Potential Starting Points

A few years ago I went to a conference in San Diego. At this conference a woman from a nationally published magazine was being interviewed. This woman was incitefull and I couldn't help but feel like she'd been wounded in her past... big time. She did not profess to follow Jesus, in fact, she was somewhat curious about why she was speaking at a "pastor" event.

Immediately before she stepped on the stage we sang a song that said something like "You are my King". When she walked on stage, she commented on this.

"We have to get away from this idea that God is exclusively male." Then she said something like, "Calling God a king in the world we live in only wounds people, and it shows a gender bias"

These comments have been planted in my head for a few years. Everytime I hear the word "Kingdom" I think of it. Beside the fact that there are very few kingdoms left in the world and those that are, are mostly pomp and circumstance with little actual power (ie. the United Kingdom)

So as we move forward, as we move forward in deepening our understanding of this idea of the "kingdom of God" can we also push forward with the language.

Revelation, the term for kingdom of God seems to be "city of God" and though "city" has it's own baggage, I wonder if it's a better substitute.

Then again. I like the idea that no one word (or words) can contain the kingdom.

Summarizing the Kingdom of God is dangerous work. Especially since Jesus himself often didn't give concise definitions, but rather mysterious and often vague parables by which he described an aspect of the kingdom.

In light of this.

Maybe a good starting point for us may be each of us individually picking out a parable and then write our individual thoughts on that parable and the kingdom and then we expand our thoughts in the comments section?

what do you think?

post away!

Emergent Tulsa Cohort

Cohort meeting on Nov. 10
10:30 @ Nordaggio's
81st and Lewis

I do realize this is not the best time for some folks. Though it works for many.
Please comment on times that work for you. (Thursday's after 8 etc.)

The Gospel according to Jesus

What is the Gospel According to Jesus?

Often we interpret Jesus through the lens of Paul.

some quotes.

Dallas Willard writes, "History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally."

he goes on...

"To the right, being a Christian is a matter of having your sins forgiven. To the left, you are Christian if you have a significant commitment to the elimination of social evils. A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face the judgement of God or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it."


Tony Jones speaking in Pittsburg earlier this month.

"And then back to Paul - evangelical Christians are in love with Paul and not Jesus. We've become Paulophilics and don't even realize we're reading Romans through a contemporary lens. Like the PENAL SUBSTITUTIONARY THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT - this whole idea that one thing can balance out something else like a transaction - it comes from a guy named Anselm and was developed during the same time the Magna Carta was. The whole concept that someone screwed up so someone must pay for it... laws are very important in our society - we're very litigious and we assume that there's an economy of sin, too... only the rest of the world doesn't see the Bible like we do."