30/11: Full-Time Christian Service
Category: American Christianity
Posted by: an okie gardener
It used to be a saying in my Reformed tradition that if someone in a Reformed Church said, "Full-time Christian Ministry," and meant by that only full-time pastors and missionaries, that person had forgotten our theology. We believe all Christians are full time ministers, and that our most significant ministry consists in being good fathers and mothers, gardeners and bakers, political officeholders and janitors. All work is Kingdom work if done for Christ according to Christian principles. We are part of God's work of reclaiming the fallen world, of bringing godly order into the chaos of sinful fallenness, of extending God's Kingdom (God's Kingly Rule) into human life, which will find its fulfillment in the world to come.
The Lutherans believe also that our vocation, our work in the world, is our major service to God. They embed this understanding in the Lutheran Two Kingdoms teaching, but the outcome is pretty much the same as in the Reformed teaching. Here is a very good presentation of the Lutheran position on work, from Christianity Today.
American evangelicals have fallen away from a major Protestant principle when they view pastors as somehow having a higher calling than dogcatchers. We all are priests to God, and exercise our priestly function whether we are handling the bread and wine of the eucharist, or bedpans.
The Lutherans believe also that our vocation, our work in the world, is our major service to God. They embed this understanding in the Lutheran Two Kingdoms teaching, but the outcome is pretty much the same as in the Reformed teaching. Here is a very good presentation of the Lutheran position on work, from Christianity Today.
American evangelicals have fallen away from a major Protestant principle when they view pastors as somehow having a higher calling than dogcatchers. We all are priests to God, and exercise our priestly function whether we are handling the bread and wine of the eucharist, or bedpans.
martian mariner wrote:
In the Arabic there is a different word used for the Kingdom of God than for earthly kingdoms, such as the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia or Jordan. The earthly word comes from the form for a place name, so literaly, the kingdom is the king's place, like in our English. The word for the Kingdom of Heaven, however, has the same root as the word for king, but comes in a different form, meaning something closer to what you paranthesized, God's Kingly Rule. My question here is, do you know if there is such a distinction in the Aramaic or Hebrew that Jesus would have been speaking the numerous times he referenced the Kingdom of Heaven? And, if so, are we losing something with our translation into English of "Kingdom"?