One In Jesus

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

Conversion

Now, the A-B-A’ way of telling the scriptures’ story has certain implications. For example, if the plan is for God to be king, ruling through Jesus, then for anyone else to claim kingship is usurpation — sin.

In the Garden of Eden, we see this in the nature of Satan’s temptation of Eve: Continue reading →

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

Scot points out that both the local church and academia have learned — finally — to read the Bible as story. One such story might be summarized as C-F-R-C: the story of salvation in the Bible.

(And this is very much the story as related by Scot in his excellent The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, which we covered in this series.) The story goes like this. Continue reading →

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

Changing culture

Scot challenges the Pleaded Pants and Skinny Jeans assumption that Christians should be about changing the culture of the world as Kingdom work.

[James Davison] Hunter’s study [To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (required reading to be a serious student of such things)] reminds us all of fundamental issues at work in any attempt to change culture.

He argues that culture changes from top down and not from bottom up; that evangelicals on the Left and Right do not have enough social and cultural capital to change culture; that culture is resistant to any intentional change; that most Christian groups today are too politically activist in grasping for power; and that the gospel does not valorize power but loving service. Continue reading →

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

In contrast to the Skinny Jeans kingdom approach, Scot speaks of the Pleated Pants theorizing of academia.

A little more completely, [the Pleated Pants academics’] questions are:

Is the kingdom already here, or is it still in the future?

And is the kingdom a dynamic rule of God or the realm over which God rules— that is, a nation or a people or a territory, such as the kingdom of Denmark?

Continue reading →

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

In the last post, we considered the various Millennial theories. In contemporary evangelical discussions, however, the idea of “kingdom” has been discussed in very different terms. Continue reading →

I’m a Scot McKnight fan, and I’ve just received a copy of his latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church. (I had to pay for mine.)

And it’s some kind of big deal. I mean, this one is going to be discussed by elders, in minister staff meetings, in academia — and in the blogosphere — because he steps on lots and lots of toes — but in a very good and necessary way.

To put it simply, Scot’s theme is that most of our teaching on the kingdom is messed up, and so we need to rethink it all. And in so doing, we’ll rethink how we do and think about Christianity and church and mission. Continue reading →