kingdom business
Jonny Baker posts up a great and challenging quote from howard snyder’s book liberating the church.
“The church gets in trouble whenever it thinks its in the church business rather than the Kingdom business. In the church business people are concerned with church activities, religious behaviour and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behaviour and everything God has made, visible and invisible. Kingdom people see human affairs as saturated with spiritual meaning and Kingdom significance.
Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people often think about how to get people into church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church chnage the world.
When Christians put the church ahead of the Kingdom they settle for the status quo and their own kind of people. When they catch a vision of the Kingdom of God their sights shift to the poor, the orphan, the widow, the refugee ‘the wretched of the earth’ and to God’s future. They see the life and work of the church from the perspective of the Kingdom.
If the church has one great need it is this: to be set free for the Kingdom of God, to be liberated from itself as it has become in order to be itself as God intends…”
(via digger)
June 21st, 2006 at 1:19 am
to have the church liberated FROM ITSELF - now that’s is a beautiful thought:-)
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:10 am
Now that’s the kind of church I want to belong to. We are reviewing our Cafe Community this Sunday (hopefully the entire community will be there to participate) and this is the sort of thing I think we need to engage with. It is so easy to fall into the “church” business and not be considering the real business of the church - Gods kingdom.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:52 pm
When it comes to discussions about evangelism and the mission statement of a local church I end up with:
“Ask not what you can do for your [local] church, but what you can do for the Kingdom of God.”