WACO, Texas (ABP) — A rising generation of Christians intent on working for social justice must not confuse that effort with "kingdom work," award-winning Christian author Scot McKnight said during the Parchman Endowed Lectures series at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary.
"In our country, the younger generation is becoming obsessed with social justice," including through government opportunities, politics and voting, said McKnight, author of The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. "What it's doing is leading young Christians out of the church and into the public sector to do what they call 'kingdom work.'
Scot McKnight
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"I want to raise a red flag here: There is no such thing as kingdom work outside the church — and I don't mean the building. The kingdom is about King Jesus and King Jesus' people and King Jesus' ethics for King Jesus' people.
"Social justice outside the church is not biblical justice or kingdom work. It is social work. Fine, that's a good thing. But let's not call this kingdom work."
Instead, he called on listeners to make the church "a beachhead of justice and peace and love" for those in need in the church. Then, "let that kind of church and kingdom and justice work spill over into the walls of your community."
Churches have lost sight in other ways of their mission of spreading the gospel of God's atoning work through Jesus, said McKnight, the Karl A. Olsson professor in religious studies at Chicago's North Park University.
"We like our music and our drama groups. We're now more and more driven to act justly in social ways by engagement with the poor and despised, and we're hoping that in doing this, our little lights will shine," McKnight said, referring to the lyrics of a children's gospel song.
Churches have shaped themselves using entertainment and business models — even down to satisfaction surveys, he said.
But "when will we ever learn as churches and as pastor/teachers that all we have to offer, all we have to tell people about, and all we have to show people is Jesus?" he asked.
Among the primary instruments for doing that are preaching and teaching the gospel, baptism, the Lord's Supper and Spirit-shaped fellowship, he said.
Through baptism — with its embodiment of the death and resurrection — and the partaking of the Lord's Supper, "the gospel is shown in a way that words cannot interpret," he said.
McKnight recalled that in his youth, Communion often was observed quickly at sermon's end — before roasts simmering at home for Sunday lunch would dry out. He remembered one church even set up a stand where Communion elements could be picked up by departing members.
He recalled thinking: "Yikes almighty. Drive-away Eucharist."
"There's no reason to rush the Lord's Supper, because it's the gospel," McKnight said. "There's no reason to tack it on to a sermon. There are good reasons to let the Eucharist be a sermon."
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Terry Goodrich writes for Baylor University.