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Evangelism - Myers Mott Maggay Linthicum        
Theology

Campolo says Kingdom Now 

"I ask my students why Jesus came into the world and I typically get answers like this:

  •  To seek and to save the lost
  •  To reveal God to us
  •  To provide us with a model for being fully human
  •  To defeat the demonic spirits of this world

Good answers, all of them. But I seldom hear a student repeat the mission statement that Jesus himself gave us. In the three synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells us that he has come first and foremost to declare that the kingdom of God is at hand. ... God wants this kingdom to become established on earth now! ... (Mt 6:10) God's kingdom is a new society that Jesus wants to create in this world - within human history, not after the Second Coming or a future apocalypse or anything else. But right now. ...

Over the years, I have come to believe that both the liberal Social Gospelers and the Dispensational Fundamentalists were each partly right. I now affirm the optimism of those who believe that God is at work in the world through faithful servants, both inside the church and outside the church, bring hope to the poor, liberation to the oppressed , and the creation of a new society in which love and justice reign. 

At the same time, however - even as I join with them in striving to realize this kingdom of God on earth - I also believe that we should delude ourselves into thinking that whatever we can build of God's kingdom now can come to fullness without Christ's return."

(McLaren Responds)  "If God really cares about justice in this world here and now, and if we are converting people away from that concern, then we are working against God. We could inadvertently become enemies of God's wishes."

Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-controlled Church Neutered the Gospel by Brian D. McLaren & Tony Campolo, Zondervan, 2003, (p. 43, 47, 53)

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