Campolo said he doesn’t want to minimize teachings about how to be saved and go to heaven after you die, but it isn’t the major emphasis in the teachings of Jesus. He said Jesus instead emphasized a kingdom relevant in the here and now.

The church of the future will focus less on saving souls and more on following Jesus, author and sociologist Tony Campolo said Jan. 10 at a minister’s conference on the campus of Georgetown College in Kentucky.

“The reality is the vision for the future does not come from old guys like myself,” Campolo, professor emeritus at Eastern University and author of more than 30 books said in a keynote address at the conference on Following the Call of the Church in Times Like These. “There’s a whole array of young people who are emerging on the scene who are not willing to be preoccupied with issues that are preoccupying our attention.”

Tony Csmpolo delivers keynote address on “Following the Call of the Church in Times Like These.”
Campolo said he has noted a shift over the decades away from a faith composed primarily of beliefs about Jesus toward taking Christ’s teachings both literally and seriously.

“I grew up at a time when the church was organized around the theologies of the Apostle Paul,” Campolo said. “Every Bible study I ever went to growing up was on Paul. We studied Ephesians and Philippians and Romans, and we went through Paul verse by verse.”

“Being solid theologically was of crucial significance,” he continued. “It still is. The shift that has taken place, however, is a shift away from the Pauline epistles to the Gospels.”

Campolo said he doesn’t want to minimize teachings about how to be saved and go to heaven after you die, but it isn’t the major emphasis in the teachings of Jesus. He said Jesus instead emphasized a kingdom relevant in the here and now.

“As young people are forcing us to shift to the red letters of the Bible — to the words of Jesus highlighted in red — the first thing we have to deal with is the Kingdom of God,” Campolo said. “This has incredible ramifications, because the Kingdom of God stands in opposition to the kingdoms of this world.”

“Now that sounds good when you say it theologically,” he continued. “But when you say the Kingdom of God stands over and against the value system of the United States of America, you’re in trouble, but it does. You can’t read through the Sermon on the Mount and believe in war…. When he said love your enemies he probably meant that we shouldn’t kill them.”

Read More