Newsletter #62

On Strategic Patience (Part 2) and the Kingdom of God

The first part of this week’s newsletter picks up where last week’s left off. You can read the Part 1 of my reflections on “strategic patience” here.

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The Ongoing Conundrum: How Quickly?

Several years ago, I wrote a paper entitled, “Cultural Analysis and the Dynamics of Leading Change in the Church.” Between presenting the paper at a national Evangelical Theological Society meeting and a theological symposium, it elicited a lot of interest and feedback. (I’m sure it was the topic more than my brilliance.)

One exchange stands out. After presenting in one setting, a pastor-professor said something like this: “I’ve always found that it really takes 5-7 years to lead significant change because you’re not really seen and trusted as the people’s pastor until you’ve been with them that long.” Before I could respond, another longtime pastor-professor sitting directly behind him retorted, “The problem is that a lot of our churches don’t have 5-7 more years.”

This exchange strikes at the heart of the tension between pastoring churches that are either generally healthy or stable versus those that are very, very sick. One might put it this way: do I still need to be trusted fully as a leader before I’m allowed to lead certain changes? Probably, depending on the change. But define “full trust”!

I think the more pertinent issues that will shape how one thinks through the perspectives above is has the revitalization ministry effort formally begun under a new leader, with a new vision, and a new set of pre-commitments, or has the effort been recently undertaken by a pastor who has already been on the ground for some time? Additionally, is there a recognition that what one is primarily seeking isn’t just some adjustments to the ministry organization, but a true spiritual renewal among the people? If the principal leaders and congregation are properly focused in their heart and mind, patience will still be required.

So then, how quickly can change x be made? How long should I tolerate person y? Let me offer two more concrete points for the revitalization ministry compass.

First, prayerfully and carefully identify and distinguish between long-term goals, strategic plans, and short-term tactics.

Sometimes we forgo a smaller ask today so we can focus on the bigger ask tomorrow. On the other hand, sometimes prudence says that harvesting some low-hanging fruit today cultivates trust and confidence, making tomorrow’s reach less daunting. I think almost every ministry will discover that sometimes strategic patience means forgoing today’s effort so you can focus on tomorrows, and sometimes “settling with contentment” on today’s small step because of how it will make tomorrows more achievable.

As one can discern, I’m assuming that leaders have a longer-term and shorter-term perspective that they’re able to calibrate (and recalibrate) from time to time. Be diligent to not be paralyzed by the two. Whenever things are less clear (whether long-term or short-term), focus on the non-negotiables of Scripture. These always help us stay in tune intellectually and relationally with God and people.

This leads organically to my second compass point: keep on cultivating your own spiritual growth so that you will have the other virtues essential for true patience to take root. Strategic patience assumes other virtues, such as humility, faith, courage, self-control, compassion, love. While I’m sure it will sound like I’m cheating, essentially smuggling a whole lot of biblical concepts into strategic patience, I think it’s unavoidable to define patience this way. Additionally, we’re benefited by this understanding because other virtues help distinguish between true patience versus cowardice, or ambiguity masquerading as patience.

We can easily envision ourselves or someone else deceiving themselves in these ways. “I’m not avoiding the hard decision. I just think the Lord wants me to be patient and wait on Him.” Subconsciously, we may actually be ensnared by the fear of man, but we’re able to rationalize that by using the principle of patience. This isn’t true patience—strategic or otherwise.

We could also say to ourselves, “I just don’t want to mess this up, so I’d rather just wait on the Lord.” This could absolutely be an authentic, spiritual impulse. Indeed, I can think of a decision about a renovation project that I encouraged our church’s trustees to hold off on until we got more clarity. It must have been two years until the situation fully ripened (i.e., we gained clarity) and we were able to complete the project swiftly and successfully. However, we cannot allow ambiguity—sometimes rooted in a lack of courage and understanding—to be mistaken for patience.

Revitalization ministry, like every other meaningful ministry, will make demands on everyone. No single leader nor congregation can be prepared to meet the challenge without the intentional pursuit and exercise of patience.

I’ve focused these reflections on the leadership side of the coin, though much could be said about congregational patience. However, we shouldn’t expect it from the sheep if the under-shepherd doesn’t practice it either.

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Revisiting George Eldon Ladd and Kingdom Talk

Do you ever find yourself talking about the “already-not yet” when it comes to eschatology or most anything else biblical? Somewhere along the way, directly or indirectly, you probably derived this from George Eldon Ladd.

Ladd was a brilliant, prolific New Testament theologian, best known for his many books and years as professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was one of the intellectual giants of the mid-twentieth century neo-evangelical renaissance. His book The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God is one of my favorites. I couldn’t imagine my library without it, though it’s probably not as groundbreaking as other works, such as The Presence of the Future or A Theology of the New Testament.

Ladd’s greatest and lasting contribution is his work on the theme of the Kingdom. Here are a few excerpts from The Gospel of the Kingdom:

“The Kingdom of God is basically the rule of God. It is God’s reign, the divine sovereignty in action.” (24)

“The life and fellowship of a Christian church ought to be a fellowship of people among whom God’s will is done—a bit of heaven on earth.” (23)

If you’ve been a Christian for some length of time, you’ve most likely heard these expressions or used them yourself. Ladd’s fingerprints are everywhere in contemporary evangelical discussion about the Kingdom. His work helps us refocus on the reign and rule of God, not primarily a realm, a theme which is less attenuated in the New Testament (at least compared to the amount of emphasis this typically receives).

This leads to a question that all Christians need to consider: are we responsible for building, growing, or expanding God’s Kingdom? I’ve revisited this question in my thinking recently as I’ve preached through Matthew 13. You can’t escape the question when you deal with such chapters. But I don’t think you can when you're trying to lead Christians either.

I would say that the mainstream evangelical sentiment is this: “any biblically consistent endeavor we undertake as Christians could be described as advancing or building the Kingdom. Certainly church-related efforts, such as new ministries, new churches, and the like could be thought of as helping grow the Kingdom.”

On one level, I think most people know the Kingdom and the church aren’t the same, technically speaking. On the other, I don’t know that most people have thought through the precise degree of overlap and difference.

Before returning to Ladd, a better question might be, does it matter? I think it does, for at least three reasons.

First, if we don’t use Bible words the way the Bible uses them, errors are bound to creep into our thought and obedience.

Second, as an extension of the first reason, if we set out to do what we’re not able to do, then we’re destined for failure, leading to discouragement and despair. If we set out to do what we’re not supposed to do, we’ll be guilty of disobedience. Moreover, we may make a mess of God’s good work.

Third, as Russell Moore recently noted, “Metaphors matter. They shape the way we see who we are, where we are, and what we do.” “Building,” “growing”, or “advancing” are all metaphors that show and shape how we’re seeing God’s Kingdom. Chalking this whole conversation up to semantics is exactly the point. Semantics concerns the meaning of words. Ergo, what we mean in what we say is everything.

I can conceive of other reasons why properly defining “Kingdom of God” may matter, but these three seem to encompass most of them.

Kevin DeYoung wrote a bit on this topic some years ago on his very good blog. In this brief article, he provides an excerpt from Ladd, which he takes as a way of chastening all the talk about the Kingdom being something that grows. From Ladd:

The Kingdom can draw near to men (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15; etc.); it can come (Matt. 6:10; Luke 17:20; etc.), arrive (Matt. 12:28), appear (Luke 19:11), be active (Matt. 11:12). God can give the Kingdom to men (Matt. 21:43; Luke 12:32), but men do not give the Kingdom to one another.

Further, God can take the Kingdom away from men (Matt. 21:43), but men do not take it away from one another, although they can prevent others from entering it. Men can enter the Kingdom (Matt. 5:20; 7:21; Mark 9:47; 10:23; etc.), but they are never said to erect it or to build it. Men can receive the Kingdom (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17), inherit it (Matt. 25:34), and possess it (Matt. 5:4), but they are never said to establish it. Men can reject the Kingdom, i.e., refuse to receive it (Luke 10:11) or enter it (Matt. 23:13), but they cannot destroy it.

They can look for it (Luke 23:51), pray for its coming (Matt. 6:10), and seek it (Matt. 6:33; Luke 12:31), but they cannot bring it. Men may be in the Kingdom (Matt. 5:19; 8:11; Luke 13:29; etc.), but we are not told that the Kingdom grows. Men can do things for the sake of the Kingdom (Matt. 19:12; Luke 18:29), but they are not said to act upon the Kingdom itself. Men can preach the Kingdom (Matt. 10:7; Luke 10:9), but only God can give it to men (Luke 12:32). (The Presence of the Future, 193)

DeYoung proceeds to offer some more careful ways for speaking about the Kingdom. I think he’s mostly on target with both his usage of Ladd, as well as his own take. I will say, however, that I still think Matthew 13:31-33 may be the best passage to challenge his view:

“He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

I tend to think that “impact” is a better word to capture what Jesus is describing here, as opposed to “growth” or “expansion.” Again, I suppose it depends on how precisely we’re defining these words. The key to understanding parables like these is to not focus on the wrong detail, pay attention to crucial words such as “like” (different than “equals”), and not assimilate the passage into our modern way of seeing things.

On the whole, then, my antennae raise when I hear someone talk about “building the Kingdom.” I’m confident this isn’t how Scripture describes our task. As Ladd says,

The Kingdom of God is a miracle. It is the act of God. It is supernatural. Men cannot build the Kingdom, they cannot erect it. The Kingdom is the Kingdom of God; it is God’s reign, God’s rule. God has entrusted the Gospel of the Kingdom to men. It is our responsibility to proclaim the Good News about the Kingdom. But the actual working of the Kingdom is God’s working. The fruitage is produced not by human effort or skill but by the life of the Kingdom itself. It is God’s deed. (The Gospel of the Kingdom, 64)

When it comes to notions like “growth” and “expansion,” I think there could be some limited usage of these which coheres with the New Testament. But if there is, it is limited—and probably different from how we’re used to talking about ministry!

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Follow-Up:

I’ve written extensively about reading and books over the last 14 months. Joel Miller’s Substack page consistently provides great insights into this topic, including this recent article on books which affect us the most. Having lately emptied my study of over 1000 books in anticipating a renovation, the subject has been on my mind.

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Currently Reading:

Donald Whitney, Praying the Bible.

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Quote of the Week:

…bishops and priests in the Anglican Communion take vows to defend and promote official church teaching as expressed in the Thiry-nine [sic] Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Book of Homilies, and more recently, the Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which preserves the traditional teaching of Scripture and the church related to marriage and sexuality.

What does it mean, then, for bishops to deliberately defy these teachings upheld by the worldwide Communion or to advocate for positions that go against what they vowed to teach? Who is schismatic? The bishops and priests who remain faithful to their vows to promote biblical teaching or those who change the practice and then expect everyone else to ignore, downplay, or be OK with such doctrinal deviations? Certainly it's not the Global South but the bishops and priests who, against their vows, introduce errors and heterodoxy and then expect everyone else to accept it and remain in full communion.

Third, when a group of people is walking together down a path and several depart from the group and begin to take a different path, how does it make sense for those walking in a new direction to chastise the main group for their “divisiveness?” And yet that's exactly what we see today. All the language about “walking together” obscures the reality that some have walked off. It’s as if those who walk away now wag the finger at the bigger group, saying, “Why don’t you want to walk together anymore?”

Trevin Wax, “Who Are The Real Schismatics?”