"Beware then of limiting this word 'gospel' to what we call Christ's 'atoning sacrifice.' The truth is, the reenthronement of God in man is in the deepest sense the evangel, the good news of the gospel" - George Dana Boardman, 1899, The Kingdom (Basileia): An Exegetical Study

How many times have we been castigated for taking the role of God? This headline raises many spiritual questions. MPs back creation of human-animal embryos.

Let's start with this. Will they worship God as their creator? Like Frankenstien, will they seek a creator who can answer their angst of isolation, confusion and meaning? Are the scientists ready to take that place? If not, are they ready to step into the role of creating a new humanity?

Chuck commented,

I think there's another way to look at the question of whether the "thinness" is in the place or in us. Beyond our perceptions are our intentions and actions, the way we arrange our surroundings and the things we do in them.

Not having been there, what you're describing about Calvin Crest makes me think of what I experience in certain churches. When we build a church building, when we decide what the physical space we will conduct our worship in will look like, we try to make a place that will be as "thin" as possible. And the practices we participate in there are intended to make it even more "thin."

I think this is an excellent extension of this conversation, Chuck. It reminds me of my afternoon at the Cathedral Notre Dame in Paris.

I'm wondering what we can do to make the places we inhabit more "intentionally thin.

If we understand thinness to be the perceivability of God's presence and work in the world, then certainly this can increase just by our looking for it. One of the benefits of camp is that there are so many things that you don't have to do there. You don't have to raise children. You don't have to go to school, produce food, or a product that can be traded for food, clothes, electricity, etc. It is a time that is set apart away from the many demands on our lives . It allows us to concentrate our attention more explicitly on God.

There is no doubt that as week seek God's presence and work in the midst of the many demands in our daily lives, the Kingdom of God would be more apparent.

In addition, I think there is a place for retreat, for vigil, for pilgrimage that set aside necessary daily issues for the sake of focusing on God and God's kingdom.

One of my classmates last year mentioned the idea of thin places, or places where the kingdom of God is more visible than others. When he mentioned this, Calvin Crest immediately came to my mind.

What does it mean to see the kingdom of God? When Jesus began his ministry the gospels record he preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." What was the kingdom of God and why did Jesus call people to repent because it was near? Dallas Willard explains this phrase thusly. If I were walking with you downstairs and down the hall, I would stop you, point my hand to the door and say to you, "Turn for the cafeteria is at hand." Jesus was announcing the availability of the realm of God's rule that he embodied in his very presence in their midst.

Jesus went on throughout the region preaching, teaching and healing. He proclaimed the Kingdom, he taught about it, and he demonstrated the reality of it's presence in miraculous healings.

It is my desire to consider ministry in this pattern. I desire to proclaim that the kingdom is at hand, teach people about it and show it to them as well. I believe that particularly in times like these in a world that is skeptical of our arguments, our dogma, and our claims to a uniquely true understanding of the world, more than ever we now need to demonstrate or manifest the kingdom of God.

If we want to impart our faith to others, we need to show it to them. It is exactly this that I wish to make a central focus in camping ministry. I want to focus on creating a community with the intentional self understanding that it exists to be a visible manifestation of the kingdom of God... a people living in the realm of God's rule.

I still haven't found a way to articulate the point I was trying to make about the Kingdom of God at Calvin Crest in response to Tyler's question. We are speaking of the kingdom of God in different ontological (types of existence) terms. Tyler is describing an eschatological (end times) reality. I, on the other hand am describing something like an intersection of two coexistent visible and invisible realities.

When Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, he embodied it. It was present in his being. He brought with him the kingdom of God where ever he went. When people were with Jesus, they encountered the kingdom of God. Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, and they too brought with them the kingdom of God, or the realm of God's rule. Jesus did not say, 'behold, a facet of the kingdom of God is at hand,' or 'behold an incomplete part of the kingdom of God is at hand.' Rather, what was in their midst was the kingdom of God in all its reality and authenticity. He announced it, and he invited people to enter into this realm of God's rule.

I expect that people were more able to perceive the kingdom of God when Jesus spoke than when the disciples spoke. I expect that being in Jesus' presence as he preached, taught and healed conveyed a powerful sense of God's work, God's rule and realm in their midst. So too, though we as local congregations are manifestations of the kingdom of God in so much as we gather as people in grace and obedience under the rule of God, the kingdom may not be as visible as it would be in the community up in the mountains who have set themselves apart for the purpose of devoting themselves to God's service, to each other and to the guests who come into their presence.

Camp would not be the kingdom of God in contrast to other elements of God's church. Rather it is a place where God's realm is unusually apparent and demonstrable. In this place, people may come and spend time away from their world, be shaped and moved by God and perhaps gain a certainty about God's existence and presence in their lives that they had never before.

When I was a junior in high school, one of my friends who had been exposed to church but on the fence regarding God and our faith went to camp with me. He told me sitting above the basketball courts in the middle of the week that he could say with a new certainty that God existed and was present in his life.

Another friend said from the perspective of a week in this community that she could see that it was God who was keeping her life together, and keeping her sane. It was a window into the reality of God's presence and work in our lives and in the world.

A thin place. A place where the blinds are drawn between this world we live in and the active working presence of God and his rule. A place where people can better see the realm of God's rule and consider the call to enter into the abundant life participating in God's work under his rule.

I watched a video from Allelon earlier tonight and different parts of it are spinning through my head as I try to lie down. It's Ryan Bolger being interviewed by Allen Roxbourgh regarding the Emerging Church and it's connected conversations to the Missional Church Movement.

I need to get back into this stuff.

If you want it to spin into your head too, it's here.

I'm sitting still waiting for the window to open in our family life for me to return to my academic work. In the mean time books in my field are being written and going unread, and ministry practitioners are leading new styles of ministries that I remain unaware of. I am feeling that I need to get my final project started and finished before what is left of my thousands of pages of reading dribble out my ear and my assessments and conclusions about culture and my field become stale and dated.

On the other side, when I started studying ministry in our changing culture, the answers were nebulous. Now, the field is maturing. There is disagreement, but groups of people are agreeing together on more definitive concepts. It will be easier to assess and draw from these ideas now that there is some consensus and maturity.

After all of that, my gut response remains that the ministry ideas that most emerging church models are using are a good fit to only about 1-10% of the people who live in my Midwestern community. I desire to explore and substantiate that claim. I also desire to answer the question, what then?

If the average body of Christ in Des Moines Iowa would be poorly served in trying to imitate emerging church models of ministry, is there anything they should be doing to better incarnate the body of Christ in this city's culture? I believe that there are more modest cultural changes that are significant and important, and churches would better be able to be the body of Christ to our culture were they able to understand and modify their outreach to them.

I'm not in Los Angeles anymore. I think there is an exuberance around postmodern ministry ideas that ignores the durable differences between the blue states and red states, the coasts and the middle states, the different language and ethnic groups.

Tyler's comments reminded me of a lecture that John Westfall, who was the senior pastor of Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church with Cathy Burkholder(Tucker), gave when he visited our Presbyterian Polity class in 1997. John taught that every institution has a life cycle marked by the following progression of characters.

Barbarians

The barbarians are the bold message bringers who in their passion for the gospel will knock down barriers of class, geography or race to share the word. They are messy and dangerous. They make things happen.

Builders

The second to come onto the scene are the builders. As the groups grow that the barbarians began, logistical and structural needs arise. The builders love the message and they build institutional structures to help the barbarians and the group they created.

Bureaucrats

The third group to arise are the bureaucrats. They love the institution that the builders created. They are welcoming of the message so long as it isn't destructive or messy. They recognize the danger of the Barbarians so they chain them up to protect the institution. They are good at running the institution but they have forgotten why the builders built it.

Royalty

The last group to arise are the royalty. The royalty care only for their power. They coerce the builders to create structures that enforce their power, but the builders may leave entirely out of lack of inspiring vision. The royalty court the bureaucrats to lead the institution in such a way as to cement their authority. At this point, the institution has been largely perverted from the purpose for which it was created.

Westfall's solution

John's solution to this was to enter an institution and look for the barbarians. He would unchain them to do the ministry. Then he would look for the builders who would be inspired by the barbarians and support their ministry. He would then shield these two groups from the unhealthy attempts by the bureaucrats and royalty to thwart them for the institution's good and their own power.

We asked if there was any hope for the bureaucrats and royalty. He said his hope was that they would fall in love again(?) with Jesus Christ, love him and his message more than the institution or their own power and join the barbarians and builders.

In response to Tony's post, Managing the Kingdom...

I think I've posted here on this before. Institutions are problematic. They, like we - I am sure because they are made up of us - are ever turning to their own interests and preservation rather than the Lord which they were created to glorify and serve. Unless the Christian body is going to splinter into groups of no more than 10 to 15 people, though, we will continue to need institutions to facilitate our existence as the body and further our efforts to corporately do that which Christ is doing in the world.

Institutions create freedom to do ministry
I affirm that freeing people up to do ministry is important. Institutional structure will do exactly that when it is functioning. If the body can not create a policy or corporate understanding of how the building will be used, outside groups won't be able to find out how to use it, won't know how to get permission from the body to use it, or it will be poorly managed and needs of one ministry won't be met versus the needs of another. When the institution is healthy and functioning, though, there is a structure that provides for logistical needs of ministry and allows freedom for people to do ministry.

Where are the chairs?
Without it, every time we get together we have to answer the questions, "How do we get chairs in here so we have a place to sit" and, "Can't we put these three hundred chairs somewhere so we have a place for our youth group to meet," and "Wow that is a spectacular 30,000 foot facility, wouldn't it serve Jesus better if Alcoholics Anonymous could use it one of the six and a half days a week that it sits dormant?"

I am enumerating the benefits of the institution because your post might suggest that we would be better off without it. Perhaps you did not intend this.

Calling the institution back to its intended purpose
My call, as I began, has not been to eliminate the institution, but forever to call it back to that for which it was created. As Christ continues to call me to lay down my life and serve him over and against my own selfish wants and desires to cling to my life, so Christ calls institutions to exist for his service rather than for their own growth and gain.

They need to be permission giving rather than hording so they facilitate rather than stifle ministry. They need also to create structures that allow us to be the body in groups larger than fifteen people.

Interested in buying a Christian response book to the Da Vinci Code? No, I haven't read any of them either. Roger Overton over at the A-Team has reviewed five of them, and plans to review more this week.