Kingdom Come

Why we Must Give Up our Obsession with Fixing the Church—and What we Should do Instead

By Reggie McNeal

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2015 Reggie McNeal
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4143-9187-8

Contents

Introduction, xi,
1 My Journey into the Kingdom, 1,
2 Kingdom Tales, 19,
3 The Heroic Kingdom Narrative, 39,
4 Challenging the Church’s Storyline, 59,
5 Aiding and Abetting the Kingdom, 85,
6 When It Works: Kingdom Collaboration, 109,
7 Making the Move, 133,
8 What Now?, 161,
Conclusion, 177,
Notes, 181,
Discussion Questions, 183,
About the Author, 193,
Also by Reggie McNeal, 195,

CHAPTER 1

MY JOURNEY INTO THE KINGDOM

I WAS A CHURCH PERSON before I was even born, attending services in my mother’s womb for nine months before showing up to claim my spot in the church nursery. My dad was a Southern Baptist pastor, and my early spiritual life revolved around the church. I made my profession of faith when I was nine years old, walking the aisle during the hymn of invitation to publicly declare that Jesus was my Savior and Lord. By that same action, I also joined the church as a member, and I was baptized some weeks later as the culmination of that process. My baptism was celebrated as a church ordinance, took place in a church sanctuary, and was witnessed by a roomful of church people. It was a full-on church experience, signifying that I was now officially one of them.

The Kingdom of God was never mentioned during this pivotal time in my life. I didn’t have the foggiest notion about the Kingdom or what part it played in my connection with God. For me, and for everyone I knew, it was all about the church. We demonstrated our Christian commitment by being good church members.

At some point, news of the Kingdom of God penetrated my consciousness, but it was viewed through the lens of church culture, leading (I now see) to a skewed understanding of the Kingdom and its place in God’s plan for the world. The Kingdom was seen as a subset of church activity—more of a catchphrase to describe extraordinary church activities—rather than the main purpose for God’s work in the world. So, for example, if two congregations came together to do some church thing—such as a youth fellowship event after a football game—that cooperative effort was called a Kingdom endeavor. The Kingdom was like the church on steroids—at least, that’s how I understood it.

Later, as my denomination got caught up in the culture wars undertaken by conservative evangelical church leaders, the Kingdom designation was extended to include efforts by which the church sought to influence the political arena. Thus, crusades against various evils, certain leaders, and high-profile Supreme Court decisions were deemed Kingdom engagements. The clear belief was that the Kingdom of God was under assault and that it was up to us in the church to protect it and save it.

Because the church and the Kingdom were synonymous according to this paradigm, anything that threatened the church or diminished the role of the church in society was seen as a direct assault on the Kingdom. We didn’t have to look very far to find evidence of Kingdom erosion. Blue laws were collapsing, church attendance was waning, and countless other distractions were tearing at Christendom’s hold on the culture.

Unfortunately, the church’s budding siege mentality served to further its i nward-turning self-absorption. The church-growth movement among evangelical Protestants and the Second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church were touted as efforts to connect with contemporary culture. But in reality those initiatives were driven by institutional concerns for survival. The rise of megachurches in the latter decades of the twentieth century—and the sense of growth and progress generated by shifting church attendance from the “mom and pop” churches to the “superstores”—masked the decline of Christendom and the church’s influence in the culture.

Because church and Kingdom were seen as interchangeable terms for the same spiritual reality, things weren’t looking too good for the home team. And, in fact, that “home team” mentality was part of the problem. We thought of ourselves as playing out the Kingdom game on our home turf, the church. As Sunday went, so went the Kingdom. Our church-centered scorecards celebrated church activities on church property led by church people for other church people. Everything else—vocations, hobbies, the rest of life outside the church—wasn’t Kingdom related. Simply put, if it didn’t show up at church, it didn’t count. The perceived line between what was spiritual and what was merely secular was firmly drawn.

I began my preparation to go into ministry just as the church-growth movement was taking off and the seeker-friendly model was being formulated. The evolving conversation about ways to “reach the lost world” at least acknowledged that a world requiring some intentional engagement existed “out there.” But my thinking, along with that of most other church leaders at the time, was still very much centered on the church and its activities. The work of God in the world was anchored in the church and played out in the church. The aim was to get people into church, where God could somehow get ahold of them. And the church would grow if it was doing the right things.

Then, late in my seminary sojourn, I read some books that really messed up my view of the church. Beginning with Howard Snyder’s The Problem of Wineskins and The Community of the King, I came face-to-face with a radical, new (to me) idea—namely, that the key to church renewal lies in anchoring the mission and purpose of the church in the biblical teaching of what it means to be the people of God.

These books were the first I had encountered that highlighted the discussion of the church’s mission in the world. (Most books I was reading at the time dealt with some aspect of “doing church better”—improving existing practices without asking questions about why we were doing things the way we were or whether we should be doing them in the first place.) Snyder’s observations and critiques unsettled me, especially when he pointed out how much Jesus struggled with the religious institutions of his day.

I had grown up with a Jesus who loved the church, every single part of it, from the organ prelude to the Vacation Bible School pledges of allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible. (I can still recite them all.) The idea that Jesus might not be thrilled with church as I knew it was a stunning revelation and a real wake-up call.

Snyder’s books were game changers, beginning a process that has now continued for more than three decades. The journey has involved moving from a church-centered universe to a Kingdom-centered framework, and it has shifted the center of gravity for how I see the world, how I view the work of God in the world, and how I relate to both.

Other writers soon chimed in on the conversation. Some were contemporary; others were ancient. I had done my doctoral work in historical theology, so I began to explore primary sources: the ante-Nicene church fathers, the sixteenth-century Reformers, and leaders of church renewal efforts throughout Christian history. These writers and their ideas expanded my understanding of how the church should express itself. I confess that my ideas were still church-centered rather than Kingdom-centered. I thought if we could just fix the church, the Kingdom of God would naturally be released. But I still thought our expression of the Kingdom would primarily be demonstrated through the congregational life and programs of the local church.

As a young church planter after seminary, I was determined to “do church differently,” so that it would be more of what God had in mind. However, I still reduced the scope and reach of the Kingdom down to church size as I plotted our congregationally focused ministry. I was convinced that building a great church was our contribution to God’s Kingdom. We offered lots of innovative programming—and we did it well—but it was all tethered to the church’s facilities. Church people planned, produced, and promoted our activities and programs, which were geared primarily for other church people to consume.

And then it was all taken away. After twenty years of local congregational ministry, I shifted venues to take on a role as a denominational executive and leadership coach. It proved a very challenging transition for my family and me. I loved the part about working with church leaders in their personal development; but I despised the denominational politics, and I couldn’t figure out why God would reassign me to something so unappealing. The only clue I had about the repositioning came through something I sensed God saying to me during a personal prayer retreat: There’s someplace you cant get to from where you are.

For a long time, that was all I had to go on, but now I think I understand. There was a universe I couldn’t get to from where I was.

A Missional World Dawns

I vividly remember the moment when the shift began. It was like the crackling of ice on a pond in the springtime, which signaled the eventual collapse of the theological and philosophical platform that had supported my entire ministry to that point.

After speaking one day about the future of the church to a group of church leaders in another part of the state, I got in my car and drove home. Late that night, I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex where my family and I lived during the transition to my new job. I shut off the engine and began contemplating the thirty-two-step climb to my third-floor apartment.

In the next few moments, before I even got out of the car, I had an unexpected but life-altering thought. It was more of a confession than an insight: I just spent the past ten years of my life building the perfect church … and not a single person in this apartment complex would walk across the street to attend it.

It was the truth! I had noticed that my family and I were the only ones leaving our apartment community on Sunday morning all dressed up and headed to church. Everyone else was sleeping in, enjoying the pool, or heading to the lake or the mall, and church was nowhere on their list of possible things to do.

What’s wrong with this picture? If the church represents the manifest presence of God in the world—the very body of Christ—why was the culture losing interest in it, and why was so much church activity resulting in so little impact?

I spent the better part of the next decade working on this puzzle.

Over time, I came to believe that the church, particularly in North America, suffers from missional amnesia. When the church decided that the mission was about growing the church, doing church better, or even fixing the church, it went off mission, and became misguided, even idolatrous.

The answers I formulated led me to become a champion of the Kingdom and to try to shape the conversation around missional church—a term that should be redundant, but unfortunately is not.

The right answer to the question, What constitutes the mission of the church? has to do with partnering with God as his people in his mission. That mission is the Kingdom of God, not the church.

Jesus told us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” not “Thy church come.” Though the church plays a vital role in the Kingdom, it is not the point of the Kingdom.

The purpose, goal, and result of the Kingdom is life, not church-centered metrics and outcomes. Jesus said, “I have come to give you abundant life,” not abundant church. Moreover, the church is not forever; the Kingdom is.

Those of us in the missional church conversation have made the case for a very different understanding of the church. This perspective (a more biblical perspective, we believe) offers a corrective to the consumerist, preoccupied, and self-absorbed expressions of church that, among other consequences, have given the church a well-deserved poor reputation among many people in our society. The missional understanding of church opens the door to a reevaluation of the relationship between the church and the Kingdom, with an expanded view of God’s work in the world.

For missional thinkers, church is a verb, a way of being in the world. It is not a place where certain religious rites are conducted. Nor is the church a vendor of religious goods and services. The notion of the church as a place, or as a dispenser of programs, is a relic of an era of Christendom that is rapidly diminishing, if not already disappearing beyond the horizon.

In its essence, church is organic, not organizational, though it has institutional and corporate expressions. Church is not a time, a place, or a set of prescribed activities. In short, church is not a thing; it’s a who. It is the people of God. Everywhere we go, and everything we do, is informed by our relationship with God, just as everything I do (and some things I don’t do) as a husband are informed by my marriage to my wife. I don’t go to my house to be married. I carry my marriage with me everywhere I go.

Likewise, wherever we go, as Jesus-followers in covenant with God, we are (part of) the church. We gather with other believers, worship God, and practice certain spiritual disciplines. But we don’t have to “go to church” in order to be “part of” the church because we are the church. We’re not all of the church, but everywhere we go, the church is.

Being church is more than just a catchy way of saying it. It means finding organic ways to express our covenantal relationship with God. Church is incarnated in every aspect of our lives, not just as part of our “church experience” in a local congregation. It means that we see all of life as a mission trip.

Missional church seeks to live out our covenantal relationship with God by finding ways to bless people, both corporately (as groups of believers) and individually. Love of God and love of neighbor are inextricably intertwined in a missional understanding of church. Service to others is a fundamental spiritual discipline. And most important, when we are faithful at being church, we point people to the Kingdom.

This understanding of church as a mission-centered relationship presents a challenge for those giving leadership to the institutional church. My role for years now has been to help articulate for church leaders the changes that must be made in order to realign the institutional church with its mission, and to help these leaders develop and implement strategies to move in a missional direction. To support these shifts, leaders must make some intentional choices. As I make suggestions and share with you the conclusions I’ve drawn, you will see how my thinking and experience have led me to a broader view of what God is up to in the world. His agenda is far bigger than building the church. He is building his Kingdom.

Kingdom Insights

Helping congregations and leaders become engaged with their local communities has opened their eyes to a very accessible and ripe “mission field.” Many congregations have sent hundreds or thousands of people and millions of dollars around the world to support missions activities, but at the same time they have failed to connect with the school across the street or the apartment complex next door. As soon as congregations truly grasp their mission to partner with God in his redemptive mission in the world, it’s only natural that they would begin to engage with their local community. I’ve seen congregations that, once the blinders were off, were stunned by the depth of need in their very own neighborhood: a world of need that has little to do with church programming but everything to do with real-life issues.

This new awareness of what is happening just outside their doors has provoked a crisis for these leaders and their congregations. But it’s a good crisis. When church people confront the reality that much of what they have focused on as a congregation is irrelevant and unhelpful to the very people they are called to serve, they often suddenly find themselves eager to engage in what they have previously thought of as nonchurch activity: tutoring school kids so they can learn to read; teaching English to immigrants so they can assimilate into society; rescuing vulnerable people from human trafficking; and securing affordable housing for families, just to name a few.

Because the Kingdom is about 1 ife—abundant life, to quote Jesus—I came to realize that all of these life issues are Kingdom concerns. In Jesus’ day, a Kingdom outbreak meant that the lame could walk, the blind could see, and the lepers were made whole. Because these physical conditions prevented people from working to support themselves, their disabilities doomed them to beggary and poverty. Delivering people from these maladies made a much better life possible for them.

In our day, manifestations of the Kingdom may still include physical healing, but they also mean that people are freed from limiting conditions that keep them locked into perpetually poor life situations. Thus, Kingdom efforts result in kids learning to read so they have a chance at graduation; the unemployed finding jobs; the uninsured gaining access to adequate health care; and the homeless finding a place to call home.

The Kingdom gives life—not just for those who are served but also for those who serve. Getting in on what God is already up to brings profound, life-giving renewal to congregations and leaders who are taking this path. Many leaders who have become weary of doing church work suddenly find themselves reenergized as they shift their attention and their efforts. Though I still run into clergy every week who are burned out and ready to quit church work, I don’t know of a single missional church leader who is ready to throw in the towel. Tired? Yes. Burned out? No! As one leader nearing retirement age recently told me, “I wish I had thirty more years for ministry.” This desire stands in stark contrast to the sentiment he expressed in our first conversation several years ago, when he complained to me that he was bored and “barely hanging on.” What brought about this change in perspective, energy, and drive? He shifted his ministry focus from church programming to community development. Specifically, he led his congregation in developing a citywide network of after-school resource centers to bring help and hope to kids who are locked up in generational and institutional poverty.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Kingdom Come by Reggie McNeal. Copyright © 2015 Reggie McNeal. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
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