meditatio at the water's edge

Represent, Cooperate, Invite

Several ideas started coming together for me after the Newform Conference. Some of this started in the little piece I wrote last week (see the On a Mission post below). Well, I was thinking more about this phrase George Hunsberger used (a phrase that we're going to get familiar with this month), "a body of people sent." I was reflecting on the question, 'What are we sent to do?' What is the nature of our sent-ness? I came up with this set of ideas:

Kingdom Metaphor / Action / Quality / Other Description

1. Kingdom Colony / Represent / Faithfulness / life shown
2. Kingdom Agents / Cooperate / Blessing / life shared/given
3. Kingdom Heralds / Invite / Welcome / life extended/offered

Kingdom Colony: A body of people who demonstrate what life together with God as king looks like. Colonization is not isolation, but dynamic engagement with surrounding culture in order to subvert the present order. It is what Rome did with Philippi (among others), and what Paul used to describe the task of the believing communities there.

Kingdom Agents: A body of people who see their activity as subversive action. Our good deeds have a larger agenda than benign social action. We want to see God's rule and reign become a reality where we are. This includes everywhere from home to work to nation to planet. It is social justice grounded in and springing from kingdom theology.

Kingdom Heralds: (There must be a better word than 'herald') Here, I think of the servant/messenger in Jesus' parable of the king who threw a great banquet. We invite people to the party--into the life that is truly life. This is not conversionism, but evangelism in its original sense of 'heralding' good news about a new King. Today, in the ruins of Christendom, this invitation only has weight insofar as it is demonstrated by the Colony and its Agents.

I'm sure that this is not original, but it seems to shed a bit more clarity (for me at least) on our identity as 'a body of people sent.'