The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community [Hardcover]

As the previous review pointed out, the strength of `The Tangible Kingdom' is the stories. Halter and Smay include some great anecdotes from their own lives as church planters that illustrate their faith and ministry in the context of modern culture. Their care and love for people is evident. Their real-life examples of being missions-minded, invitational, and outward-reaching are personally challenging to me.

With that said, the book also has a few weak points. They get much of their church history backwards. For instance, they claim "People in the Dark Ages tended to be focused on God. They built their churches in the middle of their towns and lived to survive the day and keep God at the center of their worldview." That might be a good description of the Puritans. However, prior to the Enlightenment, Reformation, and Great Awakening, while `religion' and `superstition' were prevalent, God being the center of community just wasn't the case.

Additionally, they go on to champion the Eastern-mindset as having a radically holistic approach to life - and claim `Christianity is completely, entirely, an Eastern faith.' That's a bold statement. If anything, Christianity, born at the crossroads between East and West has had a significant impact on the West, while having a marginal impact on the East. As a result, the ideals, worldview, and mindset that are reflected in the West, more closely align with the core tenants of Christianity. Those would include the world being separate from God, the world being knowable, the sanctity of human life, life having meaning, and life going somewhere as opposed to life being endlessly circular.

However, the part of the book that most concerned me was their understanding of the gospel. The authors claim the gospel isn't the answer of Jesus to the sin-problem of men and women. Rather, it's "[God's] love and acceptance and vision for every human being... God's love for his created humanity." That description of the gospel too easily marginalizes the passion, crucifixion, and substitutionary death of Jesus. In fact, if the gospel is merely about God's love and acceptance of every human being, then why would Jesus have to die? They go on to claim that the gospel isn't just about God's love, it's about love in general - people adopting children, having block parties, and planting trees... "it's all Kingdom, and it's all good news." While Christians are called to love others, that's not the gospel - that's an outworking of the gospel. The good news in the New Testament isn't a message about us, it's a message about Jesus. The authors go on to claim, we should look for ways to "Witness to this gospel by bringing tangible slices of heaven down to life on Earth, and continue to do this until those we're reaching out to acknowledge that our ways are `good news'." Again, the gospel is not a message about me. It's a message about Jesus, who is more than sufficient for a person has the same problem a non-Christian does. It's called sin, and Jesus provides an incredible answer to it - His life. His good news is about Him, not about me trying to be Him.

In short, I wanted the book to be more about its sub-title, "The Posture and Practices of the Ancient Church Now." I was hoping for an understanding of how the Jesus of then is the same today and how His cross can be known now. Instead, the book focused more on general relationships, inter-personal situations, and caring for people in community. Those are good, but how are they uniquely Christian? How do they differ from the community experienced by people from other faith-traditions? In short, the community in the Tangible Kingdom seemed to be both the beginning and the end.

As a Christian who has been involved in ministry as a participant or leader over the last 15 years, I have to say that this book has some of the most fresh ideas about reaching the world that I have ever heard. The odd thing is they are not "new" ideas, they are firmly rooted in scripture and an understanding of the way believers and nonbelievers lived in community 2000 years ago. Halter and Smay communicate clearly the message that if the church is going to grow and continue to be a vessel for change in people's lives, it is going to have to change the way that it relates to people in our modern culture.

In reponse to the review above, never once did the authors suggest that adopting a child or having a block party was a substitute for Christ's redemptive work on the cross. This book was not written as a gospel presentation. It was written to Christians and Church leaders who already know the gospel, but don't know how to make that gospel matter to people who have never been to a church and never care to.

I would reccomend this book to any Christian, especially one in a leadership role, who is interested in having a deeper impact on the people in their communities.

The Tangible Kingdom presents some excellent ideas for thought on the church. The authors take on the typical tough question of making the church relevant to an increasingly secular and uninterested society. Yet, they point out how these same people, who include many of us, are interested in the spiritual aspects of life and will relate to the teachings of Jesus. They are very critical of the modern church but recognize the need it serves for the many current Christians who have grown up with it security. This is not a book of theology, but an idea of how to look at the world and how the church relates to it.

The core of the authors' idea is a clever diagram that spells out the relationship of the missional people in a church to the "sojourners" in the world around them. As I read I began to see that I am both a missional person and a sojourner. After years of being fully immersed in the formal, administrative monolith of the American Protestant church I am turned off by alter calls, memorized prayers, and membership requirements. The thought that someone is showing a PowerPoint slide at a denominational meeting somewhere with my attendance shown as a successful metric makes me ill. The Tangible Kingdom was not the answer, but pointed me in a direction to think about it.

I came away from the book inspired to build a missional organization around my work. Fully immersed in the world, I want to work with faithful people who no longer are happy in "the temple" and want to walk through the desert with the farmers, tax collectors, and fellow sinners. Perhaps, there is an opportunity to model a care and love that might inspire a few sojourners to regain their faith in Faith. This book made me think, pray, care more, and read Matthew 5 and 6. I hope it does you too.

Dios te Bendiga.

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