the kingdom mandate

I received this email from another ex-religious-professional, post-religious-follower-of-Jesus I know from Canada. I have been enjoying fellowshipping with him, and have been following with interest his return to a "pastorate" of a church granddaughtered by a church he planted. This off-the-cuff email is packed (even on the fly, David is a great writer). Enjoy! The best of all is God is with us! -Brian, Christmas 2010.

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"So here is the bare essence of my strategy that I am about these days.

Jesus will build his church. Thus, I am not going to attempt to fashion its structure around a worn out – out dated model that essentially is only maintaining a central building. The earth in relative terms is a village/hamlet of the King’s kingdom thus in my view the church is to be subversively infiltrating the village with Kingdom salt. Yet keep in mind that Christ’s body is only a facet of the Kingdom and as such its initatives must be subservient to the Kingdom’s business.

Originally the village was given to Humanity to rule with General Managerial Authority (Genesis 1 in the Message says – “Take Charge” and “Be responsible”). It was a unique managerial responsibility in that they had the right to give away the village, which they did via their disobedience. As such the village was usurped by the fraudulent Mayor. He took charge because we note in the third temptation he offers Jesus back the ownership. Post death, burial, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost the village’s deed is once again safe within the legal ownership of the Son who now sits at the right hand waiting until his Father makes all his enemies a footstool for Him (Heb 1:13). Better still no longer will our behavior affect its ownership.

The fraudulent mayor is actually defeated (e.g. D-Day which effectively was the end of the war even though the allied forces had to go to Berlin), but he is still squatting in his former village desecrating every thing he can place his influence on.

The follower’s job now is to regain their managerial leadership of the village by renovating the desecration that has occurred. The responsibility includes making disciples (repatriating kingdom citizens) who Jesus will form into his body. But the job also entails bringing the kingdom to bear on the desecration of the village by salting (purifying) the social, political, economic moral fabric within our spheres of influence. It includes setting right even as it pertains to the architecture of our communities that have been desecrated. Not by pointing and wagging our finger but by subversively entering the desecration as salt. Including making disciples, who post being formed, conformed and transformed into the image of Christ salt their spheres of influence.

So this is why you must deal with parasitic sins that so easily entangle. You can’t salt your sphere of the Village if you are dirty brine." --David Brandon, Aurora, Ontario, Canada