Kingdom Come!

If you are involved in or thinking about social action, I couldn’t recommend a better event than the Social Action Conference.

It is a fantastic opportunity to hear from and meet with people living out God’s call to love the lost and t he broken. This year I went to the day anticipating God-given conversations, ins piring stories and challenging teaching; I wasn’t disappointed. I found myself envisioned and encouraged, both by what God is already doing, and by the hope and expectation of what is to come.

Throughout the day God spoke about his command to ‘seek first his kingdom’. David Devenish’s (Woodside Church, Bedford) first session looked at living in the ‘now and not yet’ of the kingdom and how vital it is that we serve from this perspective. He highlighted the importance of allowing God’s promises about his kingdom to shape our vision and expectations. The heart of social action is to see these promises of the future demonstrated right now in people’s lives. As we do this we need to remember that the land is the Lord’s – this is his kingdom. He brings justice, freedom, grace and transformation. All our endeavours must be in and through and for him, or we run the risk of becoming merely well intentioned people.

In David’s second session, he drew us to God’s design to bring in the kingdom through his church. It is God’s intention that the church be living out these promises. Our social action must be rooted in and flowing out from this vision for the local church. I was struck by the parable of the sower in the context of social action. In building the kingdom, Jesus tells us to expect some seed to fall on the paths, or fall on soil and spring up, only to wither away in the rocky ground. It was refreshing to hear God saying, ‘don’t worry, this is part of what will happen as you sow seed. We are not yet in the fullness of the kingdom, some people won’t respond, and others may fall away, despite initial enthusiasm. But his promise is that some of this seed will fall on good soil. There will be those who respond, grow, and go on to yield crop a hundred times what was sown. Now there’s a promise to hold on to!

This promise was also at the heart of Simon Allen’s (Kings Church, Catford) seminar on ‘Making Oaks of Righteousness’. Alongside practical insight, Simon tackled our need for the expectation that God will do this. Of course we should serve and love people practically, they are kingdom values, but as we work with people, we must be rooted in an eternal perspective. God doesn’t call us simply to focus on changing external behaviour, but rather to see total transformation from the inside.
The Bible is packed with God’s desire and power to transform the most unlikely of lives beyond recognition; let’s be expectant and full of faith for this to happen.

Ali Inwood is a member of the project team at the King’s Arms church in Bedford.

Follow this link to read the latest edition of the Newfrontiers Social Action newsletter, Groundswell.