Over the last few weeks we have looked at the relationship of the church, the kingdom of God, and mission. I want to bring these ideas to a close this week and move onto a new theme beginning next week. Please join the conversation in the comments. I enjoy the discussion!

The Church on Mission for the Kingdom

We may now see how when everything becomes mission, nothing is mission. The church does not point to a reality in itself, but rather to the kingdom of God and the reign of Jesus Christ. The church stands for something more elemental and invasive than itself. Because the kingdom is more all-encompassing and far-reaching than the church, the church must be recognized as a servant to Christ's kingdom.

The church finds its significance precisely in this distinction. If the church is a "sacrament, sign, or instrument," it thereby holds a consequential place in the kingdom. As servants, missionary congregations are communities of intercession, bridging the abyss from the kingdom to the world.

The excessive pessimism regarding the church in the mid-1960s from thinkers like J.C. Hoekendijk has also emerged in some other reform movements in North America. I have often said, "Many are taking swings at the church like a low hanging pinata on Cinco-de-Mayo."

The impact of this negative view of the church, combined with much evangelical angst (I wrote about it here) on the missional conversation is difficult to quantify, but it is noticeable. Unfortunately, they are on the same track that Hoekendijk and others were, which resulted in the near total eclipse of the church and the kingdom. Van Engen states, "Replacing the biblical order of God's mission (God-Church-world) with a new order (God-world-church) worked out in the end to rob the church of its own involvement in mission."1

This new order led to empty activism that had little purpose and negligible impact. Only as we recognize the connection of the church to the kingdom can we begin to understand the missional relationship of the church to the world-- within the scale of the kingdom of God.

On the contrary, however, the emergence of salvific-historic eschatology, as mentioned earlier in Cullman and Freytag, actually emboldens the missional endeavor. The breadth of the reign of God is coming, but the vision of the coming kingdom renders itself into a radical concern for the penultimate rather than a fixation for the ultimate. Bosch notes that on this side of the cross, "living in the force-field of the assurance of salvation already received and the final victory already secured, the believer gets involved in the urgency of the task at hand." 2 Cullman says it this way: the "already" outweighs the "not yet" in mission. Instead of passively waiting for God's future world plan, we ask about the church's participation in the world.

In practice, this means that missionary congregations live out their spiritual life not only as the church, but also as God's people in the world, proclaiming the good news of Christ's work on the cross, and acting as a force to change society to more closely resemble the kingdom of God. The church is called to preach the Gospel of the kingdom, a gospel that has social and political justice consequences for the greater society. (Here is my earlier post on on the gospel and its implications).

These gospel implications cannot be constrained either to individualistic spiritual categories or to strictly socio-economic categories. The gospel of the kingdom deals with all of life and transforms all of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

So, let me be bold here. Some people who talk about the Kingdom and God's work in the world need to read up on their history. This is not the first time we had this conversation, and it has not ended well. I see much "missional historical naïveté" at work and, honestly, it concerns me. Some of the words I hear from some missional thinkers are the same words that J.C. Hoekendijk said decades earlier-- and it led to theological ruin (see my earlier comments about J.C. Hoekendijk here and here).

However, I cannot avoid the plain teaching of scripture about the gospel, the Kingdom, and the church. I think we need to take the risk to talk about the Kingdom of God and to live out the implications of the gospel.

Am I being naïve? Or, can we speak of the Kingdom and, more importantly, live Kingdom-focused lives without losing the clear proclamation of the gospel? Can we avoid the mistakes of our fathers and mothers?

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1 God's Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church, pg. 114

2 Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, pg. 509