I have been discussing with a student, issues around Mission and Inclusion. On further reflection the issues for inclusion when we have a Kingdom based approach are vast. Impacting practice and theology around church, language and choice(see last post), mission etc. It can be hard to remember when at the coalface of trying to get involved with God in building the kingdom, that it is already here. This dual paradigm, and living as an in-between people has all sorts of issues. For a long time I have been trying to grapple with the issues of inclusion and kingdom, and it is still so easy to forget the God given image that young people maintain in their DNA. How far this may be a key to working in this kingdom which is now and not yet. I am wondering if we might borrow from education theory which has two basic approaches; banking knowledge or drawing out learning. Much of our history of mission sees banking as the way, inputting the gospel story (or evangelical theological takes on it) and then seeing young people respond. How much can we draw out the image of God within? Some traditional evangelical language talks about people having “a God shaped hole in their life”. Maybe we can turn this on its head, and see young people as having a small God shaped light already in their life and our role is to encourage that to shine into the rest of their life. A helpful metaphor???