Reflections on Kingdom Come

I'm sorry if this is turning into a rotisserie of books I've been reading. It's not my intention that this become a book review blog, but I've been reading so great books lately. The latest was Kingdom Come: How Jesus Wants to Change the World by Allen Wakabayashi who is on staff with InterVarsity at Northwestern. In the book, he does a great job of describing Kingdom theology in layman's language and drawing a grand holistic mission for the church based on the Kingdom.

Basically, he writes that the American church has emphasized the individual aspects of salvation (Christ died for my sins so I can go to heaven) at the expense of the Gospel's teaching of the Kingdom. That teaching is that Christ's death and resurrection accomplished not only an individual's salvation but the restoration of God's reign in all areas - personally, relationally, and corporately. This means God's redeeming and reconciling work extends to not only my sins but to making right injustice, healing the hurting, etc.

I've been chewing on these things for a while (George Ladd's Gospel of the Kingdom has been really influential), and this idea comes up often in Emerging Church discussions. But, I've never found anyone who deals with this holistic view of the Kingdom while maintaining a robust evangelical view of the need for individual salvation. It always seems to be one or the other. Well, until now. This book provided the missing link between the Emerging emphasis on the Kingdom and the traditional evangelical beliefs in salvation. I highly recommend it especially to college students and those in campus ministries.