One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow by Scot McKnight

Author:Scot McKnight [McKnight, Scot]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780310412120
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2010-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?

A Christian is one who follows Jesus by devoting his or her One.Life to the kingdom of God, fired by Jesus’ own imagination, to a life of loving God and loving others, and to a society shaped by justice, especially for those who have been marginalized, to peace, and to a life devoted to acquiring wisdom in the context of a local church. This life can only be discovered by being empowered by God’s Spirit.

So how do we get this Kingdom.Life?

Interlude

I’ve been thinking of asking this question for a few chapters, so maybe I shouldn’t wait any longer: Why is it so easy to work for kingdom purposes but ignore your local church? Why do we see kingdom work in such idealistic terms but look down our noses at our local churches? Do you think Jesus ignored the local in order to chase the kingdom? Or did he want us to be inspired to enter into the imagined life of his parables and then bring that back to the ordinary relations of our ordinary world?

This division between church and kingdom needs to be examined afresh. What Jesus meant by kingdom was the society where God’s will is done. But any reading of the Gospels will show that he knew that the kingdom dream wouldn’t happen all at once in a perfect and sudden way. He knew it meant hard work, struggles, and interpersonal conflict with real people in our own neighborhoods. He knew his own followers weren’t perfect and their society wasn’t living up to the ideal. His closest follower denied him; his specially chosen apostles were power-hungry and reputation-grubbing. Yet, those were his people and the ones he chose to concentrate all of his attentions on.

Local churches aren’t perfect, and if you are looking for the perfect local church, you won’t find it. But here’s something I’ve learned: Local churches reflect the realities of real humans who participate in kingdom living in a world broken by sin and systemic evil. Kingdom life is designed to take root in local communities, and it is the vision of Jesus for you and me to make our local community of faith our primary launching place for kingdom-dream living. Neither your local community nor mine will be the perfect one. Our challenge is to settle in and strive for the kingdom dream — empowered by God’s Spirit — from the local community into the global village. It’s much harder but it’s the real world.

I wonder if the African word from a previous chapter, Ubuntu, shows us something here too. What makes Ubuntu so notable is the stubborn commitment of Africans to dwell with one another, to work with one another, and to be committed to one another even when they fall short of their own Ubuntu ideals.

So, Jesus’ kingdom dream is meant for this world and is meant for folks like you and me. We fall short of our own ideals, and we dwell with others who fall short. Perhaps

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