Excited About “The Tangible Kingdom”
A friend has lent me this book and I am enjoying it so far. The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
I like that the authors are not negative toward certain forms of church; I like that the model they are promoting is something that can be used in house churches, small groups, or even mega-churches; I like that they give me practical steps on how to accomplish the kind of community I long for; and, I like that they make me feel hopeful!
It’s not about attracting Christian people to a worship service. The goal is to be the faithful church in small pockets throughout the city – places of inclusive belonging where God’s alternative Kingdom can be experienced.
Look inside the book here to get a feel for what I am talking about.
The following is from the website, http://www.tangiblekingdom.com:
Jesus’ news about His Kingdom is a wild, life-reorienting message. It changes people, cities, and the social fabric. It looks quite different from the religion common to some of our present-day church experiences.
Watch as a normal God-searching man finds hope as he sees a glimpse of the Kingdom in a community of friends, around a table, and everywhere he goes.
The Tangible Kingdom helps open a window into the uneasiness many of us feel when what we’ve read in Scripture does not line up with our experiences of church or religion.
Comments
I am still in my mega church and still feeling the disconnect between the beauty of its walls and the polish of its programs, and the ache of the city around us. This book sounds like one I would Amen my way through!
It is a terrific book (and a friend of mine shot that video). To me, it shows that the “Australian stream” of the emerging church, focusing on being missional, really can work in the United States. Did you see that they have now published a Primer for the book?
Jon, I wish you and I lived closer to each other!
Cynthia, it really is an exciting book. I can’t wait to find out where we will be living so I can start using the principles in this book!
i am just beginning it,…. i am not really impressed up to now…
we really feel the guys are in a process of bereavment with institutionnal church…. i don’t really feel they think that not only the church as we used to live it IS right now irrelevant for this generation, but it NEVER was even 200 years ago… this church was not the gospel.
in my mind, the institutionnal church has NEVER been conformed to the truth of the gospel… it is not because it was “popular” in the past that it was right in that time… it was an easy gospel, a sunday gospel, a no-cross gospel.
Sure God used it ! … as he can use a donkey to talk to Balaam !! as he can use rocks to shout his truth …
simply, the church is becoming what it should really be
and the guys is all surprised that the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures actually lead even the new believers…. duuuhhh …come on,…. you pastors were there just in the way to not let them here from Him and you just discovered what He always was trying to do, … in spite of you….
it is not because we are now in a post-mod era that we have to change the way we do church, it is because in the modern era we were doing a church that is not a church
as i said, i am just beginning the reading,… maybe i will find some good stuff
… hear from Him…. sorry
the agenda of changing the culture is nothing but an old constantinian dream of the “good old time” when everything in the society was “christian”
Is it just me, but I don’t see this agenda in the New Testament ?
… sorry i must retract what i said in my last reply… in some way we change the world.
In Acts 17:6 it is said: “These men who have turned the world upside down …”