Kingdom Agents
What a great weekend we had at Renovation!
I remember as a kid having different preachers come to the church my dad pastored in Kansas City… back in the 70′s you had Bible Conferences, Mission Conferences, Evangelistic Conferences… you name we had it. We had the world’s strongest man speak… the tallest man in the world speak… it was always somebody and I look back on many of those experiences fondly. I loved being able to have them over to our house or go with dad out to eat with them!
That is not really how we roll today but on occasion we will have a guest like we had this past weekend. We had the real honor of having Noel Castellanos the CEO of CCDA. He and his wife Marriann flew in from Chicago on Saturday and we hosted “Dinner with Noel” down in the basement of the Renovation Center. Everybody brought a dish to pass and we had a great time hearing some of Noel’s personal story which was great and then we had a chance to ask him some questions that he did a great job answering and giving some perspective from serving poor and under-resources communities for the last 25 year. We had renovation folks and a good number of friends join us that had been a part of the CCDA regional conference.
There is no question that it is a hard and often times frustrating and discouraging road serving in poor communities. There are so many hardships in the lives of people and there are NO simple solutions. It is also at times discouraging because people we love don’t always quite get what it means to serve in the “hood” and how long it takes to build trust and relationships and that simply implementing programs is not the answer. So when we can gather together some practitioners and others who are on “there way” it is a great time of sharing and encouragement and meeting new friends who have similar hearts!
That was Saturday evening and then Noel spoke at all three of our gatherings on Sunday. He did a fantastic job. It was a great way to wrap up this (we will have many more in the years to come based on Christian Community Development) latest series on CCDA. Noel went back to Jeremiah 29:4-7 and did a brilliant job of unpacking this passage especially verse 7. For those who missed it here are some of the highlights of the day…
- The Church is to be about the work of The Kingdom the “work” of the church.
- We should be so full of the love of God that it would change the world we encounter.
- “I wish the church was known more for it’s love than its hate”
- The King of the Kingdom has assigned the Church to be agents of God for the kingdom and proclaiming Kingdom values by both word and deed.
- A Kingdom approach to the City through the church will have to have 5 key components for real systemic change to happen
- Incarnation John 1:14
- can’t have effective Kingdom ministry without incarnational living… which has 3 key elements
- proximity – God came close… we need to come close to people
- relationships – Jesus just wasn’t close in proximity he actually touched and loved the people NOBODY else would dare too.
- humility – we must have a posture of humility as we serve Philippians 2:3-8
2. Proclamation and Formation
- we must proclaim the Gospel – sharing God’s Grace story and ours but also giving help and direction for the growth and development of those coming to Christ.
- there are no short cuts to developing fully devoted followers of Christ… its a life time journey and investment! (ain’t gonna happen in a 3 week discipleship class!)
3. Demonstration of Compassion
- this is the appropriate response to need.
- can’t meet all the needs (Jesus didn’t) but we can and should meet some.
4. Restoration and Development.
- this is going beyond charity and compassion work
- this is the hard and long work of assisting, coaching, mentoring, helping people to step up and out…
- this is not just job prep but actually working to develop jobs and industry in these communities
- Nehemiah didn’t walk into the city and address the spiritual condition of his people but began to rebuild the walls… the physical structure that was causing the vulnerability was what he addressed and then he worked on the spiritual brokenness of his people.
5. Confrontation of Injustice
- Injustice is anything that robs people from living as image bearers of God.
- every man, woman and child deserves to be treated with love and dignity and when they are not we are to step in and be there advocate.
- each one of us needs an advocate
We must reverse the order that the American Church has adopted from verse 7…
“And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.’
We the Church have been praying for our welfare first… and then after we have what we need we might pray for the welfare of our city.
If we are going to be Kingdom Agents we must reverse this order and restore the original order by praying for and working for the shalom/welfare/flourishing of our city first and foremost!
Renovation I thank God for what He is doing in us and through but we still have a lot of hard but good Kingdom work to do! Lets be good Kingdom Agents!
