Ch. 3 – The Dawning Kingdom

In student ministries not too long ago had a series on the Kingdom of God, which would make Ron Sider (and Jesus) happy:

Unless Matthew, Mark, and Luke are totally wrong, all who want to preach and live like Jesus must place the “kingdom of God” at the center of their thought and action.

Sider suggests that to best understand what Jesus meant when he announced the kingdom to his listeners, we need to understand the Jewish messianic hope which was derived from the prophets. With this in mind, imagine being present at the synagogue in Nazareth when Jesus read a very messianic passage from the prophet Isaiah …

(1) The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
(2) to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
(Isaiah 61:1-2, TNIV)

… and then clearly said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

That is huge.

Jesus was announcing that the kingdom had come, though he made it clear in further parables that it had not yet reached its culmination. As one Caedmon’s Call song goes, and as our experience in life attests, death [and sin and the devil] is on a long leash.

This is a kingdom of the already and the not yet, and there is a great quote from some dude named Mortimer Arias, who said,

Jesus, who had announced the Good News to the poor in this life, still had Good News for the poor beyond this life, when nothing could be expected from history. Jesus’ evangelization, therefore, is truly holistic – for this world and for the world to come!

You may not be used to agreeing with things the Pope says, but I thought these words from the late John Paul II were right on:

The kingdom of God is not a concept, a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God. If the kingdom is separated from Jesus, it is no longer the kingdom of God which he revealed.

Consider Sider’s comment, that “Jesus, the kingdom, and all the blessings of the kingdom are inseparable [and that] one cannot have the ethics of the kingdom or the forgiveness of the kingdom apart from Jesus.” What do you think of that assertion? In adhering to a limited, one-side view, have we somehow missed the boat completely? What do you think has been the cost of neglecting the other dimensions of the kingdom all this time?

Ch. 2 – Mapping The Terrain: Four Models

This is where Sider gets down to business, saying things like this:

Most churches are one-sided disasters… One group saves souls. The other reforms structures. That’s what I call lopsided Christianity.

In order to move towards a more balanced Christianity, a lot of the book will focus on what the Bible actually has to say, but to begin he invites us to consider four streams of the church, which each have their own distinct answers to the question, “What exactly is the proper biblical relationship between evangelism and social concern?” These four models, along with broad characteristics, are as follows:

Individualistic Evangelical. The saving of individual souls is paramount. Mission equals evangelism. Sins are personal rather than social.

Radical Anabaptist. Salvation is personal and social. Change comes through community, so the primary focus is on being the Church.

Dominant Ecumenical. We can evangelize both persons and social structures. Personal faith in Jesus and peace in Vietnam are both forms of salvation. Liberal and conservative subgroups within this category shift the emphasis to one side or the other. A Roman Catholic subgroup is similar to the conservative one, but says we start by evangelizing persons and then cultures, and in so doing build the kingdom.

Secular Christian. Evangelism is merely politics and salvation is only social justice.

I think that Sider believes, as I do, that there are things to be learned from each of these groups, but none of them alone really take into account the whole of Scripture. We all probably feel a sort of attachment to one of them, and perhaps for most of us it was the same one. If this attachment is particularly strong, you might be inclined to argue passionately that your particular viewpoint is more biblical than the others, which it may very well be.

But personally, I’m not content with a theology and a way of living that’s just “better than others,” because if it ignores entire portions of Scripture, it is nowhere near good enough for us.

Ch. 1 – My Pilgrimage

In this chapter Sider tells his story of coming to the place where he is today, with this vision, this passion of his that permeates all he does:

I long for the day when every village, town, and city has congregations of Christians so in love with Jesus Christ that they lead scores of people to accept him as personal Savior and Lord every year – and so sensitive to the cry of the poor and oppressed that they work vigorously for justice, peace, and freedom.

Throughout the book, Sider will have some really challenging things to say about what he views as less-than-biblical – and therefore, heretical – practices and teachings from churches all across the spectrum. I’d suggest you read and consider these challenges as open-mindedly and humbly as you can, remembering that he is speaking out of a deep-seated desire to see the Church live up to its great potential – which is something we are also very interested in.

Some Christian organizations and churches major almost exclusively on evangelism. Others on social action. (Unfortunately most churches in both groups do neither.)… In God’s name, I cry out: Why can’t there be thousands and thousands of churches all across our world that meet the needs of the whole person in the name of the Lord whom we worship and follow?

Where does our church fit? What about C2SM/C4? And how about you, personally? Let’s not assume we have it down. Any ideas on what it would look like to become more biblical in our lives of worship (using the word in the Romans 12:1-2 sense, as opposed to just the singing sense)?

Good News & Good Works – Preface

One of the basic themes of this book, as the title suggests, is that the gospel is (at least) two-sided. For most of the twentieth century, the North American understanding of the gospel was split in half, with one group of folks concerning themselves solely with meeting physical needs while the second group prided itself on being about the spiritual side of things. Both believed they were fulfilling their purpose as Christians.

In Walter Rauschenbusch’s lectures titled “A Theology for the Social Gospel,” he argued that the dominant understanding of the gospel was “one-sided” and “individualistic,” whereas the focus of the gospel really lies “beyond the individual soul” and is concerned mostly with “the great ethical problems of social life.”

Conservative Christians, who became known as fundamentalists, reacted against the social gospel by abandoning almost all ministry to physical needs, instead focusing on spiritual needs; namely, individual souls.

Over the past thirty years or so, and increasingly during the past few years, many people are beginning to see that the distinction between physical and spiritual needs was never meant to be there. Both the social gospel of the liberals and the fundamentalist gospel of the conservatives are only partially biblical, and therefore, inadequate.

As Sider says,

[W]e need a full-blown biblical theology that affirms both personal and social sin, both personal conversion and structural change, both evangelism and social action, both personal and social salvation, both Jesus as moral example and Jesus as vicarious substitute, both orthodox theology and ethical obedience.

That sets the stage for what we are to explore in the rest of the book.

The launch.

By now I am hoping that many of you have had the opportunity to pick up a copy of the book and have even begun to read it, because it is time to get this book discussion of ours underway.

I’ve been encouraged by the response as I have shared these ideas in C4 and at the Leadership Family Meeting over the past few weeks. It seems as if a lot of folks have been sensing the need to be involved and serving in the community and the city, but maybe didn’t know how to do it.

Several people have come up to me to say they have a particular area they are interested in focusing on. A couple of people plan on volunteering at Christ’s Home orphanage. Someone else wondered out loud what it would look like to minister to those in the community who are living with HIV/AIDS. One leader suggested we get involved with Habitat for Humanity and the rebuilding of several row-homes in the southern part of the city that were destroyed in a fire. My favorite, though, was a guy I’d actually talked to about renting a room at his place, who decided to withdraw the invitation so the room could be available for men when they are released from prison, or for other homeless folks.

God is doing something in us as a ministry. He is stirring our hearts and minds to act as his loving hands and feet in our community. May we continue to be sensitive to his leading, and may we follow.

Tomorrow I’ll post the entry for the preface of the book, with one new entry to follow each week after that. Please help us get the conversation going by posting your thoughts and by inviting others to be involved.

A theology for the whole gospel

I got the idea for this blog from a few of you, who suggested I host a book discussion club online by choosing a book that we’ll read together and then I’ll blog about it, since reading and writing are two of the things I happen to be able to do with a certain degree of regularity (arithmetic not being a third one). Once I have read the chapter and have composed some of my ideas, any and all of you can respond, multiple times if you want, and we can all learn and grow together.

The hope is that if I do my part, it will be beneficial for all of us as we seek to become more fully the kinds of people God wants us to be for the sake of his Kingdom in the world. No pressure or anything!

So with that said, the book I propose we start with is Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel by Ron Sider. I have not yet read it, but if Sider’s other work is any indication, this one will give us plenty to work with, both in terms of discussion and practical application in our particular context. He is the president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which may sound scary if you have been raised on the idea that social action is “liberal” and therefore bad, but I assure you, he loves Jesus like we do, and probably more so.

You may find it tough to put Sider in a box because he bucks the trends. There are those who do a great job with evangelism and those who do a great job with social justice, but even today, very few who seem to do them both as well as Sider. Read the text of his speech I’m Not A Social Activist and you will see what I mean.

So, who wants to read, discuss, and act upon this book together?

So why this title, anyway?

Part of it is because of the song I mentioned earlier. That is a big part of it, actually. It is people who are being changed on the inside and are then turned inside out for the glory of God and the good of everyone else. It is people who are about justice and praise, together, hand in hand, in one big Kingdom embrace.

But it also takes into account this growing hunch I have had for a couple of years that if we are truly serious about glorifying God and growing in our relationship with him and sharing his love with others (which is one way of summing up what it means to be a Christian), we should probably be spending less time in a church building or otherwise in the exclusive company of Christians and more time where we are needed.

We need to get out more.

Now, spending time in the building in which our church happens to meet is an essential part of our spirituality. Our singing and teaching and learning and MPACTing and fellowshipping is good. In our vision statement, we talk about drinking deep of Christ. We do a lot of drinking within the walls and under the roof of the big stone building at 1051 Landis Valley Road.

But what about flowing, which we also claim to be about, from campuses/communities to continents? We as C4/C2SM do a pretty good job at the continents part, I think, a week or two each year. But what about the other 50-51 weeks of the year, the other 350-360 days? Is God only concerned with these things when it is summer and it does not conflict with our family’s beach trip? Are we? And what about our community, our city? When was the last time we built a significant relationship with someone right here in Lancaster who is from another culture or a different faith? When was the last time any of us took a Saturday morning and went down to the soup kitchen to wash dishes or clean up spilled oatmeal after homeless people had eaten their breakfast?

We are beginning to see, I think, that as leaders especially, and as a ministry more broadly, we have failed to make much of an impact at all locally, outside the walls of our church building.

It is time for that to change. We are not sure what that is going to look like, but we have some ideas and we’re moving forward; we’re building the airplane mid-flight. Realistically, you should know that a lot of this depends on you, me, us. Real ministry is done by real people among real people, and it is messy. Messes may drive us crazy, but I think a mess is fertile ground for Holy Spirit work, so I am excited to see what God does in us and through us – and in turn, in and through others – as we seek to take these small steps of obedience together.

So, for the sake of this blog and this discussion, we – all of us who choose to be a part of it – are “inside out people” in training. As we drink deep of Christ in our homes and in our church building, we will also flow into the lives of real people in our community, our city, and throughout our world.

Inside Out People

“Let justice and praise become my embrace, to love you from the inside out.”

What do we mean when we sing those words on any given Tuesday night? What does it really mean to love God from the inside out? And what does it mean for justice and praise to be our embrace? What would that really look like? What would have to change? What would it mean for our community, our city, our world? For the Kingdom? How would it change the way we relate to God?

I’d imagine most of us have never considered those questions in any detail. And if we don’t know what we’re singing, we’re not likely to do much about it.

So that is what this blog is about – a forum for exploring these themes, in hopes that we, as Kingdom people, will allow God to turn us inside out and let the world see and experience and taste the love of Jesus, perhaps in ways they have never seen and experienced and tasted before.

More thoughts forthcoming…