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This reorientation challenges our understanding of what it means to be the people of God. This rebirth comes in the mold of Genesis 12, where God’s people are blessed to be a blessing. We’re here to give free samples of the kingdom not just for our own bliss, but for the betterment of God’s world and for God’s own glory. Following Jesus ceases to be about maintaining and growing the church. It becomes about announcing and sharing the kingdom of God. We’re here to transfigure the world in the power of the Spirit, not just make as many converts as possible to the neglect of discipleship in Christ’s teaching. We get back to the heart of the great commission – making not just converts, but making disciples in the Way of Jesus of Nazareth.

Is this making sense? It really is a big shift. Instead of a “rapture and retreat” mentality, the emerging generation sees the gospel as about conforming the world to heaven, God’s world to God’s dream for it.

How do we know what God’s dream for the world really is? I think we can look to the Old Testament prophets and to Jesus’ own teaching on the Kingdom of God. We get glimpses of it all over:

Isaiah writes:

“He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.”

Or consider Christ’s inaugural Jubilee speech, quoting from elsewhere in Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Then there’s the Sermon on the Mount as the sort of “Kingdom Manifesto,” and elsewhere, where we have a vision of this reconciled, pure, peaceable, just, compassionate, Christ-adoring and Christ-adored world. Those who have much, don’t have too much, and those who have little, don’t have too little.

And I’ll submit to you that a lot of Emergents are realizing that this is precisely the gospel that we are to be preaching. We’re supposed to be signposts and “sample trays” of this Kingdom. Our job is, having read of God’s great works in the past (centered of course on Jesus Christ’s ministry, death, resurrection, and present cosmic reign), and having these glimpses of God’s future, we’re to receive and live in that Kingdom in God’s present. Like Joshua’s spies who came back from the Promised Land with firstfruits of what God had promised his people, we as new creations in Christ are God’s firstfruits of the New Heaven and New Earth that are coming.

Don’t be mislead about this – such a reevaluation of the gospel does not diminish the role of Christ’s death and resurrection. Rather, it exemplifies it as the most epic expression of God’s kingdom thus far in God’s story. The cross and empty tomb are not the totality of the gospel, but they certainly are its apex so far.

This is also no wishy-washy postmillennialism that says the church will eventually bring in the fullness of God’s kingdom over time. We will not. The fullness of that Day is coming. But we can receive, enter, and demonstrate it today, and I believe that is what we are called to do. It’s what makes us “the church”.

Lesslie Newbigin notes that in Acts, almost every time Christ and his kingdom are verbally shared, it is because someone saw how Christians were living, and inquired about it. They see disciples of Jesus living in a new way, empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. And their question in response to this was, “What is this new reality?”

So Emergents are clinging to something like that, where by living out God’s dream for the world – “on Earth as it is in heaven” – people are drawn to our glorious Savior and King.

OK, that’s the end of my theological sidetrack. Now let’s ask, how can we get people in America, in Oregon, in Portland to ask “What is this new reality?”

We can celebrate redistribution within the local church. The early church did this, and ended poverty among them. Amid the great rat-race of American living, how great a testimony of God’s kingdom it would be to see an end to poverty in our midst! When people ask why, tell them about this new reality made possible by Jesus.

We can affirm that God’s future takes place on God’s world, which he called good and loves. We can affirm this by living more gently on the land, taking radical steps in our lifestyles and consumption habits so as to tend to God’s great garden. When people ask, why, tell them about this new reality.

We can enter into relationships with the homeless and economically depressed among us, the last, the lost, and the least, and offer them dignity and love. When people ask why, we can tell them about God’s new reality.

We can take steps toward stopping pre-emptive wars by waging pre-emptive peace. When people ask why, we can tell them about this new reality brought in by history’s most glorious human shield – Jesus Christ.

We can lobby to restrain the principalities and powers, be they payday loan shacks or Wal-Marts or profiteering bureaucrats, which create and exacerbate poverty in our communities. When people ask why, we can tell them about our King and His new reality.

We can pay our employees well, even at the cost of our own income or business plan. When people ask why, we call tell them about God’s new reality.

When confronted with sin, be it economic inequality or sexual deviance or addiction or racism or militancy, the gospel of the kingdom says to the People of God, “NO MORE. End these treacheries in your midst now, and so let your love for one another point to Jesus. Let your light shine!”

In addition to being that light of God’s future in this dimming present, I believe the time is long overdue for us to begin confronting the systemic evil which creates many of the ills we seek to mend. This takes courage. But we must say and ask, as Shane Claiborne does, “Feed a man and he’s fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’s fed for a lifetime. But who owns the fish pond? Who built the fence around it? And who the heck polluted it?!” We can keep letting Enrons happen and spend all our time cleaning up the mess, or we can change the rules of the game in such a way that prevents more Enrons from happening. That mentality is what the church must now reach for.

My prayer is that the future of the people of God will be defined by both of these practices: both living out the kingdom of God among them as evangelistic firstfruits of God’s future, and also courageously challenging the systemic evils, the principalities and powers, which are so inhibiting God’s dream from breaking into the rest of the world.