A New Vision For Israel

As Americans in the 21st Century it is difficult to approach and relate to Jesus outside of our own presuppositions and cultural traditions. As a result we end up shaping Jesus into a mold that looks more like our own ideologies and less like the God that stepped into human history during a specific time, place, people, and context.

Scot McKnight's book: A New Vision For Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in a National Context is a helpful resource to anyone that desires to understand what Jesus and his mission meant to those who would have heard (and seen) his message first hand. Taking into a account cultural and historical elements McKnight shows how Jesus' view of things like: God, exile, kingdom, conversion, salvation, and ethics radically spoke into the 1 century landscape and as a result what they mean for us today.

Here's an excerpt from the book as McKnight discusses the vision and hope Jesus came to bring: "That both John and Jesus had a vision for the nation of Israel needs to be emphasized: neither John nor Jesus was thinking down the road thousands of years, to our own time, when Christianity would have gone through a multitude of mutations and denominations and when the Church would be interacting with cultures and ideologies so remote from that encountered in the land of Israel at the time of Herod Antipas. Both John and Jesus had a single vision: the restoration of Israel."

Inflatable Gorillas

As consumers living in the 21st century we are bombarded with advertisements, jingles, and billboards all jockeying for our attention. Those peddling products use these tactics in the hopes that they will "hook" us and then "lure us in" until we purchase their product; one that most certainly will "revolutionize" our way of life.

Enter: The Gigantic Inflatable Gorilla.

Promising "Huge" savings at a "Monster" discount, the gigantic inflatable gorilla is one monkey that is tough to beat. You can find the gigantic inflatable gorilla perched atop most car dealerships hoping to create just enough of a spectacle and attraction that you are compelled to stop in. I'm not sure what gigantic inflatable gorillas have to do with automobiles, but some would say, "It doesn't matter, as long as it helps sell cars."


This is "attractional" marketing.

As church communities I think we should be attractional as well. Yet I think our attractional nature should not come from the gigantic inflatable gorillas of great music, quality programs, slick marketing campaigns, or caring for the poor (yup, even caring for the poor can be a "hook" to get people to buy our "Jesus product").

In his book, A New Vision For Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context, Scot McKnight writes: "(Jesus) did not perform miracles to get attention or to coerce others to follow him, but to reveal a kingdom that would eventually embrace the world in a universal display of God's salvation."

I am all for inspiring musicianship and creative worship gatherings. I believe the church should do works of both compassion and justice. I think these elements (and other things like it) are good not because they can be useful "bait" for a "spiritual seeker", but because through those elements (and others) the living hope of the gospel can be realized and experienced. The Church should be attractional not because of what it does to grab people's attention for the kingdom, but because (through all of its expression) it embodies the very kingdom itself.

Have you ever felt like the church was trying to "sell" something? What are the true attractional elements of the Church?