Post-class thoughts

I'm not sure this will come out as one coherent post of organized thought, so I'm not really going to try. Just try to track with me, and we'll see where my reflections take me...

Strategy for Kingdom Advance--the name of a course that could have been more accurately titled, "Right on, let's discuss this!" For a postmodern young person, such as myself, this type of learning format was highly enjoyable and very effective. It seemed like whatever topic came to mind, so long as it was in some way relevant to church or missions, was open for discussion. And in this way, I learned about church planting movements, cross-cultural evangelism, insider movements, reaching this generation through media such as Facebook, spiritual warfare, and even arranged marriages.

Since the class, I've become more and more aware that God needs to be in the center of any kingdom advance movement, and God needs to be the primary actor. His Spirit will impress in individuals ways in which He wants them to carry out His kingdom strategy, and it is their job to be obedient and faithful to God's call. The church really messes things up so often by preoccupying themselves with how everyone else is carrying out God's call to advance His kingdom. "Person A is wrong because God has impressed upon my heart that He wants to reach such-and-such people group via such-and-such strategy." Well, fine! That's wonderful--praise God! Be obedient to His call, but just because God has called you to this, doesn't mean He's calling the universal Church to the same strategy. He may call you to one specific strategy plan, while calling someone else to another strategy plan to fill in the gaps where your strategy is lacking. Don't you think God knows what He's doing when He works in the hearts of individuals? Not all are called to tentmaking. Not all are called to church planting. Not all are called to children's ministry. And certainly not all are called to pastoring. Leave every man to the Holy Spirit.

And how dare we determine who the Holy Spirit can use and what He can do! What is heresy except what is clearly out of line with Scripture? What is inappropriate except what Scripture deems as inappropriate? We see God moving in controversial movements such as the insider movements happening in Muslim countries or the house church movements of China--is that not the Spirit of God moving? Sure, there may be some false teaching, but is that absent from our own churches? We may be tentative about new believers doing the bulk of evangelism, but if their frontline is larger than ours and if they are more effective in reaching their frontline than we are, then why not? Why stop them? This is about advancing the kingdom of God, not about crafting church the way WE see fit. We need to get on board God's mission, because He is not about to lend His powers to the fulfillment of our mission.

I suppose I'll end on that note. I'm not very good at this blog thing--not when I don't update regularly. Efforts to prevent addiction to such forms of self-dissemination have, in a sense, crippled my ability to publish updates on the inner workings of my mind. Very unlike my generation, I know. One day if there's a need, I could probably get into it...