Andrew Jones wrote a “random thought” today on the intersection of Kingdom and Mission:

- After a good soaking of Kingdom thinking, when you pull out your head, and wipe your eyes, you dont see churches, you see the Church. Only one. And you don’t see mission as a yes or no button in front of you, but rather a river coming somewhere behind you, sweeping you along into somewhere exciting.

I suppose this is merely another way of restating Matthew 6:33 –

…rather, seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Nevertheless, it is an important re-statement: by developing and maintaining our focus on the Kingdom of God, all of our smaller territories find their place within the whole; once the Kingdom is in view, we don’t have to hold seminars about how to make the Christian faith look like good news, neither do we have to ask the question of the role of outreach: for the Kingdom of God is nothing if it is not God reaching out to us in a welcoming embrace, inviting us to join in his very life – a life that is not just restored to fullness but a life that is being re-created into life in overflowing proportions.

We who are looking to find direction for being not only “the church” but “a church” need look no further than the Kingdom. The church is not the Kingdom. Lest we forget, the church is the witness to the Kingdom. As witnesses to the Kingdom, we stand as participants in the Kingdom whose role is inherently missional. Our loss of missional focus seems to come from either a loss of Kingdom-consciousness or our identification of the church with the Kingdom.

In the first case, we end up doing church just to do church. We perceive the actions of the church to be ordinances, commands to be followed, not activities to be joyfully engaged in. In the second case, we become very territorial and defensive. Each local body is seen as the church, so each Kingdom has to be advanced – and there are a lot of other Kingdoms out there in competition for unconquered territory (and, I daresay, quite a bit of territory already held by others). The second case also establishes the church as a defensive bastion against the evils of society and is the basis for culture wars.

Notice that in both cases, the church becomes almost entirely inward-focused (even in outreach practices). Even evangelism – the joyful telling of the good news – becomes drudgery or something used to build up the Kingdom. Taking on Jesus’ Kingdom perspective changes everything. Jesus’ perspective says that we may well be participants in the Kingdom, but the Kingdom isn’t us. Actually, nothing can destroy God’s Kingdom, because it is and is coming whether we want it or not. It is a fact of life of the age to come.

Therefore, going out into the world, we make disciples of all nations – not to make them look like or act like us, nor to convert them to our opinion and perspective – but to point them to God’s Kingdom that has come in Jesus Christ and is coming: immersing them into the life of the Triune God and teaching obedience to the Kingdom way of life through our own obedience to it. And God With Us, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, will be with us through all of this, until this present age shall end and the Kingdom is all that remains.

Amen.

For more random thoughts for today from Andrew Jones, click here.