You may have gathered from my blogs that I have a passion for the church to be engaged in mission in a local context. Recently my thoughts on this subject have been more focused through personal experience, books and conversations on the subject. I have never and will never see the church as a means to keep Christians happy until heaven but as a agent of heaven on earth. As Dave Tomlinson puts it "The mission of God was not to invent Christianity but to spread life" (Re-enchanting Christianity, Tomlinson, 2008:132). This should be at the heart of every church.
I am beginning to uncover the sticking point to this thought. I have long known and acknowledge that we should be a people of the Kingdom but never fully grasped and convinced myself about as to how and why. What is beginning to emerge for me is a picture of what the church would be like without the Kingdom as its focus. One dimensional, inward looking, a place on maintenance, safe and comfortable. The kingdom is none of these things that I have listed. The kingdom is a scarily unsafe place to live out faith, it is a place where anything is possible and anyone can be involved. It is about always being aware of your surroundings and seeing the creator in them and how God is calling us to engage with them. Often the church has taken the priority over the kingdom. Surely, God has ordained the church as a tool to represent the values and image of the Kingdom.
Our mission, if we chose to except it, is to be people of the Kingdom rather than members of churches.
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment