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House2House Conference

2008-07-18T09:24:53-06:00

Stop Press Announcement: The House2Harvest conference over Labor Day is nearly full! If you want to go to the conference, I recommend booking very soon.

Speakers this year include Wolfgang Simson (author of Houses that Change the World), Paul Young, (author of runaway bestseller The Shack), Dennis Balcombe, (missionary statesman working into China), Frank Viola, (author of Pagan Christianity) and Tony and me. There will be four tracks that include business, missions, relational Christianity and simple church basics.

Full details at www.House2House.com.

Crazy for God

2008-07-13T21:18:07-06:00

At first glance, this might seem a rather unusual book to choose on the topic of the Kingdom of God. Tony picked the book up in a store and bought it when he recognized a photo in it. The author,Frank Schaeffer, son of well known evangelical Francis Schaeffer who founded L'Abri, went to the same school as Tony and the book contained a picture of the principal.

The book is Frank's entertaining but negative view of life growing up as the somewhat neglected child of famous evangelical parents. Later in life, howeve, he joined with his father and some others in an attempt to bring about Kingdom principles by political means. The book is subtitled, "How I grew up as one of the elect, helped found the religious right, and lived to take all (or almost all) of it back." Frank eventually turned his back on evangelicalism.

Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world!"

The Gospel of the Kingdom

2008-07-05T14:49:37-06:00

One of the next books I studied in my quest to learn more about the Kingdom of God was “The Gospel of the Kingdom.” There were some concepts I found especially helpful in this book by George Eldon Ladd (1911-1982), an evangelical New Testament scholar and Professor of New Testament exegesis and theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The first was the flat nature of Biblical prophecy. To quote Ladd:
“Usually the prophets, as they looked into the future, spoke of coming events without attempting to give the temporal sequence of the several stages of the accomplishment of God’s purpose. Not only is the distant future regarded as a single although complex event but the intermediate future and the distant future are described as though they constituted a single act of God.” (page 36)

An example would be the Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus. Quite clearly there are two different prophetic views concerning the Messiah. There is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, and then there is the triumphant King of much of the rest of the Old Testament. The Jews missed Jesus as the Messiah because they were looking for the triumphant King. With the benefit we have of time, we know that Jesus has already come as suffering servant and will return to reign in victory in the future.

Now apply this concept to the apparently conflicting Biblical concepts about the Kingdom. Sometimes the Kingdom is portrayed as a present reality, at other times it is our inheritance in the future. The Jew’s were expecting a literal return of the glory of David’s kingdom. Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world. Some parables seem to indicate that the Kingdom comes gradually. Others passages imply a sudden and glorious event.

Eldon Ladd describes two ages that are talked about in the Scriptures—this present age and the age to come. For example, in Ephesians 1:21, Paul describes Christ as being “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” As you investigate this idea further, you find that these two ages are separated by the return of Jesus.
The apparent conflicts about the Kingdom can be resolved by looking at whether we are referring to the Kingdom in this age or the age to come.

Again quoting Ladd:
“This is the mystery of the Kingdom, the truth which God now discloses for the first time in redemptive history. God’s Kingdom is to work among men in two different stages. The Kingdom is yet to come in the form prophesied by Daniel when every human sovereignty will be displaced by God’s sovereignty. The world will yet behold the coming of God’s Kingdom with power. But the mystery, the new revelation, is that this very Kingdom of God has now come to work among men but in an utterly unexpected way. It is not now destroying human rule; it is not now abolishing sin from the earth… It has come quietly, unobtrusively, secretly. It can work among men and never be recognized by the crowds. In the spiritual realm, the Kingdom now offers to men the blessings of God’s rule, delivering them from the power of Satan and sin. The Kingdom of God is an offer, a gift which may be accepted or rejected. The Kingdom is now here with persuasion rather than with power.” (page 55)

Booklist

2008-06-27T10:54:56-06:00

It seems from the comments I have been receiving on the last two posts that others are thinking about the Kingdom of God too.

Here is a list of the books I have read on the subject of the Kingdom over the past year. Some I found more relevant than others. If any of you have good ideas of a "must read" on this subject, I would love to know them.

The Church, the Churches and the Kingdom (Philip Mauro)
Rediscovering the Kingdom (Myles Monroe)
Kingdom Principles (Myles Monroe)
The Gospel of the Kingdom (George Eldon Ladd)
The King and His Kingdom (Peter Whyte)
Dominion (C. Peter Wagner)
Churchshift (Sunday Adelaja)
Authority (Kenneth Hagin)
Destined to Rule (Rebecca Greenwood)
The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person (E. Stanley Jones)
When Heaven Invades Earth (Bill Johnson)
Crazy for God (Frank Schaeffer)

This last one might seem a rather odd one to add to the collection, but it is an account of people trying to bring about the Kingdom through political and social means.

Some comments from you...

2008-06-19T11:03:46-06:00

UnkleE posted the following comments on the last post:

"I agree with you about the importance of the kingdom, and of getting back to Jesus' teachings generally. Jesus was obviously in a very different position to us (that's an understatement!), but I can't help feeling that we too easily reinterpret his teachings without understanding them in their original context. For example, our modern evangelicalism tends to talk about people "accepting Jesus as their personal saviour" or "becoming a christian" (as if it's a passive thing), whereas Jesus called people to follow him (a more active thing) and to live as people in the kingdom (i.e. under the rule of God). All this suggests different ways for us to do evangelism today, and instead of having the separation between faith and good works which we have, Jesus seemed to connect the two far more. There's heaps more we could explore here, but I'll refrain! : ) Thanks"

I thought these comments deserved wider reading.

Here is what I emailed in response:

"Thanks for your comments on the SimplyChurch blog. I totally agree with you and hope that this will come out in future posts. My sense is that right now we (the church in general) tend to preach a "Santa Claus gospel" rather than the gospel of the Kingdom. We pray a wish list to God and expect him to have "a wonderful plan for our lives." There is some truth to this--but it is certainly not the whole truth. It leaves out the fact that we have become part of a Kingdom with a culture, principles and responsibilities."

The Church, the Churches and the Kingdom

2008-06-18T18:55:56-06:00

About a year ago, I sensed the Lord challenging me to take another look at His Kingdom. Eager to see what other resources I could find, I searched our reasonably extensive home library of Christian books (14 shelves worth) and came up with precisely one title. I was shocked! The Kingdom of God was the focus of Jesus’ ministry, and we had one book on the subject? (I suspect we are fairly typical.)

So I set myself to study. Over the past 12 months I have read the entire New Testament noting every verse that could possibly have anything to do with the Kingdom (believe me, there are a lot!) I discovered that the Kingdom of God was the main thing that Jesus spoke about. When he healed the sick or cast out demons, He told people that the Kingdom had come near them. Many of His parables were about the Kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount was a description of the principles of the Kingdom. Following His resurrection and before His ascension, at a time when one assumes He covered the most important things the disciples needed to know, Jesus spent 40 days talking with them about the Kingdom. Paul had a similar emphasis in his life too. And I had just one book on the subject!

During this year I also took recommendations from others on books about the Kingdom and I have now read eight or ten of them. I’m beginning to reach a few conclusions but still have many unanswered questions. But each of the books I have read has given me pointers as to the nature of the Kingdom.

The first book I read on the subject (the one we had on our bookshelves) is called The Church the Churches and the Kingdom. It was written by Philip Mauro, a brilliant lawyer on the bar of the Supreme Court from the earlier part of the last century. The main argument he puts forward is that we have failed to distinguish between the Church (by which he means that which Jesus is building—His people across the nations and the ages), the churches (or local expressions of the Church in a location) and the Kingdom. We ascribe to the Church or to the churches, many things that the Bible only ascribes to the Kingdom and vice versa, and in so doing, rob them both of the meaning Jesus gave to them.

Let me quote from Mauro:
“The essentials of a kingdom are: a king, his people and a domain. In the case of the Kingdom of God, Jesus Christ, …was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, is the King all glorious, who rules that Kingdom from the throne of God in heaven; His people are all they who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and translated into His Kingdom by God the Father; the domain of that Kingdom is this earth, which God has given to the children of men. Manifestly, those essentials of the Kingdom of God do not pertain, and cannot be fitted to the Church, which is the building of God, the body and bride of Christ. Nor do they pertain to any one or more of the churches of God. In the light of all the Scriptures these distinctions are perfectly clear.

Therefore … we cannot regard it as a matter of indifference but rather of grave concern that in our day the existence of the Kingdom of God as a present reality, the place and responsibility of every regenerated person therein and the great and precious truths and promises that pertain thereto, have all but faded out of the consciousness of those who have entered into that Kingdom by the door of the new birth; while at the same time the important word “church” has been divested of the meaning it invariably has in the divine vocabulary and is forced to do duty for the forsaken word “Kingdom.”

The book is not necessarily for the faint of heart, but contains some great material and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone interested in studying the subject further.

Becoming a Citizen

2008-05-29T17:36:51-06:00

On May 23^rd 2008, I became an American citizen. In a large gymnasium hastily converted into a courtroom, before a presiding judge and with all due pomp and circumstance, I pledged allegiance to my new country and was granted the rights and privileges that citizenship brings.

It was a surprisingly moving ceremony punctuated by patriotic songs and speeches about freedom. There were around 1,100 of us, from 85 different nations. The immigration officials several times spoke of the incredible stories—the hardships that some people had endured to gain the privilege of citizenship. I was sitting next to a man from Bangladesh who had not seen his wife in more than eight years in order that he could become an American citizen and have her come and join him legally. For me, coming from a nation like Britain, I take freedom and justice for granted, but many people were from oppressive regimes or situations where the rule of law has no sway, and poverty and injustice are a way of life. In becoming citizens of the US, they are liberated.

There were several judges and even a US senator in attendance. An immigration official had to swear on our behalf that all of us had been investigated and no just cause was found whereby we might be denied citizenship, and we all had to raise our right hands and solemnly promise that there was no reason we knew of why we should not become citizens. We were then informed of the rights and privileges we would automatically have as citizens of the United States. These included such things as the right to travel under an American passport, the right to vote and so on. We were also informed of our responsibilities including the fact that any of us could be called on to fight for our country if the occasion arose. America’s wars are now my wars.

Finally, we had to give up any loyalty that we might have had to “kings, potentates and other authorities” and swear allegiance to our new country. We pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and were all declared to be American citizens, with a certificate to prove it. Then pandemonium broke out as the court adjourned and everyone began celebrating.

I am very proud of my British heritage. But now I’m also proud to be an American.

This is the second time I have changed citizenship. I was actually born into an oppressive regime that sought to marginalize all its citizens. There was no justice; its citizens frequently lived in fear, and breaking its laws carried the death penalty. At the age of 11, I had the opportunity to change my citizenship and I appeared before a judge. This time, I could not claim that I was worthy to be granted citizenship, but Someone came and stood in my place, and my right to become a citizen of this new country was based on His righteousness rather than my own. And so in the courtroom of heaven, I relinquished my citizenship in the kingdom of darkness and became a citizen of the Kingdom of light ruled by a good, righteous and just King. However, I became more than just a citizen; I was welcomed into the royal family with all the rights and privileges, not just of citizenship, but also of sonship.

Just like becoming an American, there are also responsibilities tied up with citizenship of the Kingdom. I was born again into a nation at war. Like it or not, her wars are now my wars, and God’s Kingdom is in the process of invading the kingdom of darkness. I also have the privilege and responsibility of acting as an ambassador for this Kingdom wherever I go, and of letting others know that they can be free from the oppression of the regime they currently live under. They too can change citizenship and come under the rule of a King who loves them and is longing to welcome them into His Kingdom.

For a year now, I have been studying the subject of the Kingdom of God. This post is the first of several to discuss this subject. I will be very interested to hear your comments too—I have not come to many set conclusions on the topic and am aware it is one of those subjects that the Holy Spirit is bringing to people’s attention.

More Trends

2008-05-06T17:40:27-06:00

First, a quick update on Joy, the lady in India who was facing prison two weeks ago because of her activities for the Gospel and for whom many were praying. YM writes:

"Dear brother and sister,

Greetings thanks for your prayers and concern. Joy got bail yesterday by God's grace.

Thanks again for your prayers
YM"

A couple of posts ago we looked at six encouraging spiritual trends that a group of us from around the country are noticing. Here is a continuation of that discussion. Again, these are not in any particular order of importance.

7. There are more answers to prayer and they seem to be coming more quickly. Many are experiencing a greater sense of God’s presence.

8. Interdenominational co-operation: There seems to be an increasing amount of collaboration between different denominations on ideas, conferences and meetings. This is typified by come of the co-operation on the Facebook website.

9. There are some great movies out there that raise the right questions and give us more tools to look at spirituality and a focus for discussion. Movies like Why Did I Get Married and Juno would fit in that category. Even Oprah’s “church” reveals the amount of spiritual hunger out there. (In our conversation, there was a caution raised here. Windows of spiritual awareness may close so we need to take advantage of them while they are open.)

10. The emphasis on waiting in God’s presence which some may call “soaking” will cause the move of the Holy Spirit to accelerate.

11. Missional businesses: There are more people interested in Kingdom-minded businesses. We are hearing increasing stories of people starting businesses that God is blessing so much that their time is being freed for the Kingdom.

12. Interest from mega-churches: There have been several instances of mega-churches being in contact with the simple church movement with an amazing openness to what we are doing. One is asking how they can bless us, another how they can get involved in starting organic churches and others wanting to learn more. What would happen if the mega and micro learned to co-operate?

Pray for Joy

2008-04-24T11:08:17-06:00

Several of the last posts have been from an interview with a couple from India, YM and Joy, both church planters, who are facing considerable challenges because of the stand they are taking for the Lord. They have been charged with "converting" people to Christianity. In their state, if you offer someone enticement to convert (like eternal life) you can be found guilty.

I just received the following email from YM:

"Dear brother and sister

Greetings

Thanks for email and for prayers.Tomorrow Joy goes to court for her bail.Please pray that she would be granted bail on the same day.If judge rejects her bail then she will end up going to jail for a month which of course will be unbearable for her.Pray that God will bring grace to us and work in the heart of Judge.Pray that Lord will supply all the bail needs too.

Thanks again.

YM with prayers"

We in the West know little of this kind of suffering for the Lord. Let's stand with them in prayer.

Trends

2008-04-18T17:57:36-06:00

Every couple of weeks, I get on the phone with a few good friends for an hour or so of conversation. We come from all across the nation from the west coast to the east coast, from the very north of the country to here in Texas. We try to discuss things of relevance each time. This past week we looked at different trends that we see occurring across the nation that are of relevance within the Kingdom and/or that affect simple churches.

We came up with 10 or so trends that between us we can see occurring. I will mention a few during this blog and post the remainder in a few days. What I am interested to know is if any of you are noticing the same things. That would confirm what we are sensing. I also find that hearing about these things raises my faith level and gives me an expectation that we will see more.

Here are the first six--in no particular order of priority:

There is an increase in the number of healings. We are hearing stories of regular "no-name" people praying, and remarkable healings occurring. These stories include healing from things like cancer, major abdominal problems etc. Those praying are not those with a healing ministry, but just a group of ordinary Christians praying for someone with a physical or emotional problem. Sometimes they are occurring out in the marketplace.
There is an increased hunger to hear about simple church. Many people are asking questions, searching for answers. Many leaders within various denominations have become open to these concepts.
Churches are being planted cross-culturally, both within different nationalities such as Afghan, Cuban etc and across cultural boundaries such as with the homeless.
Simple churches are becoming more missional. We are hearing stories of simple churches that started with people who left legacy churches now turning outwards and reaching out into their communities. It's as though some have needed a period of time so they can experience some personal healing, but now that has been accomplished, they have become very Kingdom minded and outreach focused.
More women are engaged in church planting. We heard of one example of a group being formed for women who are planting churches.
There are some great books out there that are becoming catalysts for conversation. This includes books such as Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity (incidentally there is a hilarious spoof commercial for that book at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hslswIal9u4) and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch.

Don't forget, we would love to hear from you if you are experiencing any of the same sort of trends. Are there books that you feel fit in that same category? Do you know of examples of healings, simple churches being planted cross-culturally and so on. Encourage us all!