And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:24 (NIV)

Many in the church are warming up to this idea.  Some in the nineteenth and twentieth century, especially liberal theologies, used the concept to set forth a humanistic agenda of world peace which stripped away any notion of supernatural salvation or atonement theology from the Christian message.  It is also used by some to propagate socialist political theory.  More recently, it is used by charismatics as grounds for a theology of healing and reconciliation.  While some of these may be aspects of evangelical options, kingdom theology serves as what is referred to as theology’s integrating theme.  Some consider it the most basic theological theme that gives meaning to all other doctrines.  That being said, it was surprising to see John Franke and Stanley Grenz offer such little treatment of it in Beyond Foundationalism, especially in light of Franke’s other work The Character of Theology in which he continues this pattern but does use the term at various points in his work, rather affirmingly.  While I considered the idea that it was not within the scope of Beyond Foundationalism, as it turns out they propose community as theology’s integrative motif.  So, there is an obvious intentionality and thoughtfulness put into it, and they even offered a few brief paragraphs as to why kingdom as an orienting motif falls short.  The reasons they provide are (p. 234-235):

• The kingdom of God is hard to define.  But there have been satisfactory, technical definitions.  Also, community itself is not without controversy.
• It lends itself to individualistic theology, even in the hands of liberal theology.  Actually, kingdom theology probably provides the most social motif while retaining the individual responsibility of persons.  Of course they would probably resist the need for such a move in the first place, since he takes seriously that we do not have meaning or identity without the reference of community.  Still, the individuality of persons is retained in Scriptures, so there is no need to fear where kingdom theology only may lead, even as Franke grants.
• Kingdom theology is a pervasive but not a basic theme in the Bible.  While this may be true if looking for explicit references, this is not true if one understand the concept as implicit.  Community, though also convincingly pervasive, falls short in a similar manner.

“In fact, the concept of community forms the content of the kingdom of God.  The divine reign consists of God at work redeeming, reconciling, and transforming creation into God’s intended ideal and thereby constituting the world as God’s realm.”

I don’t know if they realized what they just did here—they resorted to God’s realm as being more basic than community.  God’s realm is his kingdom.  What community as an integrative motif misses out on is all the dimensions of creation that is beside humans; big-picture ecology is gleaned over.  God’s kingdom plan extends to the destiny of creation, and has a wider scope than that of community.  Since the subtitle of Beyond Foundationalism is “Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context,” it makes sense that community is at the core of their proposal.  Not to mention, it is incredibly helpful and useful.  Still, since postmodern theory admits that the words we use actually shape our experience, I think it would be wonderful to see works that treat theology’s task, nature, or method take seriously the term Jesus used to define his ministry.  I am curious as to why they decided to go in a different direction.  The one reason I understand, though still have my reservations about, is that it is an outdated model in a post-monarchical world.

Yesterday was a big day for the Southern Baptist Convention.  They voted on some important motions, including the Great Commission Resurgence which was pretty controversial, though it did pass.  Read about that here.  Recently there also continues to be a lot of controversy surrounding calvinism in Southern Baptist churches and seminaries.  Calvinists are still the minority in this denomination.  Apparently the SBC isn’t favorable to the Acts 29 network—a calvinist church planting network—so pastor Joshua Shank decided to propose a motion to widen its support…in the form of a rap.  It was light hearted and the convention seemed to welcome his motion.  The only question I’m left wondering is if, ”Teamwork will make the dream work,” then why is Acts 29 exclusively calvinistic?  With such a young, talented, and visionary network of church planters, it would be great to see it open up to better relationships with those who are outside this particular theological camp.

“Bart [Ehrman] is quite an angry man.”

“I do think that the Gospels intended to refer—and succeeded in referring—to Jesus himself and not simply to the community’s faith about Jesus.” (on Barthian heritage)

“If you are a theologian that believes you ought to wait for the biblical scholars to sort stuff out before you can then use their material in your own work, then you might sometimes feel like you have to wait forever.”

“The bible doesn’t use the phrase afterlife—that’s a modern term.  Let’s talk about the robust Christian hope.”

“The role of postmodernity is to preach the doctrine of the fall to arrogant modernity.”

“If we read the gospels and say our prayers, we should be able to do it.” (on how to move into a post-postmodern world)

“The unity of the church for him [Paul] is a symbolic thing as well as an actual thing.  It is the symbol which says, this is is the new humanity—don’t accept any cheap, man-made substitutes.”

“If you imagine a church that stops doing theology, you are imagining a church that is about to split.”

And here he recalls a quote by Crossan which he considers to have been a subtle, though friendly, jab at Wright’s journey in biblical studies.

“If you read Paul first you’ll read Jesus wrong; if you read Jesus first you’ll read Paul differently.” John Dominic Crossan

Relational Intelligence: The Disproportionate Investor – Erwin McManus

Talk on 2 Timothy 2:1-7
-You can only know what you have embraced.  You become what you give away to others.
-Invest in people who aren’t trying to define boundaries but find opportunities.
-On character vs. achievement: We want the indulgences of a general with the responsibilities of a civilian.
-Invest in those who understand there needs to be an integration of character and achievement.
-People with good stories and successful ministries are those who refuse to be victims.
-The wrong intention: When I know everything you know and everything I know I will be more powerful than you.

Community of Jesus – Timothy Keller

Talk on Luke 6:12-36; The Beatitudes as a reversal of values

-Four worldly values: power, comfort, success, recognition
-Four kingdom values: weakness, sacrifice, grief, exclusion
-Michael Wilcock: “Prize what the world calls pitiable, and suspect what the world considers desirable.”  At this point Keller humorously asks “Who wants to join?”
-Christian ethic: Draining yourself of ill will towards people, especially enemies.
-To those who have been burned by the Church: Remember the church is not made up of natural friends, it is made up of natural enemies.  The Christian community is not bound together by any other commonality.  The church is therefore a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.  Be patient while relationships are transformed.

Sexuality and Christian Hope – Timothy Keller

-Sex is not self gratification or self expression, it is radical self-donation.
-To give yourself to someone so deeply that it results in personal transformation and completion.
-Never have physical oneness without whole life oneness.
-Never get physically vulnerable without becoming vulnerable in your whole life.

Culture – Timothy Keller

-Cultural activity is arranging raw material for the flourishing of human beings.  Christians do this for the glory of God.
-On missions: To charge Christianity with colonial and imperial prostitution is to declare that Christianity belongs only to one culture.  Jesus Christ belongs to Africa, Asia, as much as it does the West.
-Lamin Sanneh, African Scholar who teaches at Yale, wrote Whose Religion is Christianity and comments:
Secularism’s scoffing of “African superstition” is cultural totalitarianism … Jesus did not mock their [Africa's] respect for the sacred … [so] they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies.
-View Keller’s notes on this sermon here.  Extremely insightful.

So what does it mean to be missional?  Well, for starters, it means that you’re on top of the latest thing in church circles (which is not a bad thing!).  If emerging and organic weren’t enough to describe postmodern approaches to doing church, now we have missional.  I honestly celebrate this– don’t let my facetiousness deceive you (I have a purpose to writing this way, which will be apparent later).  But back to this paragraph’s original question; we must settle on a definition.  Since there isn’t much controversy surrounding the term, allow me to define it from memory, with no references.  To be missional means to do ministry with particular attention paid to proper contextualization of the Gospel and engagement of varying cultures.  For a better understanding of this, see this video by Tim Keller and read Confessions of a Reformission Rev. by Mark Driscoll.

I love that we can put a label on a particular approach to ministry.  It helps keep the church honest; it helps us measure success and failures; it helps us have meaningful discussions that move us forward.  Missional churches, much like “missionaries” who do cross-cultural evangelism, are really good at engaging ideas from different people groups.  The most culturally heterogeneous areas are universities and cities.  That’s why urban communities are really good at relating the Gospel message in a way that engages different theology, philosophy, politics, art, literature etc.  So, to draw attention to this important need in today’s church is of vast importance (the need to be missional)!

My only quibble is that this is in fact a modern concept!  That is not to say it is harmful or unbiblical, but it is most definitely not taught in Scripture.  In fact, the word “mission” is only used in the New Testament once!  And even in this instance, it refers to the act of being involved in a purposeful, particular event (Acts 12:25).  Furthermore, the ministry of “missionary” is not found anywhere in Scripture either, whether one wants to think of it as a gift or office.  Biblically, the closest thing to missionary is that of evangelist.

The point of this post is to call certain leaders back to a more honest position.  It is unfair to speak of “missional” churches as holding a monopoly on effective contextualization.  Also, it is unwarranted to posit missional churches against other labels such as “seeker.”  Seeker and missional are not mutually exclusive.  Furthermore, it is a bad move to contrast being missional with evangelistic.  “Evangelistic” is a biblical term used of the church; I wouldn’t want to distance myself from this word.  Finally, let’s ‘fess up and recognize that some people have an unfair stigma toward labels like “purpose-driven,” but all too readily accept other labels like missional.  This demonstrates pure hypocrisy.

Adopting missional in our vocabulary would be a great step forward in making disciples of all the nations!  I already have, and it’s helped me better my ministry.  At the same time, be honest with yourself while being charitable with others.  The fruit of your character and labor will be much sweeter.

Driscoll would have been right to label his present defition as that of “Pentecostalmaniacs,” as he does with the Charismatic position.