2. COLONIES OF GOD’S NEW CREATION:  A BETTER WAY.

My use of the term colonies to designate those communities of God’s New Humanity, God’s Kingdom, is intentional, because ‘colonies’ are those who are moving into some new challenge, some new geographical area, some new purpose in a previously unoccupied scene. Jesus calls out a people to be his sons and daughters of the dominion of the Light (“the dominion of God’s Son”) in the midst of the dominion of darkness (Satan’s dominion). Peter elucidates this calling when he speaks of God’s people in Christ as: “sojourners and exiles,” while at the same time being “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you” (I Peter 2:8).

This is so altogether so other than the all-too-frequent images of ‘church’ that are summoned up in our thinking, like: rows of folk sitting passively in pews, or endless church activities, or of huge mega-churches with glamorous professionals advocating whatever, or vested clergy in pulpits, or of the College of Cardinals in Rome, or congregations struggling to maintain decaying buildings, and seeking to survive in a new culture … you catch my drift.

Colonies denote folk who are all on the same page, and engaged in a common goal with a common authority and a common creative source. Colonies can be as small as two or three, or considerably larger, but there is always a bond of mutuality and interdependence among them.

And colonies have the capacity of incarnating those dimensions of God’s New Humanity that Jesus mandates: 1.) Relationships of true love and mutual caring: “ … that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another” (John 13:34). Note that this is not some impersonal membership in a religious institution, but a whole new and alternative kind of human community that is costly and beautiful and intimate and visible. 2) Colonies incarnate the behavior of the New Humanity that incarnate the radical new ethics of God’s New Creation: “ … so that they [the sometimes hostile outsiders] see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (I Peter 2:12, also Matthew 5:16).

Hey! We’re talking an alternative breed of humanity here. This is not tame religion, but colonies penetrating alien territory under the authority of Jesus who has called them to such. This requires that we have support and mutual encouragement. It requires that we be equipped for such a daily encounters. It eschews passivity in the calling by Christ. These are “boots on the ground” colonies of those who have encountered the Living Lord Jesus Christ, and through him are in communion with the Trinitarian community, and being formed into that likeness (holiness).

Paul lifts up an ascription of praise when he says: “ … to him [God] be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus …” These colonies of God’s new humanity are to be the radiant display of the divine nature, just as was true of the Son of God. Such cannot be realized in large religious convocations, or institutions where one can easily become anonymous and disengaged in the essence of Christ’s calling.

This is why I choose the term: colonies of God’s New Humanity, because such colonies must maintain their integrity to survive, and be committed to mutuality in their real, and often hostile, contexts. It is where the omnipresent New Testament exhortations of our responsibilities to “one another” take on flesh and blood reality. It is where and how God’s New Creation (Kingdom) engages in the mission of God.

I readily confess that I am being redundant with this focus in the Blogs, but it is because so much of the church is so captive to fruitless ecclesiastical activities that go nowhere.

[If you find these Blogs provocative and helpful—recommend them to your friends.]