Branding Hope

This past week we had a discussion about what Kingdom Causes' "brand" is and filling out all those attributes that make up what we're about. A brand is different from our mission, because it's the specific ways we accomplish the mission. It's the adjectives you would use to describe what we are and do.

One of the brand attributes our facilitator reflected back to us was that we were "hopeful:" for and not against, forward thinking, optimistic. I totally agree. And interestingly enough, I started reading N.T. Wright's Surprised By Hope last week too.

Wright's thesis is that if we reorient ourselves again to the radical implications of Jesus' bodily resurrection, we have both an ultimate hope AND hope for the present world. Too often, Christians don't see the connection between an ultimate hope (summarized as "eternal life") and how if at all there's a connection to what we do on earth--why bother with trying to make things better if the only thing that's important is to save my individual soul? For those more concerned about working for a better world today, resurrection discussion can seem like a theological diversion that has nothing to do with the hard work to be done in the here and now.

Wright talks about "collaborative eschatology" as one way early Christians combined both pieces:

Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed that God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness.


To me, Wright's book is reminding me of this: We can not brand hope in a generic way at Kingdom Causes. Christ-centered hope is radical, revolutionary, relational, and surprising!