BLOG. 5/3/13: “YOU’RE A WRITER? OH!”
I get this response frequently from acquaintances, who know that in my misty past as for forty years I was a teaching pastor (among other things) in the Presbyterian Church, but not as a writer. I am obviously not a very well know writer, alas! But my story goes as follows. The Biblical focus that lies at the center of my understanding is that Jesus came preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. This being so of me, I was a participant in a denominational council, decades ago, whose assignment it was to assist the denomination in understanding its evangelistic task. There I was able to articulate that central gospel of the Kingdom theme in a definition, which became an official document of the church. And because of that, I was prevailed upon to become the denomination’s staff person in the field of evangelism for four years. That role, then, engaged me with scores of congregations, and in conferences, seminars, training sessions, lectures in seminaries, ecumenical discussions, etc.
What was almost frightening to me was how absent was any significant thinking about the gospel, or of the gospel task, much less even any fringe understanding of the meaning of the dynamically present Kingdom of God, and its critical place in the gospel which Jesus heralded and taught. The church used a whole lot of gospel ‘code words’ but nothing connected them with that Kingdom essence.
That being so, a savvy editor from the denominational press prevailed upon me to write a book on the subject, which became Joy to the World: An Introduction to Kingdom Evangelism (long since out of print).
A decade later, out of numerous conversations with spiritually hungry young adults, who were God-seekers, I wrote another book with and for those young adults in a semi-fictitious journey with one of them into an understanding of the breadth and depth of that same gospel of the Kingdom of God. That book was: Subversive Jesus, Radical Grace, which contained some of the radical and counter-cultural components of the gospel of the Kingdom. (It has recently been re-published by my friends at Wipf and Stock.)
More recently, I have written, what is actually a trilogy, on how that gospel of the Kingdom demonstrates itself in a community called the church, which is intended to be the community of the Kingdom of God. These are: Enchanted Community: Journey Into the Mystery of the Church (the what, or essence of the church), Refounding the Church From the Underside (the why, or purpose of the church in the gospel enterprise), and The Church and the Relentless Darkness (a study of the forces that cause the church to drift away from its calling). These are all in print and available from Wipf and Stock, or Amazon.
That said, you cannot imagine how thrilled I have been at the writings of two quite well known theologians who have raised this Kingdom theme to new visibility. Dear Howard Snyder has been working on that kingdom theme almost as long as I, and has just done a new work dealing with the environmental implications of the Kingdom of God (Salvation Means Creation Healed). But more recently, N. T. Wright, with his marvelous writing and communications skills, and massive Biblical scholarship, has done: How God Became King. Wow! Blockbuster. I heartily commend these writings, along with my own to those who want to pursue this awesome central theme of Jesus.
