Zeal For Truth

One thing that characterizes many in the Emerging Church is the amount of attention they pay to the kingdom of God. Note that the kingdom of God (the term used in Mark and Luke) and the kingdom of heaven (the term used in Matthew) refer to the same thing. This kingdom focus seems appropriate in the light of Matthew 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Definition
According to Dallas Willard, the Lord’s Prayer provides a short definition of the Kingdom of God. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” means that the Kingdom of God is where God’s will is done. God’s kingdom is in full force in heaven, but on earth, it is permitted to be partially absent.

The main teaching of Jesus was the kingdom of God. He proclaimed the kingdom to have come (Luke 11:20). This kingdom has been entered into by people (Col 1:13), and is in the midst of human life (Luke 17:21). It is then, a present reality we can participate in, and not just a future reality. Although the kingdom is here, there is also the truth that it is not yet. That is, the kingdom will be fulfilled completely at the second coming of Christ.

In the Emerging Church
There is a high emphasis on the kingdom of God in the Emerging Church. Some see this emphasis as being the single most agreed upon position in the notoriously diverse Emerging Church.

Jesus’ message of the kingdom, is held to not only to be the good news of personal salvation and a promised future in heaven, but also a call to be agents for God’s kingdom here and now. This involves not only the task of making disciples, but also working for peace, justice, and mercy in the world today. It is living for the values of God’s kingdom rather than for any of man’s values.

In practice, this kingdom focus involves a great deal of what has commonly been called social work. This is the fulfillment of the command to love our neighbors. Besides the idea of the kingdom of God, motivation for these practices is commonly drawn for the Old Testaments prophets. For example, take Isaiah 58:6-7:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Criticism
Criticism of the Emerging Church’s focus on the Kingdom of God (from American Evangelicals) appears to come from two main areas. The first, are those who worry that the focus on the kingdom of God will produce a social gospel that minimizes or ignores the idea of individual salvation. The second set of objections come from certain quarters of strict dispensational premillennialism.

The first objection is a valid concern. As Tim Keller notes, churches have a hard time integrating both the individual (evangelism) and corporate (working for justice and peace) practices, although there is no particular reason why this should be. It probably exists somewhere, but I can say that I have not seen the neglect for individual salvation in the Emerging Church that so worries people. The idea that it is hard to hold to both the individual and corporate aspects is baffling to some in the Emerging Church, who wonder how that can be since the motivation to do both come from the same place, love of God and love of neighbor.

The concerns of some dispensational premillennialists are that the Emerging church’s focus on the kingdom of God amounts to postmillennialism, and that it leads to an errant hope that society on earth can improve. The optimism for social change (or at least the potential) in the Emerging Church does resemble that of postmillennialism. However, there is a wide diversity of views on the millennium in the Emerging Church, the main position is probably that of preferring not to take a position on the issue (other than to affirm that Christ will return).