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I caught sight of an interview article on Christianity Today and am mulling it over further in pastoral reflection toward a more missional understanding in my own spiritual formation and theology. A particularly relevant excerpt from this piece is listed below for this posting. It is reminding me of some other possibly related material I’ve seen (from the intercessory prayer movement, by David Bryant) on the Supremacy of Christ. On his web site DavidBryantDirect.com, is the following quote:

Only a God-given reawakening to Christ and the full extent of His supremacy can resuscitate the Church’s hope and passion, and re-engage her effectively in the worldwide advance of His Kingdom. –David Bryant
http://proclaimhope.gospelcom.net/

Here’s the pertinent excerpt from Tim Stafford’s interview with N.T. Wright:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/january/22.38.html

Mere Mission
N.T. Wright talks about how to present the gospel in a postmodern world.
Interview by Tim Stafford | posted 1/05/2007 04:00PM

Your book “Simply Christian” speaks to people outside the faith, in what must be a conscious imitation of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity….

How do you see the church’s mission in this context?

For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery.

The longer that I’ve gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it’s been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and how we’ve managed for years to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics.When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, “Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world.” And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, “My kingdom is not from this world.” That’s ek tou kosmoutoutou. It’s quite clear in the text that Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t start with this world. It isn’t a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It’s from somewhere else, but it’s for this world.

The key to mission is always worship. You can only be reflecting the love of God into the world if you are worshiping the true God who creates the world out of overflowing self-giving love. The more you look at that God and celebrate that love, the more you have to be reflecting that overflowing self-giving love into the world.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.

N.T. Wright is a world-renowned New Testament scholar—author of “Jesus and the Victory of God, The Resurrection of the Son of God”—and bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is also a keen observer of culture. ct senior writer Tim Stafford caught up with Wright as he drove from meetings at Windsor Castle to his diocese in Durham. They talked about communicating the gospel in a post-Christian society.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Missional Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.