Back to the Future?

This conference has had a profound effect on the way I view the world, who I am, what the church is. Tom Wright has made me think back to the Back to the Future movies with the very youthful looking Micheal J Fox(MJF). In those movies, MJF could travel backward in time to effect the future, and if I re-call travelled forward to view the results. We can’t go back persoanlly but we there is a similarilty in our vocation: We are the people of the future.

Instead of going back to alter the present, we are the people of the new creation / the kingdom. WE CHANGE THE PRESENT BY SOWING/LIVING THE FUTURE NOW. In that way we are also bringing about the future. The historical study of Jesus helps us to understand how to live the future in the present; His way of doing it, his means of bring it about. The questions / tentions that this brings about are these:

(1) To what extent should the way christians live, and the church lives NOW be a mirror of that which is to come? Should we bring a more visual challenge to current cultural values - in the way we share our lives - form community? i.e. Should church life look like life will look in the fullness of new creation. (as far as is possible) This would seem to bring out a very different meaning of christian/church life to what is currently perceived the norm.

(2) If "as Jesus to Israel, so the church to the world" does this mean we should be reshaping society (not forcefully) around ourselves (or Christ in us) in the same way Jesus reshaped Israel around Himself? This would imply again the a life far more involved with for example ‘the poor’ or the environment as opposed to the fringe nature to these ministries at present.

Why are is so much of the church resistant to these ideas? Does any ‘verbal’ gospel cut any mustard unless we live these demonstrations of the Lordship of Jesus?