Big K little k what begins with k?

How many of you remember that wonderful Dr. Seuss book about the alphabet? It walks through each letter and describes it with a charming mix of rhythm and humorous characters. The book also helps small children see the difference between the capital letters and the lowercase letters. That difference doesn’t seem as important today in a world of lower-case logos and texting vocabulary, but it still matters.

Let’s take the letter "k." When used in the word "kingdom" the size of the first letter has huge significance to us as Christians. With a capital "K," kingdom represents God’s Kingdom in which we are participants in His plan for the world. With a lower case "k," kingdom represents our human efforts to control our situation and build influence for ourselves.

As we participate in this global conversation, one of the key topics is partnership. One significant issues in partnership is the size of the letter "k" in kingdom. Throughout Christian missions and ministry we have seen many kingdoms come and go. They form around a powerful vision but in the end they are focused on themselves. Sometimes we see efforts and movements that are focused on the Kingdom of God. These efforts don’t usually look as impressive in human terms but they recognize that the "k" must be a capital one.

There are many differences between the lower case "k" ministry efforts and the upper case ones, but one of the most significant is the ability to partner and work together. If we have many kingdoms to protect, partnership will always be a challenge. There are intellectual property issues, issues of who drives programs, challenges with keeping donor bases separate and distinct, and the list goes on and on.

But if our ministry efforts have a fundamental appreciation and commitment to the kingdom with a capital "k," then partnership is almost assumed. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. People still have their own ideas, their own perspectives and human nature always kicks in. But if our context for ministry is the Kingdom of God, then those things can be overcome in His power and for His glory.

In our ongoing discussion about truth, this size of our kingdoms comes into play regularly. We talk about three ways of understanding truth in our book "Through the River." Each one of these truth lenses understands the Kingdom of God differently. Positivists who base their foundation in modernity understand the Kingdom of God as something that can be understood as we "grow in knowledge and truth." They want a kingdom with a capital "k" and expect that it will be clearly defined and understood. This means that positivism brings an expectation of certainty to a partnership. Essentially, they believe that the Kingdom can be understood completely and then implemented based on that understanding. The expectations of things being completely aligned and in agreement will be very high - so high that much of the time these partnerships only last a few years because the two organization’s cannot agree and keep the same picture of reality for a long enough time period.