Ever wonder what you could or should do to fix your church?
Or even the Church? According to Reggie
McNeal, in his recent book Kingdom Come: Why We Must Give up Our Obsession with
Fixing the Church - and What We Should Do Instead (Tyndale Momentum, 2015),
that's the wrong question.
If I'm reading McNeal correctly, and not just reading into
McNeal some of the things I wonder about, we might just have some things backward. We focus on growing our local congregation
instead of joining God on His mission to grow the Kingdom. We say 'church' as if it were some magical mystical
thing when in reality we're talking about our denomination, or the building
where a group of us meet on Sunday morning, or our local congregation, whether
it's comprised of 50 people or 5,000.
McNeal points out the church was created as part of God's kingdom,
(and he points out that 'church' is only mentioned a few times in the New
Testament, while "Kingdom" is mentioned again and again: the Kingdom
of God or the Kingdom of Heaven). But modern day Christians seem to want to fit
the kingdom into the church. Much like people want to put God in a box, a box
with dimensions of their own design.
Kingdom work is being done by people who often don't even
realize that they're engaged in it. And wrapped up as we often are in our small
c church worlds, we don't recognize it as such either. Funny how that works, if
my church is doing it, it's kingdom work, if you, your church, or your
non-church group is engaged in the same activity, you're just showing off,
copying, or engaged in wanna-be activity.
Some great discussion starters and questions are found at the back of the
book.
A great book for church leaders, all of us who can stand to
be reminded from time to time how God intends for things to work.
I was provided a copy of this book from Tyndale Momentum in
exchange for an unbiased review.
5/5
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