Tag: Christian Church

A Review of Scot McKnight’s Kingdom Conspiracy

I recently read Scot McKnight’s very fine book, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Brazos, 2014), in which he discusses the New Testament’s presentation of the kingdom of God and its relevance for the church today.  In doing this, McKnight provides an especially important description of the missionary dimension of God’s kingdom.

McKnight argues, correctly in my view, that “kingdom work” (as many are prone to say nowadays) is always centered within the Christian church.  Then, from within the body of Christ, kingdom ministry radiates outward into the surrounding society and the rest of the world (see especially chapter 7, “Kingdom Mission is Church Mission”).

But, he warns, if Christian social activism is not an extension of the local church’s gospel teaching, fellowship, ministry and shared experience, then it is not kingdom work.  It may be laudable social and political work, but it has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.  “This means all true kingdom mission is church mission” (96).

McKnight’s church-centered understanding of God’s kingdom is pivotal to his argument.  On this point, Prof. McKnight and I are in agreement.

But McKnight’s laser-like focus on the local church also accounts for the book’s central mistake.  For he defines the kingdom and the church as synonymous with each other.  The kingdom of God IS the church, and the church IS the kingdom of God. (Beginning with chapter 5, “Kingdom is People” and passim).

This is where Prof. McKnight and I must part company.

Anyone who has read my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America, will observe the similarity between McKnight’s emphasis on the missional dimension of God’s kingdom and my own.  But my readers will also recall my insistence that the church is best understood as the citizenry of God’s kingdom, not the kingdom itself.

 

It is unfortunate that Prof. McKnight’s concern for tightening the connection between church and kingdom leads him to such an extreme. I say “unfortunate” because I don’t believe that he is any more comfortable with his identification of church with kingdom than I am.

There are numerous places throughout Kingdom Conspiracy where McKnight slips alternative definitions into the mix without acknowledging that he has just changed the terms of his discussion.  In other words, he masks the limitations of his explicit definition of kingdom by implicitly expanding that definition when his argument demands it.

For example, he sometimes notes that a kingdom “implies a king, a rule, a people, a land, and a law” (76, 159, 205).  So, the kingdom is not synonymous with people alone, after all.  It is more complex.

He also teasingly refers to “the important overlap of kingdom and church” (95), without noting that an overlap is not the same as an identity.  We are left with a suggestion that God’s kingdom overlaps with something more than people.

At one point, he resorts to the very language that he had previously criticized and rejected, referring to “the kingdom as the realm of redemption” (114).  Elsewhere he repeats that the word kingdom asserts “God’s dynamic rule” (126), the more widely held view that I endorse.

McKnight also notes that God’s kingdom brings redemption, and this redemption is “cosmic” in scope (151-52, 156, 159); that is, it includes a great deal in addition to human beings.  The kingdom of God also involves Christ’s subjugation of “principalities and powers” as well as the imminent redemption of all creation.

Finally, Prof. McKnight frequently lapses into my preferred terminology:  Christians are described as the citizens of God’s kingdom (75, 76, 99, 111, 155, 157, 164, 207).  Which, in my view, is the proper way to explain the New Testament’s perspective on God’s kingdom rule and its relationship to the people of God.

Think for a moment of what it means to live in the United States.  We the people are not synonymous with all that is America.  We are citizens of this country, but the people and the nation are not identical or coextensive.  America is as much (if not more) an idea; an idea about liberty with a specific history; a projection of power and influence as much as it is a particular population.

McKnight is forced into using this rhetorical sleight of hand because his preferred definition, identifying the kingdom exclusively with the church, simply does not comport with the full spectrum of Biblical evidence.

Am I quibbling over a minor issue?  I don’t think so.

Both Prof. McKnight and I would agree that it is important to understand the answers to Biblical questions accurately.  Thus, it is also important to understand that God’s kingdom rule is not confined only to the church.

God’s reign is working its way throughout all of history, although we may not always be able to explain exactly where and how that is happening. God’s ways are rarely self-evident.  Although church work certainly lies at the heart of kingdom work, for redeeming sinful folks like us is at the heart of Jesus’ mission, God’s kingdom is much bigger than any of us.

God rules victoriously and will one day be glorified, not only by the church, but by angels, demons, principalities, powers, and all things above the earth and below.  These spiritual powers now tremble at the knowledge of their ultimate defeat.

The kingdom of God is our heavenly Father’s redemptive reign, His saving sovereignty, now being established over all creation.  Believers are privileged to become citizens of that victorious kingdom, but our citizenship is evidence and a partial product (central and vital, but not the whole) of Christ’s reign.

I suspect that the heavenly host of innumerable cherubim and seraphim, the legions of fallen angels, as well as the new heavens and the new earth, including the redeemed supernovae, unseen galaxies, black holes and dark matter will one day loudly object to the ecclesiastical hubris which suggests that God’s kingdom involves only the church.

The Resurrected Jesus at Work!

I am extremely blessed to be part of a local church that believes one of its major responsibilities is to love the surrounding community.  And the most significant way to love other people is to introduce them to the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ.

More than 120 people were baptized at the various Easter services our church conducted this past weekend!

Jesus is alive.  He continues to forgive sin, bring us into the waiting arms of our heavenly Father, make us new people, and lead us into new life in the kingdom of God.

The Morning the Elders Walked Out on Me

It has happened to me before, but not by so many – and at both services!

I believe that every church elder in the first service, and several congregants and/or visitors in the second service, walked out at the midpoint of my message.

More than that, the elders called me into a meeting between services to tell me why they were so upset and to suggest changes to my next message.  I learned later that one elder wanted to stop me from speaking again altogether.

What did I say that was so upsetting?

No, I was not deconstructing the Trinity or denying Jesus’ incarnation.  Those might have been messages worth boycotting.

My message title was “Seeking God’s Kingdom First and Foremost.”  The Bible passage was basically the Sermon on the Mount, focusing especially on Matthew 6:33, “But seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness first, and all these others things (i.e. food and clothing) will be added to you.”

After surveying the specific kingdom righteousness insisted upon by Jesus (reread the Sermon on the Mount) – that is, mercy, peace-making, non-retaliation, non-violence, forgiveness, servanthood, etc. – I then turned to the question of practical application.

Specifically, how might the American church behave differently if everyone claiming to follow Jesus truly lived out Jesus’ command in Matthew 6:33?

What might it look like for our kingdom citizenship to trump (no pun intended, but what’s a writer to do?) our American citizenship?

How should Jesus’ kingdom righteousness over-rule popular views of American righteousness?

Then I got specific. I said, Let’s focus on the priority of being non-violent, merciful peacemakers living in American, the greatest purveyor of death, violence and destruction in the world today.  What should that do to us?  What should we be doing ourselves?

So, I offered a few examples, illustrated with readily available information that every American can look up for themselves.

  • The United States is the largest arms dealer in the world, selling almost half of the military weapons purchased by other developing countries.
  • The United States is arming and enabling Saudi Arabia’s assault on the people of Yemen, contributing to what is now the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.
  • Many hundreds of thousands of people have been killed directly or indirectly during our unending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, many of whom have been innocent civilians blandly labeled “collateral damage.”

I then suggested that Christians ought to be appalled by America’s participation in such horrors. We can never endorse, much less support, such ruthless destruction.

In fact, as kingdom citizens who are also citizens of a supposed democracy, we should take advantage of the political means at our disposal to speak out, object and strive to change our nation’s addiction to bloodshed and warfare.

THAT is a part of what it means for disciples to be “salt and light in this world” (Matthew 5:11-16).

I then suggested a few practical, local avenues available to those who want to do something in a hands-on way.

Well, the exodus began well before I was even half-way through the statistics on American war-making.  The elders explained that they walked out because I had stopped talking about Jesus and instead “turned to politics.”  The Jesus part was great.  Then the politics ruined everything.

I was told that a church service ought to be a “safe place” for everyone.

Oh my.  Where to being?

My experience provides a text-book example of SO many of the things that have gone wrong with the American church.

  • Since when is worshiping the Holy One and hearing divine revelation supposed to make me always feel safe? Try telling that to Moses as he trembled before the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-6).
  • When honestly proclaimed, the gospel of Jesus Christ comforts the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable.  And the American church is filled with an abundance of oh-so-comfortable people. After all, that is the primary reason many attend church in the first place, to be comfortably confirmed in their comfort zones.
  • This nationalistic, play-it-safe attitude was exactly the mindset of the German Christian church in the 1930s and ‘40s, filled with Nazi sympathizers supporting Adolf Hitler. (See the discussion of this phenomenon in my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America). I suspect that these folks would have happily listened to politics had it been their brand of Christian nationalist politics. (Actually, I am still mystified as to why raw facts and figures are heard as bad politics…).
  • Recall that Jesus’ says, “Woe to you when everyone has only good things to say about you!” ( Luke 6:26).  In other words, the church is in big trouble if our mission is only to help people feel safe and secure.
  • This sad attitude is perhaps the most damning indication of the American captivity of the church, happily enslaved to US consumerism and the self-help gospel of wealth and success.
  • I strongly suspect that most of these folks are afflicted with consciences horribly numbed by Fox News idolatry. This network has been a scourge in our country and has almost single-handedly transformed historic conservatism (a respectable tradition) into an ungodly, mean-spirited, narrow-minded mob fueled by idolatrous, nationalistic propaganda. Honestly, any “Christian” who depends on Fox as his/her sole/primary source of news and political information ought to repent and be ashamed, be very ashamed.
  • The gospel has always been inherently political. This can only be avoided by truncating the truth. Politics concerns itself with a people’s governance, the management of public interaction/conversation and the exercise of state power. Once you acknowledge the universal sovereignty of the Lord Jesus, become a citizen of the global kingdom of God and submit yourself to Jesus’ instruction in kingdom ethics, it becomes impossible to avoid open confrontation with the public powers-that-be.  Especially when they demand an allegiance contrary to Christ’s rule.
  • Fortunately, the African-American church in this country has always understood this.  Predominantly white churches need to listen and learn from our black brothers and sisters in Christ. We have much to learn. And they have a wealth of experience to share.
  • The fact that these obvious conflicts of interests (and power) go unrecognized by so many (white) folks calling themselves Christians, and then cause such discomfort and bizarre behavior when discussed from the pulpit, illustrates the widespread, colossal failure of American church leaders to engage the gospel fully and to discuss the broad spectrum of its practical application in their teaching.
  • We need to change.

Alas, I could go on, but I will stop here…for now.

P.S.  I must add that after both services, I received much more positive feedback from people who understood the issues involved and were eager to follow Jesus obediently in this dimension of their lives, too.  All in all, it was an encouraging day that demonstrated the Holy Spirit’s work in a way that, I trust, is representative of the church at large.

Strengthening the Community of Kingdom Citizens, An Excerpt from My New Book

Here is an excerpt from my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America, pages 190-94. Consult the print edition to follow up on the notes.

Available from: Eerdmans or Barnes&Noble or Amazon

Strengthening the Community of Kingdom Citizens

My brief but significant experience of spontaneous community that hot Chicago night offers a good corollary to the central role that should be filled by the Christian church in the implementation of Jesus’s kingdom ethics in this world. As the community of flesh-and-blood citizens inhabiting God’s kingdom, the church is called to be the birthplace and the supportive family that assists faithful disciples in both the blessings and the risks awaiting anyone daring enough to obey Jesus’s upside-down model of loving God.

In fulfilling this mission, God’s kingdom community will be characterized by a number of essential features, none of which are electives from which we may pick and choose as we like. Rather, they are each defining traits that identify the church as church, as opposed to its being a curious religious/ social club. First, every kingdom community will be awash in biblical teaching that explains how Christ not only died for us but also how he lived for us in order to exemplify the way of salvation. A community of the redeemed will worship and adore the Lord Jesus for his gracious sacrifice, and it will exemplify his teaching and ministry throughout the regular affairs of daily life.

Consequently, the material contained in this book should not be unfamiliar to members of the body of Christ. On the contrary, all of these lessons should be old hat for anyone who regularly attends a Christian church, as familiar as a child’s nursery rhyme to even the youngest novice disciple. Wherever Jesus’s teaching is new or unfamiliar, remedial measures need to be vigorously implemented by church leaders, for the community obviously has not fulfilled its responsibilities. Anyone inclined to reject Jesus’s gospel lessons as objectionable or unrealistic requires mentoring by more mature disciples who can explain the importance of following Jesus faithfully from their own personal experience. As both Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard insisted, in this world the true church is always the church militant, never the church triumphant.

Whenever the church becomes a byword for prosperity, comfort, and success, or offers nothing more than a blasé ceremonial blessing draped over a safe, middle-class life proceeding without inconvenience or interruption, then the church has ceased to be the church. Those who refuse to embrace the difficulties of authentic discipleship need a good talking to, an occasion on which they are told, gently but firmly, that their behavior belies their confession. Jesus warned the boastful disciples who were seeking recognition for their gifts of prophecy and miracles:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.” (Matt. 7:21–23)

We dare not forget that the Father’s will, previously described by Jesus in Matthew 5–7, never says anything about working miracles, exorcisms, or delivering prophecies. Rather, true disciples reveal themselves as those who are poor in spirit (5:3), meek and merciful (5:4–7), behave as peacemakers (5:9), are persecuted for the sake of Jesus and his gospel (5:10–12), never carry grudges (5:21–26), always speak the truth and keep their word (5:33–37), love, serve, and pray for their enemies (5:28–48), share generously with anyone in need without ever demanding repayment (6:1–4), forgive all those who sin against them (6:14–15), and make faithful kingdom citizenship the number-one priority of life (6:33).

No one can follow the Lord Jesus by moving exclusively along broad, smooth, level, six-lane highways festooned with convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, and health spas. Jesus warns us in advance that he rarely travels those routes. His preferred pathways are dusty, narrow, steep, rocky, inconvenient, lacking in amenities, and often dangerous. No one can complain that they weren’t warned. Jesus commands us to “enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13–14).

Serving among such faithful Christian communities entails the cultivation of a normative Christian self-understanding throughout the entire body of Christ that focuses on the ultimacy of life in the kingdom of God. The focal point of a disciple’s identity is life in Christ, not nationality, gender, sexual orientation, career, hobbies, levels of personal consumption, leisure-time pursuits or political activities. This self-understanding will express itself as community members (a) consistently think, believe, and behave according to the upside-down values of God’s kingdom; (b) remember that this world is not the believer’s true home, that we are only pilgrims here, strangers passing through a fallen world on our way to a perfected, eternal home; (c) learn not to value what the rest of this world values so that we remain free of its deceptive power—for us “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21); (d) remember that we are always sinners saved by grace, even as we are being sanctified through experience. This means that following Jesus—at some level, in some way—will commonly run contrary to our natural inclinations. When my faith in Jesus never makes me the oddball in the board room, then I know that I have lost my way somewhere along the line.

Human nature, being what it is, will frenetically poke and prod each of us, looking for a way to turn this advice into the framework for a new game of spiritual one-upmanship. But kingdom communities will consciously foster an environment that rejects legalism and works-righteousness while making grace-filled obedience to a forgiving Savior central. We will bear each other’s burdens, rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn (Rom. 12:15), not guffawing at those who bungle or turning green with envy at those who succeed. Richard Burridge makes an important observation in his book Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics, when he notes that, whereas Jesus’s ethical instruction is always rigorous and demanding, his actual treatment of repentant sinners, including his doubtful disciples who often fail him, is always gracious and forgiving.2 Anyone who genuinely wants to follow Jesus can always have another chance—another chance to do the hard things he tells us to do. Jesus is like the patient parent who anxiously anticipates the day when his child will walk all the way to school by herself; but as long as the child remains an infant, he lovingly cheers her on at every feeble act of faith, no matter how imperfect, one faltering step at a time. But he never excuses her from the task of walking.

Moments of fellowship and mutual support in such communities will extend well beyond the typical chitchat about ball games and vacation plans. It will include regular stories of how our friends have taken risks, suffered setbacks, and been shunned by others in their efforts to live for Jesus. The church community will be able to recite the details of miraculous interventions, dramatically transformed lives, amazing answers to prayer, and the refreshing presence of the Holy Spirit—all of which occurred because faithful brothers and sisters were serious about the risky business of following Jesus.

Conversely, there is no reason for God’s kingdom people to expect similar behavior from those living outside of the kingdom or to shun unbelievers for violating the norms of kingdom living. Unfortunately, this is an ancient confusion that many in the church perpetuate today. When the apostle Paul condemned sexual immorality within the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 5:1–5), he urged the community to discipline the guilty parties by banning them from the fellowship until they repented and changed their ways (vv. 2, 5, 11). Discipline was a tool for redemption. The church, however, grabbed the wrong end of the stick and mistakenly assumed that Paul’s admonition “not to associate with sexually immoral people” (v. 9) meant that they should not have any dealings with people outside of the Christian community. This is always the easier—and more self-righteous—decision to make. However, Paul offers a quick correction:

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral. . . . In that case you would have to leave this world. . . . What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. (1 Cor. 9–13)

The church suffers from a massive delusion when its members think they are justified in refusing to do business with “sinners” outside of the community. Are we to assume that Paul, the tent-maker (Acts 18:3), never sold a tent to local shoppers in the marketplace because they, like everyone else in the ancient world, prayed to their household-ancestor deities before family meals?3 I doubt that very much. Consequently, Christians are not being persecuted when they suffer the legal consequences of such self-righteous discrimination against those unlike themselves. Whatever the penalties may be for this misguided misbehavior, none of it has anything to do with following Jesus of Nazareth, the man who feasted with sinners, tax-collectors, and prostitutes.

Finally, a community of kingdom citizens will work to break down the traditional, destructive liberal/conservative political dichotomies by doing evangelism an proclaiming historically orthodox theology while simultaneously encouraging widespread counter-cultural kingdom living and social activism among its members. The modern American evangelical church’s unhelpful identification of historic orthodox theology with conservative Republican politics, while it identifies and links liberal, unorthodox theology with progressive Democratic politics, has always been a poisonous misrepresentation that is damaging to both ends of the political spectrum. The kingdom of God can never be identified by way of anyone’s political Rorschach test, as though we can project a new tax policy or foreign affairs initiative on the screen and then discover God’s will in the fine details.4 Real disciples simply will not fit into anyone’s partisan mold because Jesus’s kingdom mindset is not of this world. I once told a colleague that he had given me one of the nicest compliments of my life when he said in exasperation that he could never predict where I would come down on a controversial social issue. I smiled and said, “Thank you. I hope that is because I am trying to think biblically, not politically.”

I am still trying.

The church must continually plug its ears to the numerous strategies that are offered for manipulating earthly power for kingdom purposes by grabbing the reins of government. The lie of that power is as old as the devil himself. Those who would co-opt the kingdom of God for their own partisan agendas need to listen again to Jesus’s rebuke when that very temptation was first offered to him in the wilderness: “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only’” (Matt. 4:10).

Admittedly, equally sincere disciples will not always agree on where the lines of kingdom faithfulness should be drawn. One of the intractable debates that divided the German Confessing Church in the days of the Third Reich was a stubborn disagreement over when resistance against the state was genuinely theological and confessional (and therefore justified) versus when resistance was merely political and not truly a result of faithfulness to the gospel (and therefore unjustified).5 As a result, the Confessing Church never extended its critique of the Nazi government beyond its interference in church affairs; and it never criticized Nazi foreign or domestic policy. For example, Confessing Church leaders such as Pastor Martin Niemöller never opposed the Nazi anti-Semitism laws because the enactment of those laws did not interfere with normal church life.6 After the war Niemöller confessed that his own anti-Semitism had blinded him to the demonic nature of the Nazi discrimination laws. Today it would be well worth the time for church members to prayerfully discuss—with Bible in hand and an unwavering focus on the personal character cultivated by kingdom citizenship—what the gospel’s implications are for a Christian’s response to the laws, policies, and actions of our own government. In how many ways has American Christianity been blinded to the right-minded implementation of God’s upside-down kingdom values because of our own cultural conditioning?7

Praise is Not the Same as Applause

I admit that I can be a bit quirky.  I am a news junky. I don’t eat bananas. And my wife teases me for nibbling chocolate chip cookies around the edges so as to maximize the number of chips left in the center.

Regular readers will find a lot of my personal quirks popping up in this blog.  So, if you think that my postings become an unusual stew of oddly mixed ingredients, well, you have been warned.

Some of my quirks are religious, and I want to talk about one of them today.  I happen to believe that when Christian people use Biblical vocabulary they ought to do their best to (1) understand the original Biblical sense of a word and (2) try to use that word accordingly, in ways that cohere with its Biblical meaning(s).

So, here is my pet-peeve for today: Praising God, whether in church or elsewhere, has nothing to do with raising your hands or giving God “applause,” as often happens in churches today.  If you attend a church

where the worship leader [another seriously misunderstood term, but that is for another day] concludes a song by shouting, “Give the Lord some more praise!”, and everyone understands that as code for another round of applause, then your song-leader doesn’t understand the Biblical meaning of praise.

The Old Testament book of Psalms defines praise as a public declaration of either (a) the greatness of God’s character and/or (b) the greatness of His actions/behavior. If a reader understands how to interpret the Hebrew poetic device called parallelism, even a casual reading of the Psalms will make this clear.

Here are two examples from Psalm 9:

Verse 1, I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; 

                                   I will tell of all your wonders.

Verse 11, Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion;

                                  Proclaim among the nations what he has done.

The psalmist first tells the people to praise the Lord (first line), and he then defines what he means by that (second line). The Lord is praised whenever his people, individually or collectively, “tell of all his wonders and proclaim among the nations what he has done.”

Consequently, praising God can be risky business.

It is not just a matter of being careful that we don’t hit the person standing next to us in the head as we wave our hands.  Actually, praise has little if anything to do with lifting up our hands and everything to do with lifting up our voice in public.

Praising Jesus Christ requires stepping outside of your comfort zone and running the risk of being thought a fool for sharing your beliefs and experiences with someone else about how Jesus Christ has worked to save you, heal you, guide you, answer your prayers, worked miracles, and directed you into the service of others – especially when those others are people with whom you would not naturally associate.

Yes, we praise God the Creator when we openly marvel at the fantabulousness of creation, as we stare at a

 

sunset or hike in the Rocky Mountains.  But we also praise God the Redeemer when we explain the good news of Jesus Christ with someone who has yet to experience that salvation for themselves.  We praise God when explaining to a friend how the Lord Jesus has taken care of us in troubled times.

You can do this while sitting on your hands or stuffing them into your pockets, if you like.  Or, go ahead, lift them up and wave them about if that feels better to you.  But don’t forget that this is all window-dressing and ephemera when compared to the God-stories and exclamations that we share with others.

So, go out and praise the Lord Jesus today.  Tell someone new about all of his wonders and proclaim among the nations what he has done.