Meeting the Global Crisis: Kingdom community, diaconal church and a diaconal world

Meeting the Global Crissis is about what David Clark believes is the unique contribution of Christian faith to the potentially terminal challenges currently facing our world. He is convinced that there is no chance of humankind surviving and flourishing unless we come together as a global community of communities. For too long the power of community has been used destructively to exclude rather than include. This has led to social collectives, secular and religious, seeking to strengthen their own identity at the expense of others.

David Clark believes that there is no way of overcoming what he calls this “communal dilemma” unless the values underpinning our civilization reflect a vision of one world and offer the power to make that vision a reality. He sees the Christian faith, empowered by the Trinity, and embodied in the life of the kingdom as a community, as the great hope for the creation of one world.

The author argues that the gifts of the kingdom community – life, liberation, love, learning and servant leadership – are already present and actively at work in our world. The need is for them to be discerned and employed to facilitate the communal transformation of humankind. He sees the church of the future as a ‘diaconal church’, that is as a servant of the kingdom community, and its mission as furthering that communal transformation. He concludes by arguing that the quest for the survival and flourishing of one world will ultimately mean all human institutions becoming “diaconal institutions”, servants of the kingdom community and making manifest its gifts.