BillyCalderwood.com

SUMMARY
Contending that “only if the church understands the full biblical revelation of God [from both Old and New Testaments] concerning the mission of God’s people, stimulated by confronting Scripture with today’s questions, will they be responsibly challenged to offer to God the devotion of heart, strength, time and resources essential to its completion,” the authors “explore the emergence and development of the Kingdom of God motif within both the Old and New Testaments taken as whole, in order to understand more deeply God’s mission through God’s people in God’s world.”

SIGNIFICANCE
This text makes an extremely significant contribution to the study of missiology and to a more comprehensive understanding of the biblical foundations of mission by exploring the theme of the Reign or Kingdom of God as the central thread uniting both Testaments, clarifying the missionary nature and relentless love of the creator God who refuses to give up on humanity as the Story of the Bible unfolds. In this manner, the text effectively accomplishes its purpose, illuminating the missional nature of the whole Bible in a way that challenges the Church to recognize afresh its missional mandate and to devote herself wholeheartedly to its completion.

PERSONAL REACTION
This is perhaps one of the most penetrating and transformational books I have ever read and one that I continue to reference with great regularity. The intentional exploration of the Kingdom of God motif throughout all of Scripture has made the Bible come alive to me anew. I was especially appreciative of the book’s focus on the missional character of the Old Testament beginning with the story of creation. I have so often missed this vitally important aspect of the Old Testament narrative. Additionally, the ministry of Jesus and his continual announcement “the Kingdom of the Heavens is at hand” is suddenly made intelligible at an entirely different level in light of this view of the Old Testament. Each individual passage from scripture I read is now so much easier to “place” in the context of the overall theme of the Kingdom. This has brought about a renewed delight in my personal reading as well as in the task of preaching as the story of the Kingdom has become both more understandable and more likely to awaken a profound sense of adventurous participation in God’s mission as my life and my church’s life are increasingly envisioned as an extension of this Story.