The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
     Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

     Jossey-Bass, 2008, 195 pages

Lately I’ve found myself reading books fairly different from my usual tastes. Not only that, but–get this–I’ve enjoyed these new reads. The Tangible Kingdom is a prime example.

The Tangible Kingdom presents a way forward for Christians, a new way of church that intentionally considers all our practices as individuals and gathered. As Halter writes,

This book is about the millions of people who are openhearted and curious about life and God but who are honestly not finding goodness in the good news that was talk about and that, at times, has been forces down their collective throats.

I appreciated the book and Halter’s voice, because he has clearly struggled deeply with how to do and be church. Coming from an evangelical background, at home in a mega-church environment, Halter fights against many of the expectations of such contexts. Hugh now heads a very different sort of church community, “Adullam” which is sort of emergenty, sort of new-agey, and very very different from the average PC(USA) way of church. He’s honest in his struggle, and often–get this–he ends up in a place very similar to my own.

Take this, for example,

What we need to dig up, recover, and find again is the life of the Kingdom and Jesus’ community…the church. As we do, we’ll find that it’s not American…it’s “other world”; it’s not evangelicalism, it’s much more holistic and integrated into real life. It’s not anti-church; it’s pro-church. It’s about the type of church that Jesus would go to, the type he died to give flight to. It’s not about success, size of buildings, budget, or “salvation.” It is about being faithful to live Christ’s alternative ways in the world again.

Beautiful. Halter, with great agility, sheds much of what he had previously accepted about the realities of church. He’s open to finding a more faithful way, and the book goes a long way to narrowing in on one.

That said, the book let me down at points. The description on the jacket speaks of “ancient church practices” which Halter leaves under-developed. His descriptions of the ancient church are few and vague. In the same vein, I thought the first half of the work was much stronger than the second.

My favorite chapter is entitled “Posture.” It puts words to my understanding of mission. Mission is about heart and relationships, about putting ourselves in situations likely to change us. Halter turns upside-down his previous understanding of mission noting that many begin their discussion of mission thinking narrowly and within the church.

Posture, for Halter, encompasses all of who we are. It’s “an attitude of the body: the nonverbal forms of communication that accompany what we say.” Rather than a mission/evangelism of coercion–how Halter characterizes trying to save folks in one conversation over coffee–an appropriate posture is embodied, holistic, and non-coercive. Halter describes his newly found posture of advocating–for others, for Christ, with our whole lives. It’s a mission “that can be done with or without words…instead of putting another slick saying on our church billboard, we commit two years to getting to know someone. Instead of advertising our faith as superior to other faiths, we serve those with other faiths.”

Halter (again, like me) is not afraid of the world becoming less Christian, of the move to the margins of society. He (and I) see this move as an exciting one, helping Christians re-focus on what Christianity is all about, claiming a true faith rather than a societal expectation.

Halter’s intended audience is church leaders, ordained or not. I’d recommend this book to any of a more evangelical persuasion who is interested in new ways forward for the church. I’d also recommend this book to a any mainliner interested in playing well with evangelical brothers and sisters.

UPDATE:

here’s the video from The Tangible Kingdom website.  Well done video.  Sermon-worthy, even.