Occupy the Kingdom...Greg Boyd

Greg Boyd's books are always within reach in my library when I'm reflecting and writing musings on the Kingdom. In that year I spent reading nothing but the gospels I began to see something that was obviously there before, but had missed. Part of it was in the church we don't spend much time in the gospels, or if we preach on it, we lean toward the warm and comfy spiritual stuff. But that year, the more I navigated my way through the gospels it didn't matter where I went, around ever corner I kept coming face to face with one word; Kingdom. I almost had the impression Jesus had an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder around this Kingdom thing...he couldn't stop talking about it, and couldn't stop living it. And as far as being spiritual...it seemed far more fleshy, and earthly. And that's when I started reading everything I could get my hands on about the Kingdom. As a follower of Jesus, if he's consumed and passionate about it...we should be.

So one of the first guys I started reading was Greg Boyd.  Greg’s search for a well-grounded and intellectually defensible faith led him to study philosophy at the University of Minnesota (B.A.), followed by studies in philosophical theology at Yale Divinity School (M.Div) and Princeton Theological Seminary (Ph.D). He then became a professor of theology for 16 years at Bethel University and is currently the senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

 

He is a prolific writer, and theological thinker...he continues to stretch the mind of the evangelical church with his Kingdom views. Many find him controversial, but, he has had an impact on many opening their eyes to the incredible redemptive imagination of the Kingdom. Below, is part of a post that Greg wrote in 2007 on the Kingdom...read it and you'll sense his passion.

The kingdom is present whenever people are getting their life from Christ alone and therefore are increasingly looking like Jesus, doing what Jesus did, and obeying what Jesus taught.

When people refuse to retaliate, choosing instead to return evil with good as Jesus and Paul taught us, the kingdom of God is present. When people love their enemies rather than fight them, bless those who persecute them rather than curse them, and pray for those who mistreat them rather than trying to get even, the kingdom of God is present. When people choose to serve rather than to be served and to be killed rather than to participate in killing others, the kingdom of God is present. When people choose to put the interests of others before their own, to forgive even after multiple offenses, and to invest their own time and resources in serving others, the kingdom of God is present. When people befriend the friendless, feed the hungry, house the homeless, serve “sinners” rather than judge them, and work to bring healing into people’s lives and relationships, the kingdom of God is present. And when we choose to live in a way that ascribes worth to animals and the earth rather than simply using them as a means of gratifying ourselves, as the Bible commands (Gen. 1:26-28), the kingdom of God is present.

This is what God’s LIFE looks like when it is manifested “on earth as it is in heaven,” for this is what Christ looked like when he came down to earth( Greg Boyd:Is the Kingdom Invisible 2007 )

A friend ask me a while back what Kingdom preaching looks and sounds like? Well there is no better person to listen, well other than Jesus...but Greg Boyd. This is a sermon he gave just before christmas 2011, when shopping and consumerism was at a feverish frenzy, called " Occupy the Kingdom." Enjoy!!!