In his well-known Southern twang and humor, Jeff Foxworthy often turns crowds into raucous laughter when he offers his ideas on how to detect Southern hicks with his opening line, “You might be a redneck if you…”. As in “You might be a redneck if you think the stock market has a fence around it.” I borrow his line, not for humor, but for the serious endeavor of detecting a kingdom-mission church: “You might be a kingdom-mission church if …” I will offer below ten traits of a kingdom-mission church, but first a few other points.
Reading through your list of Kingdom/Church characteristics, I realized how absolutely difficult it is for a megachurch to live into those characteristics. Not to say it can't be done, but the distance between individuals in the congregation or between pastors and people are really huge, so incredible intentionality is required.
“in my book Kingdom Conspiracy. In the book I make a case for what the Bible means when it uses the word ‘kingdom.’”
If it was only that simple, we would be missing something very special: how this reveals another component of the meal/great banquet you are providing!
Thank you!
I appreciate that even the list you’ve provided today opens thought trails.
“What spiritual disciplines do we need to focus on in order to form and foster being a kingdom-mission church?” - the spiritual discipline of fasting, or any form of self-denial, is largely missing from the American church. It’s a symptom, I think, of the lack of cruciformed theology and practice in our churches.
This was the first book by Scot that I read. Because of my particular church background, this was truly ground-breaking! Love this book. How difficult it seems to be to change ingrained ideas, ingrained both in society as well as the church.
Reading through your list of Kingdom/Church characteristics, I realized how absolutely difficult it is for a megachurch to live into those characteristics. Not to say it can't be done, but the distance between individuals in the congregation or between pastors and people are really huge, so incredible intentionality is required.
“in my book Kingdom Conspiracy. In the book I make a case for what the Bible means when it uses the word ‘kingdom.’”
If it was only that simple, we would be missing something very special: how this reveals another component of the meal/great banquet you are providing!
Thank you!
I appreciate that even the list you’ve provided today opens thought trails.
“What spiritual disciplines do we need to focus on in order to form and foster being a kingdom-mission church?” - the spiritual discipline of fasting, or any form of self-denial, is largely missing from the American church. It’s a symptom, I think, of the lack of cruciformed theology and practice in our churches.
Fantastic summary of an excellent book. Thanks Scot.
This was the first book by Scot that I read. Because of my particular church background, this was truly ground-breaking! Love this book. How difficult it seems to be to change ingrained ideas, ingrained both in society as well as the church.