We talk about our DNA as a church being KDSC we say that the gospel of the kingdom makes disciples who hear and obey in their respective domains of society, and from there the church multiplies all over the world…KDSC.
The key to global church multiplication is to release the entire church to engage their multifaceted domains of society, make disciples and bring their domain back under the rule of Jesus as a fulfillment of the creation mandate of Genesis 1:26-28…which is the first installment of the great commission if you will.
Domains are the built-in structures of life that God has created and uses to govern the world. Those who operate over and in domains exercise a God-given authority to subdue and release. Examples of domains are: medicine, law, agriculture etc. God gave these domains to restrain evil in the curse of the fall we read about in Genesis 3 and to reward the good done by any who do good.
Global church multiplication in obedience to the great commission will never be accomplished with the professional model of ministry that is currently employed in the evangelical church. There is just not enough volume, and truthfully, professional ministry people offer little actually bringing all things back under the rule of Jesus. They are good at discipling people, and that is part of it, but they don’t bring job skills to the world. Job skills and solving problems in industry of all kinds is not “less than”. In fact, I’d say, it should be the Christian who is leading innovation all over the world. Why not? We say we have the creator Holy Spirit, creator of all things, dwelling in us. Should we not lean on his counsel to show us how to do Genesis 1:26-28? Sounds like a sound plan to me.
Much of what we have produced in recent history has actually stifled the engagement of domains and killed innovation in domains. Innovation has been left to some folks who are not Christians and who stumble upon general revelation. These super bright people bring great change in some areas doing good work while Christians fumble to get caught up or argue that innovation is not good. Granted, not all forward thinking is equally good, but we should evaluate, discern, test and decide.
What would happen if we actually released the church to be the priests to God they are in their domains? Perhaps a global movement of the kingdom of God would ensue.
“Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) who was Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901- 1905 and founder of the Free University in Amsterdam in 1880. He was a man with a carefully formed Christian World View. He was called the greatest evangelical thinker since Jonathan Edwards.” (Release, p. 29)
This is what Kuyper thought:
“Christianity did not stop at a church order, but expanded in a life system, and did not exhaust its energy in a dogmatic construction, but created life and worldview able to fit itself to the needs of every stage of human development in every department of life. It raised our Christian religion to its highest spiritual splendor; it created a church order, which became the pre–formation of state confederation; it proved to be the guardian angel of science; it emancipated art; it propagated a political scheme, which gave birth to constitutional government, both in Europe and America; it fostered agriculture and industry, commerce and navigation; it put a thorough Christian stamp upon home–life and family ties; it produced, through it high moral standards, purity in our social circles; and to this manifold effect it placed beneath Church and State… a fundamental philosophic conception strictly derived from its dominating principle, and therefore all its own.”
Can we be that again? Lets be honest, we are not that now.
As a former educator I’ve been thinking on how to prepare the next generation to be like this. We are trying to release the church to its domains of society, but sometimes releasing folks who just want the Parrish priest to affirm their own choices in life rather than equip them for changing the world is a long-term proposition. So, we are sold out to doing just that. But how can we train and release an upcoming generation a little faster than their predecessors?
Education and parenting in education has to change.
Parents have to take seriously the equipping of their children to think about career/domain engagement long before they get to high school. Schools have to begin thinking about domain engagement not just “going to college”.
God wired each person the way they are, and he does not make mistakes in creation. He made me dyslexic and used that for his glory. He still uses that for his glory. God hits straight licks with crooked sticks, the old saying goes. We must begin thinking about how God wired our kids rather than entertain them. Entertainment covers up gifting and numbs the senses to good desires rather. I’m not talking about healthy amounts of entertainment. I’m talking about the continual bombardment of entertainment.
Observe the learning style your kid has, and don’t shoe horn them into a learning style that does not match how God wired them. You’ll have to do some research, but you can do this.
You will also have to make hard decisions on what is best for your kid…home school, public school, private school, etc. Do what equips your kid best, and don’t be guilted by straw man arguments into one or the other. Do what is best for your kid’s preparation not how to best isolate them.
So much education is focused on getting kids to college (traditional liberl arts college). Problem? Liberal arts colleges are not preparing people for the majority of the job market. Students are over educated and under qualified. If you have a four year degree but can’t operate a piece of machinery, you may be benind.
Cost is important here too. If you pay more per year for college than the degree would actually earn you, you are wasting God’s money and not adequatly prepared.
Think about it…40K per year for four years is 160K. Not many jobs at those 40K schools actually earn much more than 40K per year. You will be paying on that until the Lord comes, hands tied for home buying or anything else cool.
Your domain may require a liberal arts degree. Cool! Shop around for the most cost-effective degree around. Employers are less concerned with where you went to school and more concerned on if you can produce. Don’t pay for college so you can have the “experience” that is being sold. It’s not about the experience. It’s about being prepared to earn a living and subdue creation for the fame of Jesus.
Domains are global, so if you prepare to engage domains your job market is global no necessarily limited to a particular geography.
This will take some doing, but you can with effort, apply your preparation to engage your domain anywhere in the world. What that means is that you could actually get paid to do your job anywhere you may desire and be a Christian while doing your job. That means that you can do the work of a domain engager and a Christian at the same time. Do you get the implications of this for the great commission? Do you get the implications for the church?
This is why we want to “release” the church to engage domains.
Thinking and practicing like this will require 4 key shifts. We’ll turn to those next week. But for now, meditate on this idea and how to begin preparing our students to get after this NOW.
Theology in the Dirt 