A New Kind of Church

I've been reading Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2001). The book is a sort of novel, but dealing with questions of faith and effective and appropriate Christian living. One of the central characters, Dan, is minister of a local congregation, but suffering something of a crisis of direction. He hasn't lost his faith, but he is not sure what kind of leadership he should be offering his people. Dan meets Neo (Neil Edward Oliver), his daughter's science teacher, and the two embark on a friendship which has them delving into a range of spiritual matters. The book addresses their individual questions, answers and struggles - but the whole thing is directed at the challenge of being an effective Christian community (church). On one particular occasion they get talking about the relationship between the church and the kingdom of God. They both recognise the importance of the church as the practical way in which anyone can experience being part of God's people, despite the imperfections they might also discover. One of the ways in which we sometimes deal with the gulf between the perfection we might hope for and the imperfection we inevitably encounter is by using the kingdom to signify the ideal. The book, however, stresses that to be only an image, and an image that was relevant to the context because the Jews of Jesus' time had lost their sovereignty and were a subject people. Would Jesus be using different images and language today? Maybe, as commerce is such a big deal with some companies having more economic power than some countries, he would talk about the enterprise of God. Or maybe the image would be drawn from the IT world - the web of God - or the arts - the story of God. Or what other possibilities are there in helping people to understand what God's church is and how they can be part of it?