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By Alan B. Ward

If you read through the Gospels, you?ll find that Jesus often teaches through parables. Quite a few of these parables describe characteristics of the Kingdom of God ? see Matthew 13 for some examples. Jesus actually uses a common literary device called simile ? a comparison using like or as: 'The Kingdom of God is like ?'

As he preached, Jesus used familiar images to the people of the day ? seeds, wheat, a merchant in search of a pearl, a net ? to draw people into an on-going relationship. Jesus drew his listeners into a relationship, he never spoon-fed them answers to the hard questions of life.

But when Jesus was alive, large-scale communities of people actually practicing kingdom-living existed only in theory ? we might call them communities of parable. Jesus could speculate about what these communities might have been like, but he didn?t have concrete examples he could point to and say, 'Go visit these people and they will show you how to live this way.'

Interestingly enough, a few decades later when Paul was teaching, he did not make use of parables nearly as much. By the time Paul was alive, actual communities of believers who were attempting to practice kingdom-living existed ? we might call them communities of practice. Paul no longer needed to resort to theoretical comparisons; he could show actual examples of people living the way Jesus instructed.

In his letters, he frequently referred his readers to people and communities that were actually putting into practice the vision for life that Jesus presented ? we might call them living parables. Paul would probably have said, 'The best way you can learn what the Kingdom of God is like is for you to spend time living among a community of people that I know,' sort of on-the-job training.

Similarly, our churches today should be communities of practice where we can get the on-the-job training we need for kingdom-living. Local churches should illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like for the community in which they are located; they should seek to spread the influence of the kingdom throughout the community.

We should be able to point to individuals and communities who serve as living parables of kingdom-living. People should be able to come and spend time in our midst and learn what it is to be a follower of Christ.

The struggles many of our churches face today would suggest to me that we aren?t succeeding at our mission. Declining attendance and lack of participation by men, youth, and young adults in many churches would suggest that we are not presenting a convincing case for kingdom-living.

I think that many of our churches have gotten away from the idea that their members should actually be teaching and doing the things that Jesus did, and we suffer as a result. People don?t see in us what they need to see to be convinced of the value of kingdom-living.

We who claim to be part of the Kingdom of God aren?t that much different from everyone else ? in fact, I fear we often try hard to be just like everyone else. We?re afraid to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate a different way of living. I?m afraid that many of our churches have reverted back to being communities of parable. We have many meetings where we have endless discussions of what it could be like to live in the Kingdom of God, but we struggle to put these ideas into practice in our church community.

We need to be practicing what we preach. People do not respond to abstract theory, they respond to what they see in our daily lives.

Our job is to be communities of practice where people can see the Kingdom of God in action and are drawn in to become part of the Kingdom themselves, so that they might discover their full God-given potential.

Alan B. Ward is a member of Lodge Forest UMC in Edgemere. See his blog at www.3cords.org/blogs/canthesebonesliveagain.