MattCleaver.com » eschatology http://mattcleaver.com youth ministry, reimagined Wed, 18 Apr 2012 03:58:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Resurrection, Eschatology, and Youth Ministry http://mattcleaver.com/2009/12/15/the-resurrection-eschatology-and-youth-ministry/ http://mattcleaver.com/2009/12/15/the-resurrection-eschatology-and-youth-ministry/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:33:39 +0000 Matt http://mattcleaver.com/2009/12/15/the-resurrection-eschatology-and-youth-ministry/ How do we deal with the resurrection of Jesus within our youth ministries? Of course, we talk about Jesus’ resurrection quite a bit (hopefully). But what does that mean? Do we get to experience resurrection now? Do we get to experience resurrection only in the future? Or do we somehow get glimpses and tastes of resurrection throughout our life? In chapter six of his book Relationships Unfiltered Andrew Root reminds us that we cannot speak of resurrection without also keeping in mind that it is an eschatological event–it is something that we look forward to in the future, something that we hope for.

If you’d like to hear some further thoughts on this topic, I will be on Andrew Root’s liveBlog today at 3:30 PM CST. It’s a quick fifteen minute show that you can listen to it live, or you can listen to an archive of the show later on the show site or through iTunes.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

]]> http://mattcleaver.com/2009/12/15/the-resurrection-eschatology-and-youth-ministry/feed/ 1 Why Politics is More Exciting than Christianity http://mattcleaver.com/2008/11/05/why-politics-is-more-exciting-than-christianity/ http://mattcleaver.com/2008/11/05/why-politics-is-more-exciting-than-christianity/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:44:56 +0000 Matt http://mattcleaver.com/?p=409 Watching people’s passionate involvement in the intense politics of the past month or so has been an interesting phenomenon.  We literally had millions of people working in one way or another to get their candidates elected, and last night we watched as euphoria erupted over an election of historic proportions.

It left me wondering: Why doesn’t the church drum up this much excitement and passion? My preliminary guess is that politics offers the kind of eschatology that should be offered in the church.

With each major election people talk and think about change.  New possibilites begin to form in imaginations.  “What if…” questions are asked and dreamed about.  Nothing is outside the realm of impossibility.  We make our stake for what we think the future should like like.  Changing the future is an exciting proposition.

In the church we talk about the past, about Jesus’s death and resurrection so that we might receive the forgiveness of sins.  And we talk about the future that awaits us after our own death and resurrection.  But we don’t often talk about the role of the church in between the two, other than the mandate for personal morality.

This is unfortunate because the church has a purpose other than as an incubator of souls for heaven.  The church is God’s change agent.  The church’s mission is found in the proclamation of the gospel, a proclamation that frees captives, heals the sick, and opens blind eyes.  Talk about new possibilities!  The church is the place where imagining a new future should be a perpetual practice, not just every four years.  The church should be about the business of changing the future, not just preparing people for it. We participate in bringing about God’s kingdom on earth, changing old to new, and seeing life where there once was death.

The passion that excites the public every four years in our politics is an eschatological passion.  And eschatology is the realm of Jesus and His church, not politics and the state.  May we learn how to live in that realm.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

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