Picking Up Trash For Jesus

The other night I took a long walk in the fog, and listened on my Ipod to this conversation. Listening while walking felt like moving into an unclear, scary, yet new and exciting paradigm.

I need to share some with you. The future is not going to be like the past, and those of us older than about 30 better get ready for it, or we will be left in the dust, with our mouths open, wondering what happened to the church we loved. Get ready:

"What would it look like, where I live, for the Kingdom of God to come a little more?"

"Jesus does not use language of build the Kingdom, advance the Kingdom, impose the Kingdom. He uses the language of receive and seek..... enter."

"We pull people out of our PTA, our communities, and get them involved in our churches."

That last one is an "ouch" for me. How much time have I sacrificed from involvement in my local town to be involved in countless church committees. Yikes.

Brian told the story of a pastor in Costa Rica, who got the people together in his village (mostly women), "What would it look like, in this village, if the Kingdom of God was more fully here?" And so, his people said in reply, "Our village is really dirty. If the Kingdom came here, people would pick up the trash." The people of the church even went down into the polluted stream in the village (surely you can imagine how messy this was) and cleaned up the stream. Then, the church folk got wagons full of flowers, and planted flowers with their neighbors in their yards.

Imagine that. What messes are there, around us, and in our greater world, that simply need us to lend a hand, to clean up.

And finally, for those who want more, read a wise review of Brian McLaren's new book here.