The Presbyterian blip

I eagerly started to read Joseph McClelland’s article in June, hoping that the Record was at last starting to deal with this question. While the article made several good points, it seemed to be a theologian’s reactionary response to the “post-modern age of technology and hedonism.”
The Record needs more articles on this question. What is the problem and how do we solve it? What wilderness are we in and how do we move out of it?
The problem is rooted in the fact that the Christian church has been moved to the periphery of Western society after enjoying a period of 1,700 years as a human institution close to the established workings of society. Our theology, creeds and dogmas have more to do with the legalistic definition of the church as a human institution than the kingdom of God.
Is the institutional church, closely aligned to society, a form of counterfeit Christianity that has made its own wilderness? What is the Presbyterian blip on the drama of the history of the Christian Church in the world? We dump counterfeit Christianity out the door usually with a good kick to send it on its way.
Joseph McLelland does point to a solution. We need to communicate the essence of the Gospel in the language and thought forms of today. The essence of the Gospel is the proclamation and teaching about the kingdom of God by Jesus Christ. The rock foundation is that Jesus wanted us to act as agents for the kingdom of God. The theology of the reformation is a rather Newtonian deterministic kind of understanding. If you go and ponder the words of Jesus on the kingdom of God you find a quantum. A little of the energy of that quantum was his attempt to explain that everything in the universe was contingent on God. Rather than use scripture he turned to the natural world — the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed — to help explain his ideas.
The teachers in the Presbyterian Church need to go back to look in the storeroom of the kingdom of God so that they are able to bring out new treasures as well as old.