Gandhi, the Church, and the Kingdom (by Jonathan Storment)

Last month, I wrote a few posts discussing Scot’s latest (and great book) A Fellowship of Differents.  Today I would like to finish that review, but to come at it from a different angle, actually I’d like to start with a different book.

I grew up in Churches of Christ, a non-denominational, denomination (in the sense that we have all the boundaries, markers and gate-keepers that comes along with being a part of a named community).  These are my people, and I love them.  We are pretty eclectic, and we are really big on the Bible and for the most part we are either sectarian or recovering sectarians.

Now I have come to believe that there is a good impulse that often leads people to being sectarian.  There is a deep belief that what we have together is special, and people seem to be more willing to go deeper in community together.  But, as you can imagine, I have also seen the dark parts to this.  Sectarianism is really hard to maintain without developing some spirit of elitism, and in my experience it leads to a sustained poor reading of Scripture, and even an idolatry of Church (putting the people of God before God Himself).

And that brings me to Scot McKnight’s book Kingdom Conspiracy.  I still remember a few years ago, I was having lunch with Scot at Sharon’s Barbeque when he was in Abilene and he was floating out there some of the ideas from this book that he was writing.

I was so shocked at what I was hearing.  I had recently gone all in with what I perceived to be the movement of God in Churches around America.  I had come to believe what it meant to be the Church was primarily to be a church for the common good, to serve the city, your neighborhood, and the people outside your walls in the name of the Kingdom of God.  In other words, I had just recently put on the Skinny Jeans.

But hearing Scot at lunch that day was really, really challenging.  And when I read Kingdom Conspiracy I found myself convicted that what I really was doing was trying to be a part of a church that was seen as cool, and respected by non-Christians.

During the same month, I also read the great book by Andy Stanley Deep and Wide where Stanley asked the insightful question, “Is the Church for members or non-members?”  Stanley was asking the question because of the tendency that churches have to become internally focused, and he very convincingly makes the point that the church exists for the people who don’t belong to her.

So I went to Dr. Jeff Childers, a member at the church I serve and a good friend and a pretty brilliant Church historian and I asked him Stanley’s question:  “Who is the church for?”  In one sentence Jeff exposed a huge gap in my faith and view of Church, and what I think Scot is trying to get at in his book Kingdom Conspiracy.

Childers just said, “Well the short answer is that the Church is for God.”  Immediately, I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s the right answer.”  I realized that this was the missing piece in my theology, the Church, before she is anything, is for God.  I still believe that the Church is the only institution in the world that exists for the people who don’t belong to her, but not first.  First, she exists for God.

This is what Scot is getting at in his book Kingdom Conspiracy, and something I think most evangelical leaders need to recover.  Have we forgotten the great pleasure it gives God when we forgive actual people who are difficult to forgive?  Do we realize when we reconcile racially/economically/politically we give God great joy because we are acting like His Son?  We don’t do it because it is popular, we do it because it is who God is.

This is what Scot’s Kingdom Conspiracy book did for me, it brought me back to the breathtaking vision of what God is trying to do in the local church body and I started once again calling that work the Kingdom of God.

And yet…

I still have those stories and experiences and scars from seeing what happens when a church becomes too closed in on itself and sectarian.

Recently Rubel Shelley, another leader in Churches of Christ, wrote a gentle critique of Kingdom Conspiracy right here on Scot’s blog.  I imagine it is because he has seen the same things I have.

Shelley lays out a thoughtful response to Scot’s pointed question “Did Ghandhi do Kingdom work?” (Scot’s answer is kind of no, and Shelley’s answer is kind of yes.)

I still think Scot is right, the Kingdom of God is primarily found in the church, but after having a few years to think about it, here is what I would like to add.

The ideas that Scot lays out in Kingdom Conspiracy, are very close to what Churches of Christ have believed for a couple of hundred years, and some of us rightfully have PTSD with these ideas. That’s is not to say they are not true or important, but they are filled with challenges.  This brings me finally to Scot’s newest book, A Fellowship of Differents.

I don’t think that people should read Kingdom Conspiracy alone.  I think it is the necessary prequel to his book A Fellowship of Differents.  In A Fellowship of Differents, Scot lays out the life of Paul and the churches he planted and the Gospel he preached.  He goes into great detail about how the Gospel leads to reconciliation between all kinds of differents, how the Gospel creates Kingdom of God outposts that are showing the world a different kind of society. [SMcK: I wrote A Fellowship of Differents before Kingdom Conspiracy, and so Jonathan is 100% accurate: the kingdom book assumed the church book.]

We are, in our better moments, a counter culture for God and for the world.  A church, at her best, is filled with people of all races, socio-economic positions, statuses, and cultures.  But when we forget what our mission is, when we turn inward and start thinking this whole thing is about us, or that we are the elite “Chosen ones’ things start going to Hell quickly.

So I would like to finish my review of Scot’s work, by answering the question that he asked in Kingdom Conspiracy, with his own book Paul:  A Fellowship of Differents.

Did you know that early on in his life, Ghandhi tried going to church?  He was a young man, practicing law in South Africa, and had been reading the New Testament. Ghandi found Jesus captivating and was drawn to the Gospel, so he decided to go to a church.  But the church stopped him at the door.  They pointed out that he was a Kaffir, and told him that there was no room for Kaffirs in this church, and that if he didn’t leave that he would be escorted out. [SMcK: Gandhi is why we need Paul’s teaching on the church.]

Later on Ghandi would famously say that he loved Jesus, that he had based his life’s work on the Sermon on the Mount, but that he didn’t like Christians, “they are so much unlike their Christ.”

So did Ghandi do Kingdom work?  I think he tried to.  And if he didn’t, it was only because the Kingdom people weren’t doing it either.