Kingdom Bros

Audio By Carbonatix

A growing number of young Christian men are rediscovering words largely absent from modern evangelical vocabulary: words like kingdom, authority, discipline, order, responsibility, courage, and civilization.

Frankly, this is understandable. Many young people, especially men, have grown weary of a shallow Christianity shaped more by therapy than theology and more by self-expression than self-denial. They’re looking for something weightier and deeper. They want roots, depth, conviction, and purpose—in other words, formation. This hunger is good. Across denominations, pastors are observing renewed interest among younger Christians in liturgy, church history, and spiritual disciplines.

But like every renewal movement in Church history, sincere instincts can become distorted when detached from the character of Christ Himself. Recently, a loose constellation of online voices sometimes referred to as “Kingdom Bros” has emerged around these themes. Though not a formal movement, it emphasizes masculine strength, cultural engagement, and civilizational renewal. Some concerns they’re raising are legitimate. Christians should reject passivity. The gospel does have public implications, and the kingdom of God does concern every sphere of life. But confusion arises when the kingdom of God is subtly redefined according to the logic of the world.

In every age, Christians are tempted to exchange holiness for influence and Christlikeness for winning. Jesus confronted precisely this temptation in Matthew when His disciples began imagining the kingdom in terms of power and status: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them … It shall not be so among you.”

That single sentence may be one of the most neglected teachings in modern cultural Christianity. The kingdom of God is not the baptized version of worldly power. Nor is it advanced through coercion, outrage, tribalism, or the will to dominate.

Chuck Colson understood this well. Though deeply engaged in public life, he often reminded Christians: “We propose; we don’t impose.” The Christian vision for society is not imposed through force, manipulation, or cultural intimidation. Christians bear witness to Truth. We persuade. We serve. We sacrifice. We tell of another kingdom—one not of this world, yet profoundly for it.

The Church doesn’t grow through conquest, but through faithfulness. This is where many modern conversations about “winning” become spiritually dangerous because success is not the same thing as faithfulness.

The early Church possessed almost no cultural power yet turned the world upside down through holiness, courage, charity, and unshakable conviction. They didn’t dominate Rome. They outlived it. Christian lives marked by these lesser-preached characteristics proved more compelling than the empire itself.

This is how the kingdom advances. As Christians live under the rule and reign of Christ, whether in influence or obscurity, heaven breaks into the present as a sign of what’s to come.

This matters especially for young men seeking purpose today. They’re right to reject passivity, pornography, consumerism, and perpetual adolescence. They rightly desire brotherhood and mission. The Church should celebrate and direct that hunger.

But strength detached from Christ becomes just another form of worldliness. A masculinity shaped more by internet combativeness than the Sermon on the Mount will eventually produce pride, not holiness. The model of Christian manhood is not the swaggering conqueror. It is Christ—the One who washed feet before He bore a crown. Indeed, the central symbol of Christianity is not the throne, but the cross.

That doesn’t mean Christians retreat from culture. Quite the opposite. Christians should build institutions, pursue justice, cultivate beauty, defend truth, strengthen families, and serve the common good.

But we must do so as Micah 6:8 commands: “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

The kingdom of God begins with surrender. It is formed first within us before it transforms anything around us. And that formation requires far more than online clicks and ideological alignment. It requires prayer, repentance, worship, humility, spiritual discipline, Christian community, and obedience to Christ in the ordinary places of life.

This is precisely where the modern Church has often failed. We have too frequently produced Christians who are informed but not formed—people capable of arguing Christian ideas without embodying Christian character. And yet character is the apologetic the modern world finds hardest to dismiss.

Christian lives should demonstrate the reality of the kingdom they proclaim. Because in the end, the kingdom of God does not belong to those who appear strongest online but to those poor in spirit, meek, and merciful. It belongs to the peacemakers and to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In other words, the kind of people the modern world rarely mistakes for “winners.”

And yet, by the grace of God, they are precisely the people through whom Christ changes the world.

I was with a group of those people a couple of weeks ago at the Colson Center National Conference. The Colson Fellows Program is designed around this particular vision of formation—to go deeper, not to get angry, not just to be able to defend but to be able to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength; and to understand the truth, proclaim the truth, defend the truth, and to do so in love. After all, despite what we hear, truth and love are not in conflict. Truth and love are both personified and sourced in the person of Christ.

To learn more about the Colson Fellows Program and to be the kind of formed Christian who can engage this cultural moment with truth and love, check out the Colson Fellows Program at colsonfellows.org.

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Finn Hafemann

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.