Lifestyle and Culture
Behavior to an individual is as culture to a group. However, when we apply the idea to nations, with God’s intentions in mind, we catch a revelation of Earth filled with diversity and variety based upon one constant–kingdom culture.
Kingdom culture is the bedrock of every culture when a nation realizes the fullness of its intended purposes.
Just as individual behavior isn’t uniform to the point of conformity. Cultures are not uniform to the point of conformity. Just as the kingdom celebrates unique individualism without diminishing the kingdom’s culture, nations contribute to the Earth as Father wants it when they fulfill His original intentions.
Natural and Spiritual Lineage
Adam was to produce inheriting children who would use the Eden model to fill the Earth with Eden-like dominion. He failed.
Jesus produces spiritual inheritors who expand His domain to fill the Earth with kingdom dominion.
It is silly to assume that Jesus can fill the Earth with kingdom without children as it would be to assume Adam could with producing children. Jesus already fills all things. Jesus fills the Earth with kingdom dominion through spiritual children because this fulfills His father’s original intentions.
The measure of the kingdom is leadership, and the measure of leadership is influence. Jesus vastly improved upon kingdom influence by making it spiritual. However, the final product of spiritual kingdom influence remains the same: the dominion of God fills the Earth.
Leadership is Influence
The governance of kingdom culture is ekklesia; the kingdom culture is the context of ekklesia. Then, the kingdom’s influence through ekklesia overwhelms the influence of Christ’s enemies, displacing them, usurping the usurpers.
From kingdom culture, an ekklesia hears a summons to assemble. Ekklesia hears, agrees, and enforces the King’s governing decisions. Most of the ekklesia business applies and implements previously settled cultural principles, processes, and protocols. At the same time, ekklesia applies and implements current blueprint and battleplan priorities.
In ekklesia, kingdom culture receives its accountability to the King. Ekklesia cannot exist without kingdom culture, and kingdom culture cannot remain representative of the King without ekklesia.
Without kingdom culture, ekklesia is frozen with regard to principle, process, and protocol. Confusion reigns because who should lead, how leadership should function, and strategies for implementation lack authorization that guides the entire kingdom culture. Thus, an ekklesia summoned from kingdom culture is key to oneness in ekklesia and kingdom culture from which it is summoned.
Jesus Started His Ekklesia from Kingdom Culture
Everything I am sharing about kingdom culture and ekklesia in this blog begins with the presuppositions of what Jesus shares in Matthew 16 and 18. And, His words only make sense with we see them in a kingdom context.
To assume that Jesus planned for Paul to rewrite His ekklesia presuppositions completely requires the oddest collection of assumptions. The idea that the reset of the kingdom from Israel as the physical-first model to the SpiritFirst kingdom model dismisses the teachings of Jesus should be seen as blasphemy.
“My Word will never pass away” until I ascend, then do what seems right to you. Says Jesus never. To say that He meant His messaging for Israel, then dropped it when the church age started is an idea dreamed up after too much squirrel gravy by a human theorist.
Ekklesia is an existing idea communicated by a Greek word. In the mouth of Jesus, it becomes an eternal idea with a past, present, and future. He is careful to say, “My ekklesia.” The possessive pronoun is essential to our understanding of ekklesia when Jesus designs and defines it.
Jesus immediately locates His construction on a building site of kingdom authority. “I build My ekklesia. I give you kingdom keys.”
We establish His kingdom. Jesus constructs His design and definition of ekklesia from that kingdom dominion. That does not mean we cannot do ekklesia, but Jesus does it. That means Jesus has a kingdom lineage and he will be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Earth with a lineage like Adam.
Where Adam fails, Jesus succeeds, but they both were to accomplish what Father wants through a lineage of inheritors.
