Partnership for Missional Church

This reflection on the Kingdom of God comes from Matt Tibbles at the Federal Way Church of Christ:

Snap!

The sound of the camera invades the environment of the picture I have just taken. I love to take and look at pictures. Moments in time captured and treasured. A picture to be looked at over and over again so I can relive that special moment.

As I think about the kingdom of God, words seem very inadequate for me. So, I must rely on the pictures of life to help me grasp what this elusive kingdom of God is all about.

The first picture is of Quinton. Quinton is a young boy in elementary school. He lives on 51st Street in Tacoma, Washington. He has two sisters. His father is in construction. His mother stays at home. He is much like any little boy—full of energy, always on a great adventure and good at Madden Football. He has a mohawk (it was blue at one time). He dresses in hand-me-downs. As my youth group began to paint Quinton’s neighbor’s house, he was always there to help. The minute we would drive up, Quinton comes running out of his house with expectations of helping us. As the days pass, Quinton and I begin to develop a friendship. We talk about what fun things he did the night before, school and family, all the while expletives rolling off the tongue of his mother. It dawned on me one day, the kingdom of Heaven was being brought near to Quinton and Quinton was eagerly receiving it. He was experiencing a place of peace through the camaraderie of teenagers and adults painting a house. This snapshot of the kingdom of Heaven provides images of love, acceptance and peace.

Another picture came unexpectedly. The location was a community fair. This was not a ordinary community fair. A blowup jumping toy and face painting were the only “fun” activities for kids. The main portion of the fair was designed to help a community of people who had been displaced learn about the resources that were available to them. As each displaced mother, father, child and grandmother entered into the fair, they were greeted with love and respect. As they were handed a bag full of school supplies, a list of what schools were actually open, the anxiety of being displaced began to slowly be replaced by love and support. Each table they encountered brought new information about health clinics, job opportunities, educational services and emergency services. As the stories of surviving a hurricane and the worst national disaster in American history were told and retold, a strange thing began to occur—the sounds of laughter and hope began to fill the air. As we conversed with individuals and families, listening to the stories of survival and hope, an overwhelming awareness of the kingdom of Heaven began to settle in and make itself at home. What we thought would be a day that we would bring the kingdom of Heaven to people turned out that they were bringing the kingdom of Heaven to us. In this particular snapshot the kingdom of Heaven was full of hope, laughter, restoration and love.

These are just two of the snapshots God has graciously allowed us to participate in. These two snapshots have opened the eyes of our faith to see the kingdom of Heaven in the pictures of life.

Snap!

Jay Hawkins from the Caldwell Church of Christ has shared these thoughts on the article from Leadership Journal.

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The kingdom of God has an undefined and elusive quality. It is difficult to grasp. I search for ways to summarize the kingdom, to point to definitive examples, and yet I am always coming up short. The frustration spills over into my investigation of the biblical material. I want to have passages about the kingdom cleanly, warmly receptive to my investigation. But at times I do not even know the tense in which the kingdom is being spoken. Is it arrived, imminent or expected? Have people ushered it in here, has it come by God’s will, or has it come because Jesus has preached it? There are practical issues with this problem for me. If I cannot read it pristinely out of the text, how do I communicate it to my congregation? How does it become the guiding light of congregational formation?

What I am finding is that in the kingdom’s undefined and elusive nature, we experience the God who is working for our good. Because the kingdom of God is elusive, it asks me to be more open to God’s kingdom work. If I cannot pin it down and I cannot possess it, then it is not static, it is not stagnant, it is yet to be discovered. Every day I must be open to the kingdom’s movements and fresh demands. Every day I must be open to it remaking my life. Because the kingdom of God is elusive, I cannot latch onto any manifestation of the kingdom and call it absolute and final. I will be more dependent on God since I am inadequate for the appropriation of the kingdom. I will give more attention to listening to others about their lives and their insights into God. I will listen to God in prayer, worship and the reading of scripture so that I can better be aware of kingdom business.

Because the kingdom is past, present and future, I will inhabit three roles. I will be a recounter of kingdom stories, a watcher in the present moment, a prophet anticipating what is to come, and I will inhabit these roles for the sake of the church. I want to tell stories of occasions in the past where the kingdom has broken in so that these stories can nourish our congregational imagination and cause us to dream kingdom dreams. I want to help the church to see that the kingdom is coming in present situations. I want to be one who verbally acknowledges the church’s yearning toward the final consummation of the kingdom. In all these I want to play a vital role for the church, but my ministry necessarily needs to also lead to others rising up to recount, to watch in the present, and to speak anticipation of the future. The kingdom which we proclaim, however, must be greater than the smallness of our individual lives or even collective congregation life. It must be a kingdom we are seeing in the world, at the point of contact between ourselves and the world.

And so: a parable of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is like Miles Davis’s record Birth of the Cool. While there was a time that I thought I understood cool jazz, I really do not. I accept this fact now. But cool jazz thrills me and it has for a long time. I just cannot adequately tell you what it is I really like about it. I think I like how it breathes and is patient. It seems more truthful and real than many other sounds I hear. When I put on Birth of the Cool, almost inevitably it first sounds jerky and discordant. In those first moments I doubt that this is what I want to be listening to. But soon the rhythms of the music become familiar and I have been reoriented to something different and better.

So it is with the kingdom of God. May it ever continue to reorient us to its ways.

Jerry Wolfe, elder at the Federal Way Church of Christ in Washington, has written these rich words about the spiritual practice of lectio divina on his personal blog. He has graciously given us permission to reprint them here.

Listen. Listen. Listen. That’s what our first Partnership for Missional Church weekend was about. In the three year process the entire first year is dedicated primarily to listening. We listen to Scripture — Luke 10:1-12. ‘Dwelling in the Word’ is new language for most of us. If you wanted the ancient church language it would be ‘lectio divina‘ which means ‘divine or spiritual reading’.

Our practice of reading Scripture is to read a passage, figure out its meaning, perhaps, although not always, make some application to our personal life or the church, and then move on to another passage. And then when we have done that we ‘know what is in the Bible’. Now get this. This is a good and important way of reading Scripture. This is not something we want to lose. Knowing what is in the Bible is vital.

However, knowing what is in the Bible is a far different thing than having the Bible know what is in us. Knowing what is in the Bible, if we are not careful, turns the Bible into little more than a tool for our own purposes, to prove our own points, to set our own agendas, to create our own categories. That doesn’t have to happen, but if we are honest, we have all done it.

Dwelling in the Word — lectio divina– on the other hand is a way of reading that refuses the approach of ‘figuring out the meaning’. Not that we don’t find meaning in lectio divina, but we allow meaning to surface over time and space. We read, slowly, thoughtfully, pausing over words, phrases, thoughts, allowing them to speak deeply to us. And after reading we sit, quietly, reflectively, with the Spirit, avoiding distractions and allowing the Spirit in the text to sink in and to work on our human spirits. Over time that way of reading will bring multiple meanings to the surface and will open us up and enter our hearts and minds in deep places that a Bible class reading of Scripture will seldom find. Lectio divina — dwelling in the word — is simply listening to God tell us about Scripture rather than us telling him about Scripture. As I spoke about on Sunday, it is counterintuitive.

‘Dwelling in the Word’ is not a replacement or a substitute for our more familiar methods of reading Scripture. To exchange one for the other would be a gross mistake. But used in concert with one another they give us a richer experience of being ‘people of the book’.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Where better to start than Scripture?