There is much to be said for the actions of the Church over the past 2000 years. Many things done in the name of Jesus that we ought to boast in, yet there are many things done in the name of Jesus that we ought to be ashamed of. The Church, as Jesus said he would build it upon Peter in Matthew 16, should consist of those who gather in Jesus name to proclaim the Good News. The proclamation of the Good News, then, is what Jesus commissioned his disciples to do when he left; literally his witnesses of what had happened (Acts 1).
Proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ has often been limited and surrendered to the pulpit on Sunday mornings, and occasional encounters throughout the week. Yet this is not what we see of Jesus’ disciples in last verses of Luke, nor the beginning chapters of Acts. In the account at the end of Luke, after Jesus has spent time with them, they go to and do not leave the temple because they are praising God, awaiting the Spirit. The account in Acts describes the time after the Holy Spirit comes down upon them as a time of continual preaching, healing, driving out demons, and baptizing. This is the proclamation of the Good News.
Throughout early the early Church was this passion for proclaiming the Good News. Christians would cancel debts, live in voluntary poverty, live communally so that all would be provided for. They took seriously what Jesus had taught them about the Kingdom of God. His whole lifetime was an physical example of how to proclaim this Good News about the Kingdom of God being here and now. A key component of this is the Kingdom of God and what that means.
If you cannot give an answer about what the Kingdom of God is or what it means, or even if you can, it is imperative that you seek out what that means. Donald Kraybill, in his book The Upside-Down Kingdom, analyzes the Kingdom of God from multiple angles. He says that Jesus began the re-creation of earth, known as the Kingdom of God. In his life, he made things right again, socially, economically, racially, physically, and spiritually. He restored the sight of the blind man. He restored a heartless tax collector into a heartfelt giver. He restored life to a dear friend and a young girl. Jesus was in the business of restoring and reconciling things. That was his example of how to proclaim the Good News. And now it is the disciples turn to begin to proclaim the Good News that Jesus showed, by proclaiming the Good News itself.
Man alone cannot proclaim the Good News adequately. It is only an imitation. That, in fact, is what we have been teaching children all along to do, is to imitate Jesus. We realize that this cannot be done, so then we begin to water him down by putting bracelets on our wrist to remind us what we would if we were Jesus. Nothing inherently wrong with this, but it boils down to what kind of gum would Jesus choose? There is a need now, more than ever, to recapture this Good News and proclaim it loud in our communities through the power of the Holy Spirit! We need to teach our children and those around us we believe in Jesus, not simply just to act like him. We need to re-learn, ourselves, the gravity of the Kingdom of God, and then the church can do work.