I'm working on a new book on the Kingdom of God (out in 2011) and it's implications for living between the times in the "already" but "not yet." I ran across this from Paul Hiebert.

Paul recently died and the church experienced a great loss. David Hesselgrave and I dedicated our new mission book, MissionShift, to Paul and Ralph Winter, who both died soon after submitting their chapters for the book.

In a longer article on missiological education, Hiebert encourages us toward the Kingdom with some helpful cautions about what that really means.

Hiebert writes:

We must move from a stress on the church and world, to God and God's Kingdom.

Most Western missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were largely children of the Enlightenment. They divided reality into a spiritual realm where Christianity ruled, and a natural realm where science ruled. In this context many evangelical missions saw their central task to be evangelism. By this they meant leading people to a personal, saving faith in Christ that would lead to eternal salvation. The Student Volunteer Movement, for example, had as its watchword, "the evangelization of the world in this generation."

Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson, and later Roland Allen and Donald McGavran, pointed out that evangelism by itself is incomplete. Converts must be incorporated into living churches. The strength of this view is that it ties evangelism to the planting of churches. Evangelism without the church is incomplete; the church without evangelism is ingrown.

One weakness of this approach is its human-centeredness. Mission is what we plan and do for God. Another is its failure to address the structural evils of our world. We are in danger of separating individuals from their communities, spiritual needs from material needs, the future from the present, and the gospel from its fruit.

We need to move beyond evangelism and church planting to a focus on the Kingdom of God. This reminds us that mission is first and foremost the work of God (missio dei). As Jurgen Moltmann notes, "It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church" (1977, 64).

There is a danger, however. If we speak of mission as missio dei, but do not define dei, we are free to equate the Kingdom with our own utopias-with Marxism, capitalism, or socialism. The Kingdom of God to which we bear witness is the Kingdom defined by Christ, its king.

Within the Kingdom the church has a central place. It is the place on earth where the Kingdom is already manifest as a sign of what is yet to come. Within the church, evangelism is central. As Bosch points out,

Evangelism is announcing that God, Creator and Lord of the universe, has personally intervened in human history and has done so supremely through the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who is the Lord of history, Savior and Liberator. In this Jesus, incarnate, crucified and risen, the reign of God has been inaugurated (1991, 412).

There is no divorce here between earthly and heavenly, between material and spiritual needs, or between salvation, righteousness and justice.

Here come more threats to academic freedom, not unlike those seen by intelligent design proponents and Darwin skeptics. Over the years we've covered many, many cases like this where someone who expresses doubt about Darwinian evolution is harassed, fired, denied tenure, and so on.

"The significance of this is a threat to academic freedom and it's also a threat to academic science," Siegel said. "If scientists have to produce work that meets a certain view to keep their jobs, researchers are going to stop publishing negative findings for fear of being fired."

But of course we all know that Academia (may it last forever in all its gloriousness) doesn't drum people out because their views differ from the established consensus.

"If 100 people conclude one thing and another person concludes something completely different, then it's natural for his credibility to be called into question," Maxwell said.

1 Samuel 31; 1 Corinthians 11; Ezekiel 9; Psalm 48 is a post from: For the Love of God

This is the funniest video I have seen in a long time! I used it in my class this week to open up discussions about existentialism and nihilism. Even if you're not formally teaching, this video is well worth the chat. Check it out!

The Thomas Nelson company sent me AmSpec alumnus Jeremy Lott’s William F. Buckley. I will write a full review later, but I have just begun the book and can already tell that Lott is going to bring attention to some underappreciated territory.

Read more on Jeremy Lott’s Life of William Buckley…

Click here to listen.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin examines the double standard advocated by the evolution lobby in public schools. "Either a viewpoint is religious and unconstitutional to advocate as correct or critique as false in public schools, or it's scientific and fair game for both advocacy and critique in public schools," says Luskin.

What does this mean for evolution and intelligent design, and what does the case law say? Tune in to find out.

This podcast is excerpted from a law review article published in Liberty University Law Review. The article, "Zeal for Darwin's House Consumes Them: How Supporters of Evolution Encourage Violations of the Establishment Clause," is available here.

I almost hate to bring it up, but the decision on Prop 8 is going the direction that reflects where much of our American culture seems headed, making a decisive turn on a road we have been headed down for some time.

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The Society of Biblical Literature (an organization to which all the PrimeTime Jesus bloggers belong, I believe) is beginning an educational website for lay people. The press notice reads as follows:

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