The question is a simple one. Does Jesus have one or two climactic events in mind when he speaks to his disciples about the future? Following on from his discussion of the “parable” of the sheep and goats, Ian Paul has posted a defence of Dick France’s two-stage reading of Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark. Following on from my critique of the “final judgment” interpretation of the sheep and goats passage, I want to restate my view that neither Mark nor Matthew attributes to Jesus a two-stage future.

Ian Paul has written a good piece on the sheep and goats passage in Matthew 25. He notes, rightly in my view, that the “least of these” are not the poor in general, and that it is not good Christians and bad non-Christians who are separated at the judgment. He stresses the relevance of Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man,” who is given authority to act as judge. He also has some interesting things to say about the reasons for separating sheep from goats. But I don’t think he takes the context seriously enough, and the reader is still left wondering what the passage is supposed to teach us about the criteria for judgment. “If my Muslim friend helps me out are they counted as sheep?”

I’ve been greatly enjoying an intermittent conversation with Tim Peebles of the Anvil Trust about the relation between kingdom and new creation or shalom themes in scripture. We both have trouble getting our point across succinctly, so my response to his comments on the post about kingdom and shalom has become a follow-up post on the matter. You should read Tim’s quite detailed remarks. I’ve quoted the main point of the three contentions that he puts forward, but we should never take statements out of context.

The practical question that I’m trying to answer here is: how do we assess the effectiveness or validity of missional activity when the “product” is more qualitative than quantitative? Church growth models are proved effective if they result in larger churches or the multiplication of churches. The “incarnational” modes of missional activity that have proliferated over the last twenty years tend not to grow much. They expect to be judged, instead, by the impact that they have on a local community. But how do we measure that impact?

Prompted by an excellent podcast that I listened to yesterday discussing the relation between the kingdom of God and “shalom” in scripture, I want to look briefly at Isaiah 9:6-7.

The passage speaks of the birth of a child who will sit on the throne of David, saying that “of the abundance of government and shalom there is no end” (my translation). He will rule over Israel “with justice and righteousness from now for his lifetime” (also my translation—it raises some questions, I know).

The question is whether the juxtaposition of “government” and shalom here amounts to an identification of “kingdom” and a creational well-being and wholeness that carries over into the New Testament, so that, in effect, the proclamation of the coming kingdom of God is the proclamation of shalom.

I work with an international mission organisation called Communitas. We have a small presence in the UK, and if anyone wants to know more about us, please get in touch. This is the personal background for the question that I want to address in a couple of posts: how do we measure the effectiveness of what we do?

There are some obvious metrics for what is basically a “church-planting” organisation. How many “churches” are we planting? How many people are joining those churches? How many of those people are actually new to the faith?

The relevance of Psalm 107:28-29 for understanding Jesus’ imperious rebuke of the wind and waves is often noted: some went down to the sea in ships; the Lord “commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea”; they were terrified and cried out to the Lord, and he “made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed” (cf. Ps. 65:7). Simon Gathercole remarks that “Jesus makes the strange transition from a Jonah-like figure who sleeps while the rest of the sailors are in peril… to a divine figure who calms the storm.” But for Mark, at least, it appears that the Jonah story is not merely a springboard for christological reflection; it is central to the meaning of the passage.