(posted March 10, 2008) Pastor Dion is "just gettin' started" this week with episode 14 (even though he's wrapping up the three part series on "Resourcing the Mission.") So this week, you'll hear more about what the Bible says about how the Body of Christ should function together AND you'll hear about how the St. Matthew Summit went. That's right, all that PLUS a missional living treat.
Next week's topic is about "the kingdom." Please answer this if you could. "What do you think of when you hear talk about 'The Kingdom' [of God]?"
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Not my kids...and the Kingdom
I wanted to say that the whole kids thing rings true for us as well. It's really kind of strange when you think that my kids don't belong to me and we've tried to keep that focus as much as possible. Your whole parenting (and world) perspective changes when you start to look at your children as children of God...just like everyone else you meet. What we say we want for everyone else should be the same thing we want for our kids, only with our kids we have a MUCH bigger role to play in that....scary.
I have to say that I'm actually quite glad to hear that we're going to look at defining "The Kingdom" a bit. We hear it so much, and it's used by Jesus a lot too, but it's a very cloudy word. We hear God's Kingdom, The Kingdom, Left-Hand Kingdom, Right-Hand Kingdom, etc.
I guess when I hear it, I think of the idea that Christ will eventually return and call His people to Him, creating His "kingdom." As such, the work we do today is seeking to build that kingdom by helping to bring others to Christ.
Do I really need this?
One of the problems of the consumer culture we live in is that it ups the definition of "necessity". For example, with the digital TV transition coming next year, we are told that we "need" a nice new, flat panel, digital TV. Well, for a time, I jumped on that bandwagon and said to myself, "when we get a few hundred extra dollars, I'm going to go buy ourselves a digital TV." In fact, we have some justification, as the picture tube (how quaint) in our old analog (another bit of quaintness)TV is failing and everyone looks green when you turn the TV on. But as time went on, my favorite shows were discontinued, and I had a channel surfing revelation. 100+ channels of nothing on a green-screened worn-out TV is still 100+ channels of nothing on a new flat panel digital TV. So, do I really need this latest bit of technological wizardry? No, not really. I think we will find that is true about a lot of our purchases that divert resources from the Kingdom.