Kingdom Come

Taken from Pernell, who got it from Jonny. It comes from Liberating The Church, by Howard Snyder:

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 change 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.

To which I can only add a hearty "Amen".

Comments

[David]

Amen. Well put. Thanks for posting this.

[Pernell]

And to think you haven't even added me to the blogroll...

[wilsonian]

Wow. I need to print this out and put it somewhere I will see it often.

[Mike]

Pernell, while I appreciate the quote I have a strict "no Hamilton" policy on the blogroll, so my hands are tied.

Actually, I never use the blogroll anymore, so I don't pay any attention to it. I'm sure half the links are dead by now. I may kill the whole thing and be done with it.

(It occurs to me that I haven't added wilsonian either, but clearly she has far too much self respect to grovel.)

[David]

I don't think I'm on there either - and I differ from Wilsonian - I'm perfectly willing to throw away my dignity and grovel a little. And I am not in Ontario at all. You'd think that would give me bonus points. What about if i did this:

Go Oilers!!

(i doesn't count if I don't mean it, does it?)