One In Jesus

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

This is going to be an unusually long post. I decided not to break it into pieces — and so I’ll skip the next day or two to give the readers time to read, reflect, comment, and discuss.

There is much more in the book that I will not cover. But I’ve covered what I consider the core theses.

So what is the problem that Scot wishes to solve? What’s the point of the book? Well, from my own perspective, I see it like this —

1. Among our younger ministers and members, I have noticed a definite tendency to emphasize good works — what we used to call “benevolence” — at the expense of evangelism. Teen ministers haul their kids halfway around the globe to paint houses and plant gardens, but spend not a single minute teaching their kids how to be evangelistic. Continue reading →

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

Seventh, kingdom mission as church mission means the kingdom citizen is compelled by love to “good deeds” or “doing good” in the public sector.

(p. 111).

To disconnect the biblical idea of kingdom from social activism and to claim that the location of God’s work in this world is not the state but the church does not entail withdrawal. It is, to use the words of someone else, “leaving without departing.” But the church is the church, and the world is the world. Distinguishing the two, even radically separating them, however, does not mean withdrawal. Instead, when the church is the church it is fully engaged in loving everyone as neighbors. As such, the church becomes the most lovingly, compassionately, justly, peacefully engaged segment in all the world.

(p. 111). And so, Scot argues, the good works we do must be good works from within the church — meaning local congregations. And this means, I’m sure, that our congregations need to change and change quite a lot. Continue reading →

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

Fourth, kingdom mission as church mission means forming and indwelling a local church fellowship. The most political thing you and I as followers of Jesus can do, the most political thing we as kingdom citizens can do, the most political thing we as the church of King Jesus can do is to gather together in order to do things the church is called to do.

(p. 104). Scot now sounds very neo-Anabaptist, that is, like Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder. But there is more here than neo-Anabaptist theology. Continue reading →

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

In chapter 7, Scot lays out 9 observations for the nature of the local church in terms of the kingdom of heaven.

First, kingdom mission means the local church is first and foremost a dwelling place for God. …

If the ultimate mission of God is to dwell among the people of God, then kingdom mission is to be the dwelling place of God in this world. Kingdom mission is about being the presence of God in this world.

(p. 100). Now, this should sound familiar to those who’ve read some of the earlier posts on John Walton’s Genesis 1 as Temple Text in the Context of Ancient Cosmology, such as this one from the Creation 2.0 series. Walton argues that Genesis 1 describes the dedication of the cosmos as a temple for God, a temple in which humanity serves as the images of God and in which God rests. Continue reading →

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

It often seems that we want to use “church” to refer to the imperfect, often messy reality of Christians in community today, and we want to use “kingdom” to refer to the perfection of what God’s rule ought to be. But the Bible does not speak this way.

As we’ve seen in earlier posts, the Bible speaks of the “kingdom” in terms of both the present, incomplete, imperfect reality and the perfection of the inheritance we’ve all been promised. Both are “kingdom” — because the kingdom is in process and not yet finished. Continue reading →