We, the Kingdom
It’s either yours, or it isn’t… and it is. And, a few thoughts on being God’s adopted family, children and heirs.
Church is such a funny word.
It has so much… drift.
I think it all comes down to what questions we ask.
Example… ask, “what is Church?” and maybe most people will tell you it’s a building, or an institution, or, possibly a time of day on a Sunday.
Add a ‘the’ to the question and probably a few people will start talking about something bigger, maybe some will ask, “which one?”
Ask, ‘where’ is the Church, and most will give you an address and a few will tell you ‘everywhere.’ Maybe one very special child will say, ‘here.’
But ask “who” is the Church and something altogether different happens.
“Who” asks for identification, for accountability.
And the answer is simple.
“We are.”
I am.
You are too.
I usually try to write in “I” statements.
It’s so much easier to speak plainly when I do that. After all, my read is mine, and, when I apply it only to me… getting it wrong maybe doesn’t matter so much.
“Oops,” I say, “sorry.”
But that’s not the case on this one.
Because what I want to talk about today is the shocking, remarkable, outrageous gift of identity, grace, and power God put into our hands. Collectively.
My hands, sure.
But yours too.
Because Church, and Kingdom, are spaces of shared identity. I can’t talk about this with me alone.
I mean… I am the Church, sure… but only if you are too. I can’t be this thing by myself. It is an us-ness, we-ness, an all-of-us-together-or-not-at-all kind of jam.
Either we do this, united as image-bearing-individuals… or we don’t do it.
It’s a group thing. It’s an individual thing.
…it’s very much a Jesus thing.
It’s not an accident.
Christ came and lived, died, and lived again in part to make us exactly this… this thing that’s so hard to define.
He called it the Kingdom.
That’s us.
He said that we are His.
He claimed us as friends, students, and partners in grace.
He claimed us as family, children, and heirs in this, His Kingdom.
And, just as God himself is the great “I am” it so came to pass, I think, that in this moment of ridiculous grace, the one in which we were adopted forever into this holy and royal family, that it became that, “we are.”
After all, as friends, children, and heirs, how could it not?
We are the Church.
We are the Kingdom.
It is ours, the stewardship of it at any rate.
…so why does it so often look like we left it to someone else to manage?
Probably because we did.
We, the Kingdom, have handed the stewardship of that which we were given to steward to professional managers that are no more — or less — stewards than we are, and we, and they, have forgotten that it was we that enabled them to start with.
It’s gotten a bit confused.
Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hire or enable these stewards and administrators… but I do think we need to remember that it is our choice to do so.
It is our responsibility.
The result of doing so blindly is a nation of platform performers and passive attendees, confusion of identity, and power so misplaced it doesnt remember the hand it came from.
That’s not good for anyone.
It is, mostly, I think, a problem of convenience.
I mean, it’s a lot easier to hand someone else your responsibility than to take care of it yourself.
And convenience is an American drug if ever there was one.
But it has created a loop of blind surrogacy, enabled by men and women giving up the power Christ lived, died, and lived again to put in their hands.
That power.
Yours.
1 Peter 2:5
And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests.
It is not someone else’s responsibility.
When we forget this, when we allow the accountability to slip from our own hands while still enabling the behaviour of our chosen stewards with our resources, attention, and passive participation, we become responsible for the temptations they face and, often, succumb to.
Because, no matter what story we may prefer to tell, the reality is that our leadership of the Church allows those we prefer to think of as ‘leaders’ to pay the price of our own irresponsibility.
…there are a lot of stories about stewards in scripture.
In all of them the steward is responsible for the choices they make. They don’t get a pass. That’s the whole thing about stewards. You at least have to look at the accountability.
We are not kings.
We are heirs. Heirs being the someday-I’ll-get-there-caretakers. Heirs are stewards.
We are responsible.
The reality of responsibility is that there is no avoiding it. We are, all of us, stuck with this. The gift of being God’s image bearer, and the difficulty of choice. Abandoning my responsibility into the hands of others is still an act I choose…
It is still a stewardship.
Just a poor one.
…look, here’s the thing — this whole dynamic is an ‘either/or’ proposition. Either we are the Church, or, we are not.
There’s no middle ground.
There is no discussion, anywhere, or anyone being ‘more’ the Church than any other.
There is no discussion, anywhere, of anyone being ‘kind of’ the Church whereas some other people are ‘really’ the Church.
There is no discussion, anywhere, that being paid by people that think of themselves as the ‘Church’ makes you ‘more’ the ‘Church’ than someone not paid by such people.
There is no discussion, anywhere, that serving others that think of themselves as the ‘Church,’ while being, or not being, paid by those same people, makes anyone more, or less, the ‘Church.’
There is some discussion that to step into certain roles and postures such as ‘teacher,’ carries with it more liability… but nowhere does it give more identity.
Nowhere does it give more authority.
Our authority is simple.
Our authority is in our identity being wrapped up in Jesus’ identity.
That’s it.
It’s the same for all of us.
Our authority does not come from roles within the Church. That’s backwards.
Our authority does not come from the fact that we go to Church. That’s nonsensical.
Our authority comes from the fact that we are Church.
The roles, the numbers, the institutions and all the rest? Identity is first.
Look to Jesus. He died naked on a hill, abandoned by all who thought to value institution, title, or numbers.
That is, among many other truths, exactly what He refuted in the humiliation of the cross.
He didn’t ‘do’ something. He ‘is’ something.
And so are we.
We are the Church.
We, are the Kingdom, and we are responsible.
I get it.
It is much easier to not try, or, to let someone who seems to ‘know’ lead you in what they are doing.
And don’t get me wrong — we need leadership, we need friends to point the way — but that’s true of all of us.
Including the friends you may look to as a leader, or that you may choose to give your authority to. They were not designed to do it alone. That won’t ever work.
The Kingdom needs your participation.
It is better for it.
It needs your leadership. It needs your questions. It needs your voice in all the uncomfortable spaces.
You have to speak up to be heard.
It is very easy to show up at whatever local Church you find comfort in and say, “this is where God put me, this is where I will give and serve as asked” and then go to ‘auto-pilot.’ And that first part may be right… the giving, the participation, the service… but that ‘auto-pilot’?
I don’t think so.
I don’t see any indication — anywhere — that we should fly so blindly.
Within the old covenant? Sure. The temple was the only choice. The priests were the only mediators. Tithes, obedience, and service all had to happen there, and nowhere else.
That’s no longer the case.
You are the temple.
You are the kingdom.
You are the priest.
This is at the heart of the new covenant written in the blood of Christ.
When we elect members to walk out our priestly responsibilities as heirs of the Kingdom we make a huge decision. We are imparting to others an authority and power God died to put into our hands.
That might be worth a more than passive consideration, no?
Is it possible that who and why we select to give that power and authority to will be something we will be held accountable for?
Is that such an unreasonable thought? That our loving and active God would care about what we did with the authority He imparted to us?
That that might matter?
That there is no avoiding a decision as to where and how we want to invest our authority, resources, and attention?
I think it’s really interesting.
To look at, all of this. The dynamism of God’s design, the inevitable nature of how He made us… us. Because it just begs for another question, globally, to all of us. To me. To you.
It begs for your leadership.
Your investment.
Your creativity.
Like a whisper from a loving God, “…what is it that you want to do?”
…
Because this Kingdom… it is yours.
It is yours.
Yours.
Galatians 4:7
So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
We are the Kingdom.
We are the Church.
We are God’s heirs.
…and I am very curious. What will happen when we stop blaming others and take responsibility?
All scripture referenced is NLT unless otherwise noted. I prefer NLT for postural discussion as it is both reasonably rigorous while retaining a conversational tone.
For study I strongly encourage the use of original language tools, multiple translations, and rigorous critical thought.
Please remember that when you read the Bible in English you are always reading someone else’s theological interpretation of the text.
