The Kingdom of Heaven is Like.......

As I sit in my class with David Trobisch....the magnificent, we are doing a little story telling.  We started this morning contextualizing the parable:  the Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, that someone finds and hides and it brings them great joy, so they sell all their earthly treasures and buy the field.  The contextualizing had us exploring the notion that a person could find the kingdom of God and somehow procure it for themselves....that there is a limited amount of treasure that those who are "chosen" are keeping for themselves.

When thinking about new church, this ideas intrigues me.  The way we need to do church is changing.  In the UCC each independent congregation supports itself, how we support new church starting is thus somewhat problematic.  Especially if new church wont be able to support itself.  If we are supposed to reach everyone, not just the ones who are like us, who earn a living wage, or are in their productive years, how are we going to do a better job of expanding our radically inclusive church and share the treasure, rather than keeping it within our own real estate....hmmm maybe a pickup and a trailer full of lawn chairs are where or how we should be doing  do church.