Christianese 101: Kingdom work

I love evangelicals’ jargon, Christianese. This time around, I watched them focus on kingdom work. It sounds fancy, but this phrase just means being nice to people so you can sign up more new recruits. And evangelical leaders are desperately concerned that the flocks aren’t doing enough of it. Today, we’ll look at yet another attempt to get the flocks moving in the correct direction. But it won’t work any more than anything else they’ve ever tried will work, because they can’t address their central issue in recruitment: a product people actually want to purchase at a price they feel is fair.

(Yes, yes, but what does it look like?, mentioned in introduction.)

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The history of kingdom work

Kingdom work is a fairly new bit of Christianese. We see it in 1878 in a Wesleyan Sunday school manual. It contains a lot of songs, and here’s one of them (on page 144):

And into His bright kingdom

To Jesus to be bless’d

No fear of that sweet face

Held out its [garbled]

He would the children bring

To serve Him in the kingdom’s work

The kingdom’s joy to sing

The earliest solid definition of kingdom work that I could find was in 1897 in a book published by the United Society of Christian Endeavor. They appear to have been a relatively recently-formed but large, race-inclusive, recruitment-oriented Presbyterian umbrella group. I read the first part of it, and it’s interesting stuff in terms of Christian sociology. You can find all kinds of interesting Christianese there, including the extremely creepy “keep sweet.”

(Keep sweet means to maintain a cheerful demeanor no matter what happens. Mostly it’s applied to women, but here on page 8 of that link we a male writer praising male convention attendees as having “kept sweet” through chaotic circumstances. Interesting to see how the meaning has shifted.)

On page 148 of their book, we find kingdom work.

We ask you, friends, to consider whether there is a possibility for the Christian Endeavor societies to here take up a line of kingdom work which has not been adequately touched upon in the past. [. . .]

Dear friends, our denominations have great opportunities in spreading the work of the kingdom. Oh that we might have Congregational societies who should have their own missionaries because of their own converts in this land of ours, sending them abroad to other lands and there heralding the gospel! Oh that we might have Presbyterian missionaries!

The phrase seems to have taken off almost immediately. We find it everywhere after about 1915. A 1920 book by Science of Theocratic Democracy asserts that kingdom work, of necessity, involves the work of the Gospel. Ah, okay. And Mormons particularly liked it, adopting it for nearly constant use by at least the 1950s. By the end of the 1990s and early 2010s, the phrase appears almost everywhere in evangelical writing.

What kingdom work means in reality

Like all Christianese that hinges upon imaginary things, kingdom work can be hard for Christians to nail down with a meaningful definition. I’ve seen quite a few meaningless non-definitions, though.

• Serve68 appears to define it as sales combined with charity work. To them, it’s “announcing the reconciliation message and that while Jesus demonstrated meeting physical needs, chains are only broken with the full Gospel message.”
• The Gospel Coalition never defines it, only asserting that it’s different from “good work.”
• Denver Institute for Faith and Work also never defines it explicitly. Instead, their handout asks readers to define it themselves from a pastiche of non-definitions offered for “kingdom” itself.

An evangelism-oriented group called Christ in Youth (CIY) offers us an interesting non-definition:

Kingdom work takes life’s passions to a whole new level and draws hearts closer to God.

Umm, okay? Oh, wait, they elaborate a bit more:

The call to Kingdom work is a high calling from Christ … but what exactly does it mean to be a Kingdom worker? To put it succinctly: it’s using your gifts, talents and abilities in service to God’s Kingdom. It’s looking intentionally, every day, for moments in which to bring glory to God.

That still doesn’t help us a whole lot. It looks like shoehorning a sales pitch into every available possible situation. Their senior director elaborates a bit more:

“A Kingdom worker is somebody who takes whatever God gives them – whether that’s a talent, whether it’s a circle of influence, whether it’s a relationship or even an opportunity at work or school – and says, ‘How can I use this to advance the message of Christ?’”

Ah, okay. So yes. Kingdom work is finding every possible opportunity to hit others with sales pitches. At the end, CIY gives readers a pitch-within-a-pitch. I can’t even. It’s a sales pitch to learn how to do kingdom work itself:

Kingdom work is such a driving motivation for CIY that one of its programs – Engage – literally exists to train students for a life of Kingdom work. Through international mission trips [pricing link here – CC], Engage challenges students to learn from Kingdom workers in other cultures and discover how God works through various situations, social justice issues and the church to affect change on a global level. Students return home from these trips ready to embrace Kingdom work in their own homes and communities.

There you have it.

Ultimately, kingdom work is a vehicle for making money at the twilight end of evangelicals’ decline.

Of course the SBC had to get in on this thing

On February 2nd, the SBC’s official publishing and propaganda arm, Lifeway, ran a Bible study telling SBC-lings that they are “empowered for kingdom work.” It seems to go with their other “empowered” Bible studies, including “empowered to obey” (February 3rd, 2023) and “empowered to do His will” (April 8th, 2021). In the “obey” one, they assert that their god’s “promises” in the Bible “strengthen” SBC-lings to obey their Dear Leaders. (It also instructs readers to use that totally-promised “strength” to demand obedience from others in turn. Oh my goodness, I’d sure like to see the hapless fool who pulls that stunt on a church’s biggest spenders.)

To me, it sounds like SBC leaders don’t understand what “empowered” really means, if they think it just means they get to extra-demand obedience and compliance from their recalcitrant flocks. For example, the one I mentioned about obedience means complete, unquestioning obedience to SBC leaders and SBC pastors, not obedience to Jesus.

For years now, the SBC’s top leaders have been demanding that their rank-and-file sheep make more sales pitches. In turn, the flocks have been refusing to do it. Over and over again, the SBC’s leaders trot out new evangelism programs that promise to make sales pitches painless and easy for SBC-lings. And over and over again, those same SBC-lings barely touch those programs. They’ve spoken with one loud voice, and that voice has always told their Dear Leaders that they do not want to make more sales pitches.

So this “kingdom work” Bible study falls into line with demanding SBC-lings obey their superiors by getting out into the “mission field,” wherever it happens to be for them, and SELL SELL SELL WITHOUT MERCY.

How the SBC defines kingdom work

The Bible study uses Nehemiah chapters 1-7 as its guide. To me, this is a complete non sequitur.

Here’s why:

For those who don’t want to read the Bible link above, the overall book of Nehemiah describes the rebuilding and repopulating of Jerusalem (and its Second Temple) in the 5th century BCE.

In the book’s beginning, we find Nehemiah serving as the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes I of Persia. Nehemiah prays to Yahweh, reminding his god of his promise to be nice to his people. Then, when he next attends the king, he makes sure to look very sad.

The king, seeing Nehemiah’s sadness, asks why he looks sad. When he learns that Nehemiah is upset about Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians, the king gladly sends him over there with a bunch of vested authority, soldiers, and—very importantly—permission to obtain resources from his local area governors for the project. In the first seven chapters, Nehemiah overcomes various problems to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls and gather Jews back to their home city.

In later chapters, Nehemiah reforms Judaism and Jewish life in significant ways. These reforms include restarting major Jewish holiday observations, canceling the debts that corrupt, wealthy Jews used to gain power over the poor, signing his newly-regathered Jews to a “covenant” that will separate Jews forever from the culture around themselves, and registering Jews so everyone knows who they are moving forward.

After he returns to his duties back home, incidentally, the Jews backslide considerably. Their backsliding gets so bad that when he returns again 12 years later, he must kick everyone back into shape. But Nehemiah’s glorious success will not last forever. In 70 CE, a few decades after Jesus’ supposed lifetime, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and much of Jerusalem itself.

How we apparently get from Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem and forcing the Jews back to Original Judaism to kingdom work

Though this story doesn’t bear many similarities to the catastrophic decline of the SBC, I can almost kind of sorta see where Lifeway’s writer gets some of the ideas contained in this Bible study.

The Persian king does give Nehemiah the resources he needs to get Nehemiah’s desired project done, and the first book does strongly imply that Artaxerxes goes along with Nehemiah’s request because Yahweh pushed him to it. That strongly implies that Yahweh himself really does want the project done too. However, the entire project begins when Nehemiah takes initiative, and his god and his king both just fall into line.

Using those first 7 chapters as its guide, this unnamed Lifeway writer asks three questions:

How has God miraculously opened the door to a conversation or situation in your own life?
What are some tasks God may call us to for which we might feel incapable?
Which Scripture might help us when we find ourselves facing opposition?

These are all gotcha questions.

I’m guessing the first question relates to the king asking Nehemiah why he’s so glum. See? SEE? Yahweh “opened the door” to the king’s question! His god totally set up the shot for Nehemiah to take!

The second comes out of nowhere, because at no point in the seven books can I see any evidence that Yahweh made any such “call” to Nehemiah. Yahweh didn’t lift a divine finger in this entire process, really.

Of course, Nehemiah didn’t really need him to do anything in the first place. With Artaxerxes’ very real resources and power behind him, there’s little that Nehemiah seems unable to accomplish. But Lifeway really wants to believe that SBC-lings don’t make sales pitches because they don’t feel capable of making them. But gotcha! Officially, if Yahweh calls any evangelical to any project, by definition that evangelical is more than capable of completing it.

Unless it involves being elected President of the United States, of course.

And the SBC wouldn’t be evangelical if they didn’t misstate what the Bible actually says

Lifeway’s third question is just Jesus blahblah, because these chapters don’t quote “Scripture,” unless we’re talking about Nehemiah 1:8-9, which reads:

Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses when You said, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to Me and keep and practice My commandments, then even if your exiles have been banished to the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for My Name.’

Though these verses have a lot of Old Testament cross-references, they’re really just a reference to an oft-repeated idea: Yahweh will “scatter” Jews all over the world for their disobedience, but he promises to gather them back together if they obey his commands. I’m not sure how this reference ties in to Christians not making enough sales pitches.

As for the “opposition” facing Nehemiah in the form of the area’s other rulers, these are presented as fairly easily vanquished—but worrisome all the same. Nehemiah took smart precautions (described in Nehemiah 4:16-23) like stationing armed protectors with the ones actually rebuilding the city’s wall, arming the builders themselves, and keeping lookouts posted.

Thankfully, nobody attacked them at any point in the first seven chapters. Everyone rattles their sabers a lot, and one ruler tries to lure him into a trap, but overall it’s just a lot of middle-school-level arguing and rumor-mongering.

Did the SBC truly say…?

When I was evangelical myself, we used to say that Satan misleads Christians about what the Bible says all the time. We drew upon Genesis 3:1 for this wisdom:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

By asking that, the serpent made Eve second-guess the instructions she’d gathered secondhand from Adam before she’d even been created. She answered him thusly:

The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”

See? She added “or touch it.” That’s how Satan gets ya. Yep. That’s exactly how.

(Notably, the serpent, who is not ever actually characterized as anybody in particular and may simply be just a literal snake, tells Eve the truth about the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: it won’t kill her or Adam at all. It’ll just make them aware of good and evil, thus elevating them to divine status. Yahweh doesn’t ever want his human pets to gain that ability, that’s all.)

Ever since those days, I’ve always been tickled pink at the sight of evangelicals adding to or taking away from the Bible.

The Bible study’s conclusion doesn’t make a whole lot of sense

Here’s how that Lifeway writer summarizes this entire mess:

Because we Christians are protected and secure in Christ through faith in Him, we can cooperatively complete the kingdom work God has given us, both in the church and in the world.

Nehemiah clearly felt protected by Yahweh. Or at least, he said he felt that way to the Jews he put to work rebuilding the city. But he took a number of precautions just in case anyone did try to attack. And as I mentioned, the entire project began with him reminding Yahweh of his promises to the Jews. Once Nehemiah began rebuilding, he didn’t work particularly “cooperatively” with anyone else. Instead, he used the Persian king’s authority to its fullest extent to do the job, which often led to him forcing nearby governors to contribute those resources to him.

The SBC clearly sees itself as Nehemiah, while the rank-and-file pew-warmers take on the roles of the lucky peons pressed to rebuild everything at SBC leaders’ direction, the wealthy Jews whose corruption gets ended, and the governors forced to contribute resources to get it all done.

That SBC writer also slides this other non sequitur into the mix after that:

God’s gracious hand is upon us to love our fellow believers in Christ for their edification.

Wait, what? Nehemiah 1-7 doesn’t talk at all about loving fellow Jews! This entire Bible study didn’t mention it at all, either! That very last sentence has no idea what any of the preceding paragraphs said. It stands out worse than a sore thumb. It’s much more like a die-hard BattleTech nerd magically teleported into the smack middle of a TKE frat party. It doesn’t even make any meaningful sense on its own merits. Let us allow it to slink quietly out the frat’s back door and back to its gaming table, and then let us never speak of it again.

(Real talk, it may mean that SBC-lings should feel free to poach the members of competing flavors of Christianity. It’s a pity that Lifeway’s Bible studies are so short and perfunctory; I’d love to see them even attempt to explain their whackadoodle reasoning process for any of them, but especially this one.)

What the SBC leaves out of its new definition of kingdom work

But of interest, the SBC’s definition of kingdom work omits direct references to charity work.

Our earliest mentions of kingdom work very much imply charity work of some kind. It was, at the least, cover for the sales pitches those earlier Christians really wanted to make. Every source that even vaguely sorta-defines the phrase includes some sort of a boots-on-the-ground charity attempt.

But the SBC doesn’t mention charity at all. Their writer defines it here as sales pitches, and sales pitches only. To them, advancing Jesus’ kingdom hinges on recruitment. Similarly, their three questions relate only to making sales pitches. Their conclusion doesn’t mention anything else, either.

Combine this emphasis with the other one about “obedience,” and you get a potent subliminal message going out to the pew-warmers.

This study is important, in my opinion, because it reveals that the SBC’s top leaders are still really panicky about their denomination’s decline. I’m betting they haven’t been getting very good news from the 2022 reports that are probably being submitted as you read these words.

So this is good news, and it comes at a time when we can all likely use a little good news.

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