Desiring The Kingdom

Book Review. Smith, James K.A. Desiring The Kingdom. Worship, Worldview, And Cultural Formation. Baker Academic. 2009. J.S.- Associate professor of philosophy and adjunct professor of congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College. Comment. Henry. The focus in this resource is the ‘reshaping of Christian education’. It suggests a paradigm shift from an emphasis on information, i.e. a Christian world view, to a goal of transformation that reflects sound discipleship that is expressed in worship and a desiring of God’s kingdom. This book has an appeal to the academic. Intro. “What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?” (18) “Liturgies (a synonym for worship) –whether ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’- shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and are our most basic atonement of the world.” (25) “We are- loving, desiring, affective liturgical thinkers or cognitive machines.” “We pray before we believe, we worship before we know- we worship in order to know.” (34) “Behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology.” (37) A person as a lover model” (62) is an alternative to a person as a thinker and/or believer. Liturgies (in a broad sense) can be found in both religious and secular rituals, e.g. “the mall’s liturgy”. (98) Other sources of liturgy are military nationalism, entertainment, sports and even the cinema. The author does “an exegesis of the social imaginary embedded in Christian worship”. (155) He imagines that we are Martian anthropologists being exposed to Christian worship for the first time. This exegesis covers topics such as a call to worship, greetings, song, confession, baptism, creed, scripture and sermon, Eucharist, and offering. In the final chapter the author proceeds to “sketch what Christian education could or should look like if we are liturgical animals”. (216) He calls into question the value of a Christian world view in a ‘Christian school’ that is the key to Christian education. “Christian education has been concerned with information rather than formation.” (219) The goal of Christian education “is the same as the goal of Christian worship: to form radical disciples of Jesus and citizens of the baptismal city who, communally, take up the creational task of being God’s image bearers, unfolding the cultural possibilities latent in creation- but doing so as empowered by the Spirit, following the example of Jesus’s cruciform cultural labor”. (220) This involves “reconnecting church, chapel, and classroom”. (223) henrydirksen.blogspot.com