Let the church gather to dream and vision. Dream of what a fully redeemed world would look like. Experience visions of a world fully transformed by the love of our God and functioning in accordance with the precepts of the Kingdom of God. Let us pray with the hope that the Holy Spirit will pour herself upon all people. That our sons and daughters will prophesy, our young will see visions, and our old will dream dreams (Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17 paraphrased).
For the last few decades the church at-large has been fixated on returning to a mythical past when the church reached its pinnacle (be it 1950, 1530, 120, or some other time). We live in a new age, an age drastically reshaped by the last century of changes in information, production, transportation, and communications. These changes, in a similar manner as the printing press, have undermined many of the core assumptions of democracy, capitalism, communism, and the other big ideas that hallmarked enlightenment and the modern age. I believe that over the next couple generations we will develop the similarly world-changing ideas that will profoundly transform the next few centuries. These new conceptions will profoundly change the landscape of economics, art, governments, politics, education, healthcare, and virtually all other aspects of our culture and lives.
The church is encountering an exciting time! Instead of constantly responding in horror to our changing world or lethargically allowing ourselves to be coopted by it, we, as the church, must actively seek to shape the future towards the Kingdom of God. We must have dreams and visions. We must experiment with them boldly. Let us not seek to shape the world using the power of the world, rather let us demonstrate to the world a different way of being and invite them to join in.
How would a fully redeemed business function?
Let’s start businesses and seek to boldly demonstrate our allegiance to the King and not the free market.
How would a fully redeemed group make decisions together?
Let’s seek to demonstrate a new way in our churches, workplaces, and communities.
How would a fully redeemed prison function?
Let’s secure a private prison contract and seek to boldly love the inmates.
What would our schools look like if they were fully redeemed?
Let’s start a school that seeks to experiment and demonstrate the answer.
We must gather and ask hard questions. We must defy our desires to revert to the same old arguments of right and left, young and old, poor and rich, conservative and liberal. These are not the questions of the future, they are the trappings of the past. We must not fixate on the way things are or previously were. Rather, informed by the past, we must hope for and actively seek the world that could be. We must agree that the available systems of government, politics, economics, education, healthcare, and all other parts of our culture fall far short of the fully redeemed realities of the Kingdom of God.
We must defy the captivity of this world and dream, vision, and experiment towards the Kingdom of God!
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Kingdom Experiments is a ministry of Village Church.
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Kingdom Experiments provides staff and resource support to organizations and communities seeking the Kingdom and making disciples.