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Subversive kingdom study4/16/2024 ![]() This is why, when giving a talk at a missions meeting recently, I said rather facetiously, since it was a non-Pentecostal gathering, “What we need in our churches–in all kinds of churches–is more speaking in tongues.” (Insert nervous laughter here.) My focus–and what each of us along all points of the Christian spectrum should be able to concur with–is this: the church needs to be speaking the heart languages of all the world’s people groups, both at home and abroad. The indwelling Holy Spirit and his amazing visitation at the Pentecost celebration of Acts 2 meant the church was being empowered to pursue, not to be pursued. The centripetal mission of bringing outsiders into an earthly city was being replaced by the centrifugal mission of taking heaven’s glories to the cities of the world. They were now being sent out from Jerusalem. No longer were God’s people to be continually drawn toward Jerusalem, as had been the case throughout the Old Testament. ![]() When Christ instructed his followers to head out under the Holy Spirit’s direction and empowering, bearing witness of him “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), this signaled a new chapter in kingdom work. We go because we are sent by him, and he sends us empowered by his Spirit.Īnd “go” is the right word for how we do it. We go because we are carrying out the mission of our founder. Not because we’re better than everybody else. But just as he sent Jesus here to establish a beachhead for the kingdom, and just as Jesus dispatched his first disciples to carry out his kingdom plan (John 20:21), the church has now emerged in the wake of this mission, called to advance God’s kingdom by taking gospel light into the darkest corners of society as his messengers. No, we are not the means of reconciliation any more than the misinformed modern citizen is the potential conduit to heaven on earth. The church, therefore, remains his central tool for accomplishing the subversive kingdom’s agenda. ![]() And so that through us, he receives glory. The ministry of his gospel has been designed “so that God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church” (Eph. They say, “The kingdom of God is not the church”–and no, it isn’t.īut the missionary purpose that forges our identity, placed within us by a missional God, continues to draw us into the core of his kingdom activity. They say, “The kingdom is bigger than the church”–and, yes, it is. They say, “God is at work outside the church”–and, yes, he is. Some people talk as if the church isn’t necessary to this endeavor anymore, that it no longer applies to his plan and mission to the same degree it once did.
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