Kingdom Talk - Just the Basics

Historically, people have tended to add to the Gospel what it means to be a follower of Christ. Some of that is natural since we need to discover and work through how the Gospel plays out in our individual cultures and in our own lives. How do we apply the principles of what Jesus teaches in our workplaces? How do his teachings challenge our own culture? Yet the problem comes when we take these additions and confuse them with the Gospel itself. We end up becoming the very thing Jesus spoke so adamently against as he locked horns with the Pharisees. And when we do that, those additions become obstacles to others coming into direct contact with the Gospel - especially as it is shared across cultures. A person may think that becoming a Christian means I have to dress a certain way or hang out with certain kinds of people. They become put off by those items and as a result never come face to face with the person of Jesus. So while it is fine and expected that we apply the Gospel in our own lives, we need to do a "Kingdom check" every so often and revisit what the core teachings and values of the Kingdom are. We need to check these against our own lives. And we need to make sure that these values are the focus of teaching and sharing with others rather than focusing on the exterior of our faith.