?
3. Today’s churches seem to gravitate to a particular emphasis of the kingdom at the expense of other expressions. Is it reasonable to expect that any church could embrace, much less balance the six priorities expressed in the material?
4. When evaluating your church against the description of the Kingdom given above, how do you rate (on a 1 - poor to 10 outstanding basis) and what would be the most significant thing you as a pastor could do to improve your rating?

REFERENCE MATERIAL
Important theological reflections and frameworks concerning the kingdom, sin, shalom, the mission of the church, vocation, and the story we’re in.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. Jesus and the Kingdom of God: Eerdman’s Publishing /Patternoster Press 1986
Brueggemann, Walter. Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom. Shalom resource. New York: United Church Press, 1982.
Duncan, Malcolm Kingdom Come – The local church as a catalyst for social change: Monarch Books 2007
Jones, E. Stanley. The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972.
Mouw, Richard J. When the Kings Come Marching in: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1983.
Munroe., Myles. Rediscovering The Kingdom – ancient hope for our 21st Century world: Destiny Image Publishers 2004
Munroe, Myles. Kingdom Principles – Preparing for kingdom experience and expansion: Destiny Image Publishers 2006
Munroe, Myles. Applying the Kingdom – rediscovering the priority of God for mankind: Destiny Image Publishers 2007
Plantinga, Cornelius. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1995.
Schuurman, Douglas James. Vocation: Discerning Our Callings in Life. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2004.
Snyder, Howard A. Models of the Kingdom. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.
Stackhouse, John G. Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Wink, Walter. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
Wink, Walter. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
Wink, Walter. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at the Free University of Amsterdam. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1983.
Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2006.
Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
Wright, N. T., and N. T. Wright. The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

by Mal Fletcher

We live in a time of unprecedented change.

The sci-fi writer and futurist Arthur C. Clark noted that, “Only a century ago the poles were utterly unknown, much of Africa was still as mysterious as in the time of King Solomon, and no human being had descended 100 feet into the sea or risen more than a mile into the air.”

Today, the knowledge in the world is doubling every two years — and the rate is itself increasing.

Amazing new and emerging technologies, such as nanorobotics, biotech and gene technologies, offer unprecedented opportunities for progress on many fronts. Of course, every technology has a potential down-side, and we must be wary of how far we travel down the road of hi-tech, and how fast. On the whole, though, we live in exciting – if sometimes worrying – times.

Yet the future of human communities, cities and nations is not determined simply by technological advance. Neither will it be simply the product of what risk analysts call ‘low probability – high consequence’ events (such as earthquakes or tsunamis).

The future of cities and communities is determined by human responses to events. Human choices will shape the future, deciding among other things how technologies should be utilized and how we should interface with our natural environment.

However, human choices don’t appear in a vacuum; they are products of our values, aspirations and fears. Because we are social beings, our values are heavily influenced by the cultures – the norms of behaviour and worldviews – of the various groups to which we belong.

These cultures are shaped to a significant degree by the actions (or, inaction) of leaders. Whether in the spheres of business, politics, economics, media, academia, religion or community organizations, leaders don’t simply build structures, they are architects of culture.

In the end, it’s the strength of a community’s culture that determines how that community will respond to the major challenges and questions it will face.

Leaders can reshape the future of entire communities and cities, by creating positive, proactive cultures within their spheres of influence.

In fact, this is the core of the leadership call: to move organisations – and through them entire communities – forward in a positive direction. The major role of leadership is to equip people to shape the future proactively – for themselves and for the world.

If the next decade, with its fast moving technological advances and natural and ethical challenges, is to see the world become a better place for most, if not all, of its inhabitants, leaders of all stripes will need to take that role seriously and engage the future with hope and courage.

If its leaders think and act in the right way, the church has the opportunity to become a landmark for communities in constant change. We have the opportunity – indeed, the responsibility – to develop strategies that will move entire communities forward in a positive and godly direction. By building strategic, future-engaging cultures of hope in our churches, we can shape the direction of communities and entire cities.

Mal Fletcher heads up Next Wave International a communications group which is training companies, major community organizations, charities and churches to engage the future and move society forward in a positive direction – with a special focus on Europe.Visit his site

In the summer of 2000, Mike Lueken had every reason to be proud as a pastor of Oak Hills Church in Folsom, California. Every Sunday, thousands of people flocked to Oak Hill’s sixteen acre campus with its 35,000-square-foot facility, and the church was doing everything that a thriving, suburban megachurch with a $2 million budget was supposed to do. But then Lueken took a class at Fuller Seminary taught by Dallas Willard. The experience led to a complete change of course for him and Oak Hills Church.

“[Willard] was teaching on the Sermon on the Mount and conveying the heart of the gospel through Jesus’ teaching, and I felt I was sitting there listening to something I’d never heard before,” Lueken recalls. “We realized that we had to rethink what the gospel was about. Does the Bible teach only the gospel of heaven and forgiveness of sins? Or is it about a new way of living that involves the power of God, the peace of God, along with your sins being forgiven and going to heaven when you die?”

Lueken’s story illustrates the change occurring among today’s pastors, change that reflects new—or renewed—interest in a fuller picture of the gospel and in a sense of mission. In order to gain a better understanding of these changes, Leadership conducted a survey in May 2008 asking nearly 700 evangelical pastors how their perceptions of the gospel and mission currently compare with their understanding a decade ago. The results clearly indicate that pastors’ attitudes and beliefs are shifting.

What the survey actually says

The survey was designed to uncover movement, not simply raw numbers, and this is important when analyzing the data. When asked if “the kingdom of God is a present reality, a future reality, or both,” 37 percent of pastors said they currently believe the kingdom is a future reality in heaven, 20 percent said the kingdom is a present reality on earth, and 33 percent said both. But 58 percent said that ten years ago they believed it was a future reality, and only 9 percent said they believed ten years ago that it was a present reality. The movement is clearly toward understanding the kingdom as a present, earthly reality, even if it remains a minority view. Here are more trends uncovered by the research. Compared to ten years ago:

Pastors are focusing more on the Gospels than on the Epistles. More pastors believe the gospel is advanced by demonstration and not simply proclamation. More pastors say the goal of evangelism is to grow “the” church rather than to grow “my” church. More pastors believe partnering with other local churches is essential to accomplishing their mission. The typical survey respondent was a white male pastor in his 50s, with an average church size of about 400 people, with about twenty years of pastoral experience.

The Christian life has to be demonstrated, not just explained.Leadership spoke with numerous church leaders to examine these results. And most were not surprised by the shifts.Scot McKnight, professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University in Chicago and popular blogger (JesusCreed.org) said that he considers the survey results “very good news. The shifts have actually been going on for maybe 25 or 30 years. There has, though, been a surge in the last ten years. Evangelicals rediscovered the Gospels, and began to reframe their understanding of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom and not just justification.”

At the same time church leaders were becoming more biblically aware, they also were becoming more globally aware. David Platt, the 29-year-old senior pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, spent time in Honduras seven years ago and found himself at a spiritual turning point.

“Something happened to me there,” he said. “I started wrestling with how I reconcile my life with the needs in the world.” That trip began a series of international journeys, such as his time visiting a seminary in Indonesia. In order to graduate, every student in that seminary had to have planted one church in a Muslim community that had at least 30 new believers. “Two of their classmates died in the process,” Platt said. “Whether it’s there, or in an underground house church in Asia, or with brothers and sisters in war-torn Sudan, I came back to an American church culture that simply valued bigger budgets and buildings. There was a disconnect.”

Whatever the particular cause for the shift in these pastors’ ideas regarding the gospel and mission, five changes are gaining momentum in congregations all across the country:

1. Affirming the whole gospel
2. Not looking to a megachurch model
3. Focusing on making disciples
4. Encouraging a missional mindset as a means of spiritual formation
5. Establishing partnerships to advance the gospel.

From proclamation to demonstration

The Kingdom isn’t a program, but men and women radically living for Christ. Meyer agrees that too often the gospel has been inadequately expressed. “When you get the proclamation of what the gospel really is, not the consumer gospel that says ‘take care of the church and we’ll take care of you,’ when the gospel is faithfully and truly taught, that Jesus is Lord and he is making all things right, that’s when people really get impacted with the Kingdom.”

Meyer says, “The gospel is both proclamation as well as demonstration. The Christian life is a life that has to be demonstrated, not just explained but actually seen. The only way that can be done is in life-on-life organic relationships, not just in artificial programs of the church. It’s something that is caught.”

From mega to mini

In 2007, the Willow Creek Association released a study entitled “REVEAL: Where are You?” a survey of more than 400 churches representing hundreds of thousands of church attendees. The findings were surprising enough that even the Wall Street Journal took notice. What Willow discovered, and what many other pastors are realizing, is that building a church with quality programming to increase numerical growth does not guarantee spiritual depth and often leads to the burnout of its pastors. In addition, the current generation of young adults is not as enamored with the programs offered by these seemingly successful churches.

From programs to people

Another shift is the growing emphasis on spiritual maturity, not just conversions. Pastors surveyed are pouring more energy into disciple-making even at the expense of programs previously considered sacred cows. One of the by-products of this focus on disciplemaking is the realization that it is not only the church leaders who bear the responsibility for proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel. Everyone is to be empowered, thus shifting the emphasis from the “alpha leader” to the priesthood of all believers. “The Kingdom of God is not advanced by programs or budgets,” Platt says, “but by men and women who are radically surrendered to Christ.”

From Sunday to everyday

Compared to ten years ago, today’s pastors say they increasingly see disciple-making and meaningfully engaging the world as not merely ancillary expressions of faith, but the means through which spiritual formation occurs. For Eugene Cho, founding pastor of Quest Church in Seattle, engaging with the needs of the city is a key part of spiritual growth. He describes the Sunday service at Quest as very simple: “We don’t put on a big show. We gather, we sing, we read the Scripture and teach, and then we have communion. People may come because of our Sunday service, but that is not why they stay. “Our engagement with the poor, our social services, the way we engage culture through our non-profit café, these are the things people talk about. They see that there is a genuine attempt to live out the gospel.”

“Sunday morning is not what church is about,” says Life on the Vine’s Fitch. “It’s a place to be shaped by God to be the church in the world. Hopefully people get that our service isn’t about getting what you need to be a better Christian. It’s about being in each other’s lives and living communally in the world.” Gibbons agrees. “We are moving from a Sunday experience to an everyday experience. How has this affected our time and the management of our resources? I have told our staff that at least half of our time has to be focused on personal training. I don’t mind anymore if some of our programs aren’t as snazzy.”

From competition to cooperation

Another shift evident in the Leadership survey is the growing belief that partnerships are a critical means by which churches can reach their communities with the gospel. At Grays’s church in Atlanta, partnerships abound with numerous other Christian and secular entities. “We partner with Bank of America to feed the homeless each month. We partner with other churches every month to do a House of Prayer, and in fact before we even planted the church, every person in the Atlanta phone book had been prayed for by ourselves and our partner churches,” Grays said. For NewSong, which has established sister congregations both locally in Southern California and globally in Bangkok and Mexico City and elsewhere, partnerships are a key component to its ability to minister effectively.

Caution ahead

Pastors interviewed for this article expressed notes of warning that we not be too reactionary in our opinions, resulting in healthy shifts becoming unhealthy overcorrections. For example, Jonathan Leeman, director of communications for 9Marks.org, an organization that helps churches develop biblical models of ministry, believes that a number of caveats need to be made before determining whether these shifts are good.

Regarding whether pastors should focus more on the Gospels versus the Epistles, Leeman says, “Narratives communicate truths in one fashion and Epistles in another. But you need both.” He fears that the church may capitulate to the temptation to “downplay anything that distinguishes us from the world, anything that is not going to be popular. We must not downplay the harder, edgier doctrines such as God’s wrath or a robust understanding of sin.”

In the area of proclamation versus demonstration, Grays feels that pastors need to be careful not to overemphasize one at the expense of the other: “You have a hard time building a biblical case for demonstration evangelism. It’s really clear that proclamation is how people come to Christ. No one who sees the service we are doing says, ‘I want to get saved.’ There always has to be proclamation in the mix.” Cho also warns pastors not to forget the importance of proclamation. “We shouldn’t let our conversation about needing more demonstration minimize the importance of proclamation. … We have to be careful not to be reactive. A pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other is not helpful.”

Perhaps the greatest challenge for today’s pastors comes in the form of a congregation that does not understand or support the leader’s changing perspective. The Leadership survey discovered that many pastors see a gap between their understanding of the gospel and church’s mission and the congregation’s view of the gospel and misison. We should expect leaders to be a few steps ahead of their people on these matters, but if pastors are too far ahead of their churches, it may lead to problems down the road. The painful story of the changes undertaken by Mike Lueken and the leaders at Oak Hills Community Church, first reported in the summer 2006 issue of Leadership, is instructive for every leader seeking to infuse their changing view of the gospel into a church accustomed to a different understanding.

Time will tell if the changes uncovered in the survey will be lasting, or if the pastors’ responses are indicative of a passing phase. But in the interim, Cho sounds a cautionary note for those who are either struggling in their church or, equally dangerous, riding on the wave of their perceived successes: “It takes great courage to endure in a situation where you are proclaiming something new and people are not responding. It also takes great courage to bring change to an established, more institutionalized church. It is surprisingly tempting to just settle and coast.”

Helen Lee is co-editor and contributor to Growing Healthy Asian American Churches (IVP) and a lay leader at Parkwood Community Church in Villa Park, Illinois.

This article is an edited version of Lee’s full article which can be found at Leadership

by Ric Benson

In responding to the critically important question, “What is the place of the church in the wider community?” we are immediately pressed to examine the lives of individual Christians and the churches to which they belong and through which they serve. The simplistic answers so often given to this question reflect a defence of a church’s ministry emphasis, rather than a critical thoughtful response from God’s viewpoint as supported by His Word. If Socrates were conducting his enquiry into this question, he would bombard the Christian and the church leaders with a plethora of underpinning questions to force a considered response in the hope that adjustment and refinement of ministry and mission would ensue. It is imperative that the response to this question then would not be naively simplistic, confusingly complex, or irrationally defensive, but powerfully insightful and practically simple.

This important question poses at least three implied nuances.
1. “What should be the place of the church in the wider community?” This nuance requires theological and philosophical considerations, and its careful analysis should greatly assist in the formation of the church’s purpose and mission statements.

2. “What currently is the place of the church in the wider community?” This question requires sociological and psychological considerations, and its careful analysis should greatly assist in the formation of the church’s lifestyle and core values statements.

3. “What could be the place of the church in the wider community?” This question requires strategic and practical considerations, and its careful analysis should assist greatly in the formation of the church’s vision and goals statements and strategic plan.

It should be noted, that asking profound or key questions around an issue, is an art every Christ-follower and church leader should master, and is the path to focussed thinking. Focussed thinking gives clarity, without which, effective leadership, planning and communication will at best be limited and wasteful, and at worst destructive and misleading. Confidence, balance, motivation, organization, and potential development and release, all require focus. Focussed thinking is mature thinking which allows the development of process to link opportunity and desired outcome. Great leaders and great churches have the ability and boldness to continually and passionately refocus and realign based on the asking of profound questions and seriously responding to them.

Asking and answering the important questions

Space will only permit a superficial and simple treatment of each of these questions and considerations, but hopefully such treatment will galvanize us to carefully define and design our church’s ministry to the wider community, restructure and redirect as necessary, and encourage positive and proactive personal and corporate response. The responses to these three abovementioned nuances is an outcome of asking and considering many other questions, which for brevity sake, have to be assumed rather than listed. A brief reading list is given at the end of this paper to assist in deeper analysis.

Q: What should be the place of the church in the wider community?

The local church is a community of people, who have through salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, entered into the Kingdom of God, with Jesus as their King and them as His obedient subjects. This community of Kingdom people are to progressively grow through discipleship and supernaturally expressed love, into a deeper understanding and supernatural experience of the Kingdom of God. As they do, their mission is to be agents of the Kingdom of God in their wider community, and indeed in the world around them. They do this by fulfilling the Great Commission of making disciples, and the Great Commandment of loving others. They are supernaturally empowered through prayer, and guided by both the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

The church is to occupy God’s central place in the wider community. The church is not to exist for itself, but for all who have not yet entered the Kingdom of God. The church is to be an audio-visual agent of the Kingdom of God through proclamation and compassionate service that meets the community’s deepest needs. When this concept and these truths are understood the church is ready to set its purpose and mission statements.

Fundamentally the church is called to present a living and dynamic expression of the Kingdom of God on earth to both those inside and outside the Kingdom. To those outside the Kingdom, they explain that Jesus is the door into the Kingdom, and that through the salvation He provides they too can enter within and experience the Kingdom of God. The church then is to disciple those in the Kingdom to be Kingdom citizens, and train them to be agents of the Kingdom in the wider world through compassionate and loving service and challenging proclamation. Sadly much of what the church and its congregation believes and does bears little or no relation to this fundamental call. The purpose and mission statements of the church must be Kingdom centred and must powerfully dictate the very nature and activity of the church at every level.

Q. What currently is the place of the church in the wider community?
Many, if not most local churches and their congregations have a conviction and heart both for Kingdom living and for bringing the Kingdom of God to their wider community. Sadly, the church’s busyness with internal programs, the congregation’s preoccupation with the cares of their frenetic lives, the enormity and overwhelming nature of the community needs, and the confusion about what it means to be in the world but not of the world, has led to the church in general and congregations in particular, being largely disengaged from its Kingdom responsibilities. The church needs to revisit its core values and its desired spiritual DNA and intentionally build into every person and ministry area, Kingdom values and lifestyle from which growing engagement with the wider community can emanate and flourish.

The Kingdom values and lifestyle would include the following:
Submission to Christ, Worshipful Living, Intentional Stewardship, Passionate seeking of God, Growing in Christ-likeness, Bible-Centeredness, Relational Connection, Full Participation , Compassionate Caring, Spirit Empowerment, Evangelistic Outreach, and Missions Engagement.

When a church actively seeks to prioritize, promote, establish, and develop individually and corporately in its culture and people, these and other kingdom core values, spiritual DNA and lifestyle qualities, it will naturally and supernaturally begin to take its place in its wider community as an agent of the Kingdom. Programs which pacify people and cater for their wants will never achieve this outcome. For the church to change there will have to be open, honest, and dynamic assessment of their current Kingdom status, and a passionate desire to realign the church and its congregation to obedient Kingdom living for Christ.

What could be the place of the church in the wider community?

When the local church realizes that it can powerfully impact its wider community by being kingdom-focussed, that is, taking the Bible as both its message and method book and applying biblical principles, priorities, practices and performance outcomes, it is then ready to enunciate and pursue its vision, its goals and its strategic plan. When the church develops a Kingdom pathway both personally and corporately, the life and power of God flows back into the church and the church then has a renewed and real sense of meaning, purpose and mission.

The church will always struggle with its own carnality, but when Kingdom-focussed will powerfully press on, knowing that its very struggle is an essential part of its mission, and an indicator that the clash of Kingdom and world cultures is in progress. Rather than being overwhelmed with various methods, techniques, ideas and procedures all purporting to make the church “successful”, God is simply calling on all churches and Christ-followers to be Kingdom-focussed and committed to being agents of His Kingdom.

The simple non-negotiable underpinning biblical purposes of celebration, cultivation, care, communication and community, along with the priorities of making disciples, maturing believers, and multiplying ministries, working through the practices of corporate worship, open and closed groups and ministry teams, will of necessity produce numerical growth, spiritual transformation, ministry expansion and Kingdom advance.

Conclusion

It is incredible that churches have seriously over time tried all kinds of approaches to grow the church. They have tried desperately to identify with their local community by contextualizing their message and methods often with very little return. They have tried stopping the swing away from the church by either conservatively hanging on to many of the man-made traditions developed over the centuries, or by radically adopting a worldly form of spirituality that is shallow and unsatisfying.

Yet staring them in the face is Jesus’ Kingdom teaching and lifestyle which when applied in obedience, with enthusiasm, with commitment, and with the power of God, literally yields the kinds of results that Jesus had in His earthly ministry – results that every committed Christ-follower and church leader desperately longs for. When the wider community sees Kingdom people, living out a Kingdom lifestyle, engaged in Kingdom ministry and mission in their midst, they will in large number desire a reason for the hope that lies within so that they too can enter and participate in the Kingdom of God.

What then is the place of the church in the wider community? The only place for the church in the wider community is at the very centre where God calls and commands us to be. When the church is literally and practically in that place, being the church He wants it to be, manifest spiritual blessings will flow into the church and the lives of the Christ-followers.

There is a current and exciting movement around the world of the Spirit challenging the church to examine itself, particularly in light of Kingdom theology. The old criteria for success are no longer relevant. It is now about making a significant and sustainable difference in the lives of people in the wider community. To be truly “salt and light” requires being different and doing things differently. God doesn’t want mere change, He wants radical transformation both in the church and from the church into the wider community.

Transformation is not found in strategies, programs, campaigns or tactics, but rather in a radical encounter with Jesus Christ, an ongoing relationship and empowerment by His Holy Spirit, and an engagement with a needy world. For transformation to actually happen, we will have to ask the crucial and difficult questions, and be prepared to change our paradigms if we are to score a different outcome than what we have had before. If we positively respond to this challenge, we could see a powerful resurgence of Christianity equal to anything previously experienced. May we work together toward that end.

Useful reading on the topic
• Kingdom Come – The local church as a catalyst for change Malcolm Duncan – Monarch books 2007
• The Kingdom focussed Church – A compelling image of an achievable future
Gene Mims – B&H Publishing Group 2003
• This Beautiful Mess – Practicing the presence of the kingdom of God  Rick McKinley – Multnomah Books 2006
• The 9 to 5 Window – How faith can transform the workplace Os Hillman – Regal 2005
• Rediscovering the Kingdom – Ancient hope for our 21st Century world Myles Munroe – Destiny Image Publishers Inc 2004
• Kingdom Principles – Understanding the Kingdom Myles Munroe – Destiny Image Publishers Inc 2006
• The Goldsworthy Trilogy – Gospel and Kingdom  Graeme Goldsworthy – Paternoster Press 2000
• Faith@Work – What Every Pastor and Church Leader Should know Os Hillman – Aslan Group Publishing 2004
• The Challenge of Jesus – Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
N.T. Wright – IVP 1999
• Kingdom Living – Here and Now (John MacArthur. Jr. on the Beatitudes) John MacArthur. Jr. – Moody Press 1980
• Ten Paradigm Shifts Toward Community Transformation
Eric Swanson – Google search for article

For a copy of the more expansive notes from which this brief response to the question “What is the place of the church in the wider community?” send an email requesting the notes to mailto:ric.benson@kbc.org.au

by Henry Drummond

I, John, Saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, Coming down from God out of Heaven…And I saw no Temple therein….And His servants shall serve Him; And they shall see His Face; And His Name shall be written on their foreheads. (Rev 21:2, 22:1)

I SAW THE CITY

Two very startling things arrest us in John’s vision of the future. The first is that the likest thing to Heaven he could think of was a City; the second, that there was no Church in that City.

Almost nothing more revolutionary could be said, even to the modern world, in the name of religion. No Church–that is the defiance of religion; a City–that is the antipodes of Heaven. Yet John combines these contradictions in one daring image, and holds up to the world the picture of a City without a Church as his ideal of the heavenly life.

By far the most original thing here is the simple conception of Heaven as a City. The idea of religion without a Church– “I saw no Temple therein”–is anomalous enough; but the association of the blessed life with a City–the one place in the world from which Heaven seems most far away– is something wholly new in religious thought. No other religion which has a Heaven ever had a Heaven like this. The Greek, if he looked forward at all, awaited the Elysian Fields; the Eastern sought Nirvana. All other Heavens have been Gardens, Dreamlands–passivities more or less aimless. Even to the majority among ourselves Heaven is a siesta and not a City. It remained for John to go straight to the other extreme and select the citadel of the world’s fever, the ganglion of its unrest, the heart and focus of its most strenuous toil, as the framework for his ideal of the blessed life.
The Heaven of Christianity is different from all other Heavens, because the religion of Christianity is different from all other religions. Christianity is the religion of Cities. It moves among real things. Its sphere is the street, the market-place, the working-life of the world.

And what interests one for the present in John’s vision is not so much what it reveals of a Heaven beyond, but what it suggests of the nature of the heavenly life in this present world. Find out what a man’s Heaven is– no matter whether it be a dream or a reality, no matter whether it refer to an actual Heaven or to a Kingdom of God to be realized on earth–and you pass by an easy discovery to what his religion is; And herein lies one value at least of this allegory. It is a touchstone for Christianity, a test for the solidity or the insipidity of one’s religion, for the wholesomeness or the fatuousness of one’s faith, for the usefulness or the futility of one’s life. For this vision of the City marks off in lines which no eye can mistake the true area which the religion of Christ is meant to inhabit, and announces for all time the real nature of the saintly life.

City life is human life at its intensest, man in his most real relations. And the nearer one draws to reality, the nearer one draws to the working sphere of religion. Wherever real life is, there Christ goes. And He goes there, not only because the great need lies there, but because there is found, so to speak, the raw material with which Christianity works–the life of man. To do something with this, to infuse something into this, to save and inspire and sanctify this, the actual working life of the world, is what He came for. Without human life to act upon, without the relations of men with one another, of master with servant, husband with wife, buyer with seller, creditor with debtor, there is no such thing as Christianity. With actual things, with Humanity in its everyday dress, with the traffic of the streets, with gates and houses, with work and wages, with sin and poverty, with these things, and all the things and all the relations and all the people of the City, Christianity has to do and has more to do than with anything else.

To conceive of the Christian religion as itself a thing–a something which can exist apart from life; to think of it as something added on to being, something kept in a separate compartment called the soul, as an extra accomplishment like music, or a special talent like art, is totally to misapprehend its nature. It is that which fills all compartments. It is that which makes the whole life music and every separate action a work of art. Take away action and it is not. Take away people, houses, streets, character, and it ceases to be. Without these there may be sentiment, or rapture, or adoration, or superstition; there may even be religion, but there can never be the religion of the Son of Man.

If Heaven were a siesta, religion might be conceived of as a reverie. If the future life were to be mainly spent in a Temple, the present life might be mainly spent in Church. But if Heaven be a City, the life of those who are going there must be a real life. The man who would enter John’s Heaven, no matter what piety or what faith he may profess, must be a real man. Christ’s gift to men was life, a rich and abundant life. And life is meant for living. An abundant life does not show itself in abundant dreaming, but in abundant living–in abundant living among real and tangible objects and to actual and practical purposes. “His servants,” John tells us, “shall serve.” In this vision of the City he confronts us with a new definition of a Christian man– the perfect saint is the perfect citizen.

To make Cities–that is what we are here for. To make good Cities–that is for the present hour the main work of Christianity. For the City is strategic. It makes the towns: the towns make the villages; the villages make the country. He who makes the City makes the world. After all, though men make Cities, it is Cities which make men. Whether our national life is great or mean, whether our social virtues are mature or stunted, whether our sons are moral or vicious, whether religion is possible or impossible, depends upon the City. When Christianity shall take upon itself in full responsibility the burden and care of Cities the Kingdom of God will openly come on earth. What Christianity waits for also, as its final apologetic and justification to the world, is the founding of a City which shall be in visible reality a City of God. People do not dispute that religion is in the Church. What is now wanted is to let them see it in the City.

One Christian City, one City in any part of the earth, whose citizens from the greatest to the humblest lived in the spirit of Christ, where religion had overflowed the Churches and passed into the streets, inundating every house and workshop, and permeating the whole social and commercial life–one such Christian City would seal the redemption of the world. Some such City, surely, was what John saw in his dream. Whatever reference we may find there to a world to come, is it not equally lawful to seek the scene upon this present world? John saw his City descending out of Heaven. It was, moreover, no strange apparition, but a City which he knew. It was Jerusalem, a new Jerusalem. The significance of that name has been altered for most of us by religious poetry; we spell it with a capital and speak of the New Jerusalem as a synonym for Heaven. Yet why not take it simply as it stands, as a new Jerusalem? Try to restore the natural force of the expression–suppose John to have lived to-day and to have said London? “I saw a new London?”

Jerusalem was John’s London. All the grave and sad suggestion that the word London brings up to-day to the modern reformer, the word Jerusalem recalled to him. What in his deepest hours he longed and prayed for was a new Jerusalem, a reformed Jerusalem. And just as it is given to the man in modern England who is a prophet, to the man who believes in God and in the moral order of the world, to discern a new London shaping itself through all the sin and chaos of the City, so was it given to John to see a new Jerusalem rise from the ruins of the old.

We have no concern–it were contrary to critical method–to press the allegory in detail. What we take from it, looked at in this light, is the broad conception of a transformed City, the great Christian thought that the very Cities where we live, with all their suffering and sin, shall one day, by the gradual action of the forces of Christianity, be turned into Heavens on earth. This is a spectacle which profoundly concerns the world. To the reformer, the philanthropist, the economist, the politician, this Vision of the City is the great classic of social literature. What John saw, we may fairly take it, was the future of all Cities. It was the dawn of a new social order, a regenerate humanity, a purified society, an actual transformation of the Cities of the world into Cities of God.

This City, then, which John saw is none other than your City, the place where you live–as it might be, and as you are to help to make it. It is London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Melbourne, Calcutta–these as they might be, and in some infinitesimal degree as they have already begun to be. In each of these, and in every City throughout the world to-day, there is a City descending out of Heaven from God. Each one of us is daily building up this City or helping to keep it back. Its walls rise slowly, but, as we believe in God, the building can never cease. For the might of those who build, be they few or many, is so surely greater than the might of those who retard, that no day’s sun sets over any City in the land that does not see some stone of the invisible City laid. To believe this is faith. To live for this is Christianity.

The project is delirious? Yes–to atheism. To John it was the most obvious thing in the world. Nay, knowing all he knew, its realization was inevitable. We forget, when the thing strikes us as strange, that John knew Christ. Christ was the Light of the World–the Light of the World. This is all that he meant by his Vision, that Christ is the Light of the World. This Light, John saw, would fall everywhere–especially upon Cities. It was irresistible and inextinguishable. No darkness could stand before it. One by one the Cities of the world would give up their night. Room by room, house by house, street by street, they would be changed. Whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie would disappear. Sin, pain, sorrow, would silently pass away. One day the walls of the City would be jasper; the very streets would be paved with gold. Then the kings of the earth would bring their glory and honour into it. In the midst of the streets there should be a tree of Life. And its leaves would go forth for the healing of the nations.

Survey the Cities of the world today, survey your own City–town, village, home –and prophesy. God’s kingdom is surely to come in this world. God’s will is surely to be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. Is not this one practicable way of realizing it? When a prophet speaks of something that is to be, that coming event is usually brought about by no unrelated cause or sudden shock, but in the ordered course of the world’s drama. With Christianity as the supreme actor in the world’s drama, the future of its Cities is even now quite clear. Project the lines of Christian and social progress to their still far off goal, and see even now that Heaven must come to earth.

HIS SERVANTS SHALL SERVE

IF any one wishes to know what he can do to help on the work of God in the world let him make a City, or a street, or a house of a City. Men complain of the indefiniteness of religion. There are thousands ready in their humble measure to offer some personal service for the good of men, but they do not know where to begin. Let me tell you where to begin–where Christ told His disciples to begin, at the nearest City. I promise you that before one week’s work is over you will never again be haunted by the problem of the indefiniteness of Christianity. You will see so much to do, so many actual things to be set right, so many merely material conditions to alter, so much striving with employers of labour, and City councils, and trade agitators, and Boards, and Vestries, and Committees; so much pure unrelieved uninspiring hard work, that you will begin to wonder whether in all this naked realism you are on holy ground at all. Do not be afraid of missing Heaven in seeking a better earth.

The distinction between secular and sacred is a confusion and not a contrast; and it is only because the secular is so intensely sacred that so many eyes are blind before it. The really secular thing in life is the spirit which despises under that name what is but part of the everywhere present work and will of God. Be sure that, down to the last and pettiest detail, all that concerns a better world is the direct concern of Christ.

I make this, then, in all seriousness as a definite practical proposal. You wish, you say, to be a religious man. Well, be one. There is your City; begin. But what are you to believe? Believe in your City. What else? In Jesus Christ. What about Him? That He wants to make your City better; that that is what He would be doing if He lived there. What else? Believe in yourself–that you, even you, can do some of the work which He would like done, and that unless you do it, it will remain undone. How are you to begin? As Christ did. First He looked at the City; then He wept over it; then He died for it.

Where are you to begin? Begin where you are. Make that one corner, room, house, office as like Heaven as you can. Begin? Begin with the paper on the walls, make that beautiful; with the air, keep it fresh; with the very drains, make them sweet; with the furniture, see that it be honest. Abolish whatsoever worketh abomination–in food, in drink, in luxury, in books, in art; whatsoever maketh a lie–in conversation, in social intercourse, in correspondence, in domestic life. This done, you have arranged for a Heaven, but you have not got it. Heaven lies within, in kindness, in humbleness, in unselfishness, in faith, in love, in service. To get these in, get Christ in. Teach all in the house about Christ–what He did, and what He said, and how He lived, and how He died, and how He dwells in them, and how He makes all one. Teach it not as a doctrine, but as a discovery, as your own discovery. Live your own discovery.

Then pass out into the City. Do all to it that you have done at home. Beautify it, ventilate it, drain it. Let nothing enter it that can defile the streets, the stage, the newspaper offices, the booksellers’ counters; nothing that maketh a lie in its warehouses, its manufactures, its shops, its art galleries, its advertisements. Educate it, amuse it, church it. Christianize capital; dignify labour. Join Councils and Committees. Provide for the poor, the sick, and the widow. So will you serve the City.

If you ask me which of all these things is the most important, I reply that among them there is only one thing of superlative importance and that is yourself. By far the greatest thing a man can do for his City is to be a good man. Simply to live there as a good man, as a Christian man of action and practical citizen, is the first and highest contribution any one can make to its salvation. Let a City be a Sodom or a Gomorrah, and if there be but ten righteous men in it, it will be saved.

It is here that the older, the more individual, conception of Christianity, did such mighty work for the world–it produced good men. It is goodness that tells, goodness first and goodness last. Good men even with small views are immeasurably more important to the world than small men with great views. But given good men, such men as were produced even by the self-centred theology of an older generation, and add that wider outlook and social ideal which are coming to be the characteristics of the religion of this age, and Christianity has an equipment for the reconstruction of the world, before which nothing can stand. Such good men will not merely content themselves with being good men. They will be forces–according to their measure, public forces. They will take the city in hand, some a house, some a street, and some the whole. Of set purpose they will serve. Not ostentatiously, but silently, in ways varied as human nature, and many as life’s opportunities, they will minister to its good. To help the people, also, to be good people good fathers, and mothers, and sons, and citizens–is worth all else rolled into one. Arrange the government of the City as you may, perfect all its philanthropic machinery, make righteous its relations great and small, equip it with galleries and parks, and libraries and music, and carry out the whole programme of social reform, and the one thing needful is still without the gates.

The gospel of material blessedness is part of a gospel–a great and Christian part– but when held up as the whole gospel for the people it is as hollow as the void of life whose circumference even it fails to touch. There are countries in the world–new countries–where the people, rising to the rights of government, have already secured almost all that reformers cry for. The lot of the working man there is all but perfect. His wages are high, his leisure great, his home worthy. Yet in tens of thousands of cases the secret of life is unknown.

It is idle to talk of Christ as a social reformer if by that is meant that His first concern was to improve the organization of society, or provide the world with better laws. These were among His objects, but His first was to provide the world with better men. The one need of every cause and every community still is for better men. If every workshop held a Workman like Him who worked in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, the labour problem and all other workman’s problems would soon be solved. If every street had a home or two like Mary’s home in Bethany, the domestic life of the city would be transformed in three generations.

External reforms– education, civilization, public schemes, and public charities–have each their part to play. Any experiment that can benefit by one hairbreadth any single human life is a thousand times worth trying. There is no effort in any single one of these directions but must, as Christianity advances, be pressed by Christian men to ever further and fuller issues. But those whose hands have tried the ways, and the slow work of leavening men one by one with the spirit of Jesus Christ.

The thought that the future, that any day, may see some new and mighty enterprise of redemption, some new departure in religion, which shall change everything with a breath and make all that is crooked straight, is not at all likely to be realized. There is nothing wrong with the lines on which redemption runs at present except the want of faith to believe in them, and the want of men to use them. The Kingdom of God is like leaven, and the leaven is with us now. The quantity at work in the world may increase but that is all. For nothing can ever be higher than the Spirit of Christ or more potent as a regenerating power on the lives of men. Do not charge me with throwing away my brief because I return to this old, old plea for the individual soul. I do not forget that my plea is for the City. But I plead for good men, because good men are good leaven. If their goodness stop short of that, if the leaven does not mix with that which is unleavened, if it does not do the work of leaven–that is, to raise something– it is not the leaven of Christ. The question or good men to ask themselves is: Is my goodness helping others? Is it a private luxury, or is it telling upon the City? Is it bringing any single human soul nearer happiness or righteousness?
If you ask what particular scheme you shall take up, I cannot answer. Christianity has no set schemes. It makes no choice between conflicting philanthropies, decides nothing between competing churches, favours no particular public policy, organizes no one line of private charity. It is not essential even for all of us to take any public or formal line. Christianity is not all carried on by Committees, and the Kingdom of God has other ways of coming than through municipal reforms. Most of the stones for the building of the City of God, and all the best of them, are made by mothers. But whether or no you shall work through public channels, or only serve Christ along the quieter paths of home, no man can determine but yourself.

There is an almost awful freedom about Christ’s religion. “I do not call you servants.” He said, “for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth. I have called you friends.” As Christ’s friends, His followers are supposed to know what He wants done, and for the same reason they will try to do it–this is the whole working basis of Christianity. Surely next to its love for the chief of sinners the most touching thing about the religion of Christ is its amazing trust in the least of saints. Here is the mightiest enterprise ever launched upon this earth, mightier even than its creation, for it is its re-creation, and the carrying of it out is left, so to speak, to haphazard–to individual loyalty, to free enthusiasms, to uncoerced activities, to an uncompelled response to the pressures of God’s Spirit. Christ sets His followers no tasks. He appoints no hours. He allots no sphere. He Himself simply went about and did good. He did not stop life to do some special thing which should be called religious. His life was His religion. Each day as it came brought round in the ordinary course its natural ministry. Each village along the highway had someone waiting to be helped. His pulpit was the hillside, His congregation a woman at a well. The poor, wherever He met them, were His clients; the sick, as often as He found them, His opportunity. His work was everywhere; His workshop was the world. One’s associations of Christ are all of the wayside. We never think of Him in connection with a Church We cannot picture Him in the garb of a priest or belonging to any of the classes who specialize religion. His service was of a universal human order. He was the Son of Man, the Citizen.

This, remember, was the highest life ever lived, this informal citizen-life. So simple a thing it was, so natural, so human, that those who saw it first did not know it was religion, and Christ did not pass among them as a very religious man. Nay, it is certain, and it is an infinitely significant thought, that the religious people of His time not only refused to accept this type of religion as any kind of religion at all, but repudiated and denounced Him as its bitter enemy. Inability to discern what true religion is, is not confined to the Pharisees. Multitudes still who profess to belong to the religion of Christ, scarcely know it when they see it. The truth is, men will hold to almost anything in the name of Christianity, believe anything, do anything–except its common and obvious tasks. Great is the mystery of what has passed in this world for religion.

I SAW NO TEMPLE THERE

“I SAW no Church there,” said John. Nor is there any note of surprise as he marks the omission of what one half of Christendom would have considered the first essential. For beside the type of religion he had learned from Christ, the Church type –the merely Church type–is an elaborate evasion. What have the pomp and circumstance, the fashion and the form, the vestures and the postures, to do with Jesus of Nazareth? At a stage in personal development. and for a certain type of mind, such things may have a place. But when mistaken for Christianity, no matter how they aid it, or in what measure they conserve it, they defraud the souls of men, and rob humanity of its dues.

It is because to large masses of people Christianity has become synonymous with a Temple service that other large masses of people decline to touch it. It is a mistake to suppose that the working classes of this country are opposed to Christianity. No man can ever be opposed to Christianity who knows what it really is. The working men would still follow Christ if He came among them. As a matter of fact they do follow anyone, preacher or layman, in pulpit or on platform, who is the least like Him. But what they cannot follow, and must evermore live outside of, is a worship which ends with the worshipper, a religion expressed only in ceremony, and a faith unrelated to life.

Perhaps the most dismal fact of history is the failure of the great organized bodies of ecclesiasticism to understand the simple genius of Christ’s religion. Whatever the best in the Churches of all time may have thought of the life and religion of Christ, taken as a whole they have succeeded in leaving upon the mind of a large portion of the world an impression of Christianity which is the direct opposite of the reality. Down to the present hour almost whole nations in Europe live, worship, and die under the belief that Christ is an ecclesiastical Christ, religion the sum of all the Churches’ observances, and faith an adhesion to the Churches’ creeds. I do not apportion blame; I simply record the fact.

Everything that the spiritual and temporal authority of man could do has been done– done in ignorance of the true nature of Christianity–to dislodge the religion of Christ from its natural home in the heart of Humanity. In many lands the Churches have literally stolen Christ from the people; they have made the Son of Man the Priest of an Order; they have taken Christianity from the City and imprisoned it behind altar rails; they have withdrawn it from the national life and doled it out to the few who pay to keep the unconscious deception up.

Do not do the Church, the true Church at least, the injustice to think that she does not know all this. Nowhere, not even in the fiercest secular press, is there more exposure of this danger, more indignation at its continuance, than in many of the Churches of to-day. The protest against the confusion of Christianity with the Church is the most threadbare of pulpit themes. Before the University of Oxford, from the pulpit of St. Mary’s, these words were lately spoken: “If it is strange that the Church of the darker ages should have needed so bitter a lesson (the actual demolition of their churches), is it not ten times stranger still that the Church of the days of greater enlightenment should be found again making the chief part of its business the organizing of the modes of worship; that the largest efforts which are owned as the efforts of the Church are made for the establishment and maintenance of worship; that our chief controversies relate to the teaching and the ministry of a system designed primarily, if not exclusively, for worship; that even the fancies and the refinements of such a system divide us; that the breach between things secular and things religious grows wider instead of their being made to blend into one; and that the vast and fruitful spaces of the actual life of mankind lie still so largely without the gates? The old Jerusalem was all temple.

The mediaeval Church was all temple. But the ideal of the new Jerusalem was–no temple, but a God-inhabited society. Are we not reversing this ideal in an age when the church still means in so many mouths the clergy, instead of meaning the Christian society, and when nine men are striving to get men to go to church for one who is striving to make men realize that they themselves are the Church?” Yet even with words so strong as these echoing daily from Protestant pulpits the superstition reigns in all but unbroken power. And everywhere still men are found confounding the spectacular services of a Church, the vicarious religion of a priest, and the traditional belief in a creed, with the living religion of the Son of Man.
“I saw no Temple there”–the future City will be a City without a Church. Ponder that fact, realize the temporariness of the Church, then–go and build one. Do not imagine, because all this has been said, that I mean to depreciate the Church. On the contrary, if it were mine to build a City, a City where all life should be religious, and all men destined to become members of the Body of Christ, the first stone I should lay there would be the foundation-stone of a Church Why? Because, among other reasons, the product which the Church on the whole best helps to develop, and in the largest quantity, is that which is most needed by the City.

For the present, and for a long time to come, the manufactory of good men, the nursery of the forces which are to redeem the City, will in the main be found to be some more or less formal, more or less imperfect, Christian Church. Here and there an unchurched soul may stir the multitudes to lofty deeds; isolated men; strong enough to preserve their souls apart from the Church, but shortsighted enough perhaps to fail to see that others cannot, may set high examples and stimulate to national reforms. But for the rank and file of us, made of such stuff as we are made of, the steady pressures of fixed institutions, the regular diets of a common worship, and the education of public Christian teaching are too obvious safeguards of spiritual culture to be set aside. Even Renan declares his conviction that “Beyond the family and outside the State, man has need of the Church . . . Civil society, whether it calls itself a commune, a canton, or a province, a state, or fatherland, has many duties towards the improvement of the individual; but what it does is necessarily limited. The family ought to do much more, but often it is insufficient; sometimes it is wanting altogether. The association created in the name of moral principle can alone give to every man coming into this world a bond which unites him with the past, duties as to the future, examples to follow, a heritage to receive and to transmit, and a tradition of devotion to continue.” Apart altogether from the quality of its contribution to society, in the mere quantity of the work it turns out it stands alone. Even for social purposes the Church is by far the greatest Employment Bureau in the world. And the man who, seeing where it falls short, withholds on that account his witness to its usefulness, is a traitor to history and to fact.

“The Church,” as the preacher whom I have already quoted, most truly adds, “is a society which tends to embrace the whole life of mankind, to bind all their relations together by a Divine sanction. As such, it blends naturally with the institutions of common life–those institutions which, because they are natural and necessary, are therefore Divine. What it aims at is not the recognition by the nation of a worshipping body, governed by the ministers of public worship, which calls itself the Church, but that the nation and all classes in it should act upon Christian principle, that laws should be made in Christ’s spirit of justice, that the relations of the powers of the state should be maintained on a basis of Christian equity, that all public acts should be done in Christ’s spirit, and with mutual forbearance, that the spirit of Christian charity should be spread through all ranks and orders of the people. The Church will maintain public worship as one of the greatest supports of a Christian public life; but it will always remember that the true service is a life of devotion to God and man far more than the common utterance of prayer.”

I have said that were it mine to build a City, the first stone I should lay there would be the foundation-stone of a Church. But if it were mine to preach the first sermon in that Church, I should choose as the text, “I saw no Church therein.” I should tell the people that the great use of the Church is to help men to do without it As the old ecclesiastical term has it, Church services are “diets” of worship. They are meals. All who are hungry will take them, and, if they are wise, regularly. But no workman is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them. No Christian is paid for going to Church. He goes there for a meal, for strength from God and from his fellow-worshippers to do the work of life –which is the work of Christ. The Church is a Divine institution because it is so very human an institution. As a channel of nourishment, as a stimulus to holy deeds, as a link with all holy lives, let all men use it, and to the utmost of their opportunity. But by all that they know of Christ or care for man, let them beware of mistaking its services for Christianity. What Church services really express is the want of Christianity. And when that which is perfect in Christianity is come, all this, as the mere passing stay and scaffolding of struggling souls, must vanish away.

If the masses who never go to Church only knew that the Churches were the mute expression of a Christian’s wants and not the self-advertisement of his sanctity, they would have more respectful words for Churches. But they have never learned this. And the result in their case of confounding religion with the Church is even more serious than in the case of the professing Christian. When they break with the Church it means to them a break with all religion. As things are it could scarce be otherwise. With the Church in ceaseless evidence before their eyes as the acknowledged custodian of Christianity; with actual stone and lime in every street representing the place where religion dwells; with a professional class moving out and in among them, holding in their hands the souls of men, and almost the keys of Heaven–how is it possible that those who turn their backs on all this should not feel outcast from the Church’s God? It is not possible. Without a murmur, yet with results to themselves most disastrous and pathetic, multitudes accept this false dividing-line and number themselves as excommunicate from all good.

The masses will never return to the Church till its true relation to the City is more defined. And they can never have that most real life of theirs made religious so long as they rule themselves out of court on the ground that they have broken with ecclesiastical forms. The life of the masses is the most real of all lives. It is full of religious possibilities. Every movement of it and every moment of it might become of supreme religious value, might hold a continuous spiritual discipline, might perpetuate, and that in most natural ways, a moral influence which should pervade all Cities and all States. But they must first be taught what Christianity really is, and learn to distinguish between religion and the Church. After that, if they be taught their lesson well, they will return to honour both.

Our fathers made much of “meetness” for Heaven. By prayer and fasting, by self-examination and meditation they sought to fit themselves “for the inheritance of the saints in light.” Important beyond measure in their fitting place are these exercises of the soul. But whether alone they fit men for the inheritance of the saints depends on what a saint is. If a saint is a devotee and not a citizen, if Heaven is a cathedral and not a City, then these things do fit for Heaven. But if life means action, and Heaven service; if spiritual graces are acquired for use and not for ornament, then devotional forms have a deeper function. The Puritan preachers were wont to tell their people to “practise dying.” Yes; but what is dying? It is going to a City. And what is required of those who would go to a City? The practice of Citizenship–the due employment of the unselfish talents, the development of public spirit, the payment of the full tax to the great brotherhood, the subordination of personal aims to the common good. And where are these to be learned? Here; in Cities here. There is no other way to learn them. There is no Heaven to those who have not learned them.
No Church however holy, no priest however earnest, no book however sacred, can transfer to any human character the capacities of Citizenship–those capacities which in the very nature of things are necessities to those who would live in the kingdom of God. The only preparation which multitudes seem to make for Heaven is for its Judgment Bar. What will they do in its streets? What have they learned of Citizenship? What have they practised of love? How like are they to its Lord? To “practise dying” is to practise living. Earth is the rehearsal for Heaven. The eternal beyond is the eternal here. The street-life, the home-life, the business-life, the City-life in all the varied range of its activity, are an apprenticeship for the City of God. There is no other apprenticeship for it. To know how to serve Christ in these is to “practise dying.”

To move among the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them not as saint or monk, but as brother-man with brother-man; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of a soul; to bear the burdens of society and relieve its needs; to carry on the multitudinous activities of the City–social, commercial, political, philanthropic–in Christ’s spirit and for His ends: this is the religion of the Son of Man, and the only meetness for Heaven which has much reality in it.

No Church however holy, no priest however earnest, no book however sacred, can transfer to any human character the capacities of Citizenship–those capacities which in the very nature of things are necessities to those who would live in the kingdom of God. The only preparation which multitudes seem to make for Heaven is for its Judgment Bar. What will they do in its streets? What have they learned of Citizenship? What have they practised of love? How like are they to its Lord? To “practise dying” is to practise living. Earth is the rehearsal for Heaven. The eternal beyond is the eternal here. The street-life, the home-life, the business-life, the City-life in all the varied range of its activity, are an apprenticeship for the City of God. There is no other apprenticeship for it. To know how to serve Christ in these is to “practise dying.”

To move among the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them not as saint or monk, but as brother-man with brother-man; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of a soul; to bear the burdens of society and relieve its needs; to carry on the multitudinous activities of the City–social, commercial, political, philanthropic–in Christ’s spirit and for His ends: this is the religion of the Son of Man, and the only meetness for Heaven which has much reality in it.

No; the Church with all its splendid equipment, the cloister with all its holy opportunity, are not the final instruments for fitting men for Heaven. The City, in many of its functions, is a greater Church than the Church. It is amid the whirr of its machinery and in the discipline of its life that the souls of men are really made. How great its opportunity is we are few of us aware. It is such slow work getting better, the daily round is so very common, our ideas of a heavenly life are so unreal and mystical that even when the highest Heaven lies all around us, when we might touch it, and dwell in it every day we live, we almost fail to see that it is there. The Heaven of our childhood, the spectacular Heaven, the Heaven which is a place, so dominates thought even in our maturer years, that we are slow to learn the fuller truth that Heaven is a state. But John, who is responsible before all other teachers for the dramatic view of Heaven, has not failed in this very allegory to proclaim the further lesson.

Having brought all his scenery upon the stage and pictured a material Heaven of almost unimaginable splendour, the seer turns aside before he closes for a revelation of a profounder kind. Within the Heavenly City he opens the gate of an inner Heaven. It is the spiritual Heaven–the Heaven of those who serve. With two flashes of his pen he tells the Citizens of God all that they will ever need or care to know as to what Heaven really means. “His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His Face; and His Character shall be written on their characters.” They shall see His Face. Where? In the City. When? In Eternity? No; to-morrow. Those who serve in any City cannot help continually seeing Christ. He is there with them. He is there before them. They cannot but meet. No gentle word is ever spoken that Christ’s voice does not also speak; no meek deed is ever done that the unsummoned Vision does not there and then appear. Whoso, in whatsoever place, receiveth a little child in My name receiveth Me.

This is how men get to know God–by doing His will. And there is no other way. And this is how men become like God; how God’s character becomes written upon men’s characters. Acts react upon souls. Good acts make good men; just acts, just men; kind acts, kind men; divine acts, divine men. And there is no other way of becoming good, just, kind, divine. And there is no Heaven for those who have not become these. For these are Heaven.

When John’s Heaven faded from his sight, and the prophet woke to the desert waste of Patmos, did he grudge to exchange the Heaven of his dream for the common tasks around him? Was he not glad to be alive, and there? And would he not straightway go to the City, to whatever struggling multitude his prison-rock held, if so be that he might prove his dream and among them see His Face? Traveller to God’s last City, be glad that you are alive. Be thankful for the City at your door and for the chance to build its walls a little nearer Heaven before you go. Pray for yet a little while to redeem the wasted years. And week by week as you go forth from worship, and day by day as you awake to face this great and needy world, learn to “seek a City” there, and in the service of its neediest citizen find Heaven.