I am heading into the season in the church where we really start looking to the next year, what we want to see happen, what we envision, all that fun stuff that gets your juices pumping because there is so much hope and energy for what you want to see happen. As I am thinking of this, I had a thought cross through my head. I am getting ahead of myself, so let me back up a bit.
It may sound self-indulgent, selfish, arrogant or some other me obsessed adjective, but I really want to be a part of something great for God. I want to see His Kingdom advance in a way that is noticeable, recognised and celebrated as a divine disturbance to the broken trajectory the world is on. So with this in mind I pray and seek God’s will and His plan for me the church I am a part of, my community… I envision all sorts of great things happening and believe that God has great things in store for us. Then the thought crosses my mind, so what would a kingdom that Jesus establishes look like? If he were to play some type of computer kingdom building game – Kingdom Tycoon? Sim’s Kingdom? – what would it look like? More so, would the kingdom I build look anything like His?
So often I look at the kingdoms we build on earth, and I am talking about churches, and I wonder when they moved from the Lord’s prayer “Thy kingdom come” to ‘my kingdom’ come. I often think and feel there is a disconnect between what we end up establishing and what Jesus would establish. That there is a very earthly feel to the kingdoms we tend to build. What is wrong with an earthly feel? Well, maybe the fact that it would seem to fly in the face of “Our Father who art in Heaven…. Thy Kingdom come….” I would suggest that the closer we get to the kingdom of heaven, the less it will resemble kingdoms we see all around us on earth. Do our church kingdoms differ that greatly from the enterprises outside the church? Don’t we often model, frame, emulate the structures of empires and kingdoms from the business, political, and arts cultures around us?
I think I need to do some more work thinking about what Jesus’ kingdom would look like today…
How about you, what do you think the kingdom should look like, what do you see Jesus establishing as His kingdom? Is that what you are trying to do? How is it subversive and different from the kingdoms all around us?
The Living Experiment 
LOL Kingdom Tycoon … that is one of the most hilarous parallels I’ve heard in a while. Geoff you’re awesome. I really like your reflection on what “Thy Kingdom come” means for the church. I believe we will see a shift in perspective on these sort of things. The “self help” gospel won’t hold up, it will give way to Truth, to those words which “never pass away.”
In the history of the Church, the evidence of its presence was always seen in the positive influence it held within the community. The church influenced society. I am not so sure that is still the case. Today the church is so influenced by society that it is difficult to distinguish “the church” from “the world”.
Oh, it is still largely true that the church is “better” than its surrounding society, that it is still a force for positive change. But as society sinks into moral decline, the church maintains its relationship and declines in lock-step with the world.
Things that the church of fifty years ago would have considered worldly and immoral are common practice in today’s church. We, the church, are becoming de-sensitized to the sin around us and hardened to the plight of a populace on the path to destruction.
Thanks for the comments…