Embracing a Kingdom Imagination

Historians report that transitions can take twenty-five years to shake out. But once the pieces fall together and things settle, grandchildren often look back and ask, “You mean you did it that way?” One of the most difficult things to do when you’re living in the middle of a transition is to recognize the shifts and adjust in reel-time. As a result faith communities struggle to understand declines and solutions. Often church leaders rely on what they know best-the experienced successes of the recent past. A large percentage of congregations are relying on what worked early in the 21-first-century; the crafting of the attractional worship model. 

People of faith must embrace a kingdom imagination and take our enculturated lives seriously. We start when we change the terms of the conversation. We no longer critique, consume, or copy culture-we make culture.

It’s Been Sometime

Being a contributing editor for New Wineskins Magazine I receive a good number of advanced reader copies of books before they have been released. I’m currently reading Andy Crouch’s
Culture Making (release date August 2008). Since I’m only 40 pages into the book it’s too early to comment other than it is thought provoking reading.

I’ve also watched the ten minute preview of “Lord Save Us from Your Followers.” It’s in book form and movie. You can watch for free here.

Grassroot Movement

How do we really do church? What does a Christian worldview look like? How much of the current expression of Christianity is cultural and political? Do we have a Christian subculture today, and what good is it? Is a Christian subculture what Jesus had in mind for the church in the world? What does it mean to truly believe? If these questions are going to be asked they will have to be asked by the future leaders of the church. But where are the young independent thinkers? Where are the grassroot movements that are so dependent on the church’s future?

Is there a grassroots movement where you serve? It may not look the same as it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s but I venture to guess that it will start the same-with a brunch of rowdy, nonconforming troublemakers asking lots of questions because they really believe the answers are there.

A New Start

In this consumer culture I’m sure many people leave churches in search of a better or newer “product.” After 25+ years of life with one faith community (with the exception of a period in the mid 1990s) my wife and I have left this community and our heritage, but for a much different reason than the one mentioned.

We needed a new start. And we lacked no courage in starting over. The pain of leaving outweighed the pain of staying. When you become too guarded to be of service, it is time to go.

We have left many friends and we are discovering that leaving is much more difficult than we envisaged.

I will continue to serve as an editor and writer for New Wineskins Magazine. I think God for the crew there. They encourage me in my wackiness.

Now we move forward with freshness and hope—looking for new areas of service.

God is Cryptic

God is mysterious, surprising, and, yes, often distressing. I don’t find the same God many talk about who clearly and calmly takes them from point A to point B. Neither do I find the same protection I hear many Christians speak of—it’s not the experience of the first century servants, nor is it mine. I’m simply at a loss to find any human logic in the path God designs for those He calls to walk the journey of faith. Yet, I can confidently say that I know as much about God and His ways as the best biblical scholars. For what I know and what they know is very little. God is beyond my ability or theirs to know. He can’t be packaged and explained. He is a mystery.