The Kingdom of God

This last year I experienced a paradigm shift in terms of my faith and worldview. It all has to do with the Kingdom of God as the message and purpose of Jesus. I have never been exposed to an idea that has had more of an impact on my faith than the Kingdom. To steal from Brian McLaren, I have become 'a new kind of Christian'. OK, that was cheesy but its true.

Speaking of Brian McLaren, this is from his blog:

...I'm hard at work on my next book - "The Secret Message of Jesus" - which will explore the idea of the Kingdom of God. I feel that my own thinking is growing clearer and deeper through the writing process. My admiration and love for Jesus and his message have never been greater; writing this book feels like an experience of devotion and worship for me.

So Brian is beginning to write about the Kingdom of God. Brian's audience is HUGE and if this idea begins to trickle down into mainstream Christianity I think that it could literally change the world. After all, that is the message of the Kingdom--transformation of the world.

I was at the 2005 Willow Creek Leadership Summit this weekend at a megachurch here in the DC area and I have a lot of thoughts on what I heard there and what it means for the Church in America. I have never been a big supporter of Rick Warren bascially because I am a judgemental person. I pretty much figured that he was selling 'Self Help' Christianity and making people feel good about themselves. I was completely wrong. I won't go into it here (maybe I will post another time on my thoughts from the conference) but Rick was speaking to a bunch of ultramodern, middle-aged, megachurch-aspiring pastors and he was speaking Kingdom language! He was preaching the Kingdom of God to a bunch of people who are still preaching 'personal Jesus' and 'Save your soul' Christianity. No one--NO ONE--has a bigger audience than Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life is the best selling non-fiction book...ever) and no one has more influence. His words were this: "We are going to experience a 2nd Reformation. The first one was about creeds, this one will be about deeds. The first was about belief, this one is about behavior. We know what we believe! Let's live it out!" That is the Kingdom of God, friends, and that is exciting to hear.

I was going to post this on my blog but I decided that I would put it here. I want to open up discussion on this idea because I think 'ideas have legs' and wrestling with these things together is how we were designed to work. If we're serious about being followers of Jesus I hope it is our goal to at the very least understand exactly what he was doing. If we can begin to come to grips with what the Kingdom might mean for us as a community of believers I think we are on the right track.

Read/Listen if you want to learn more about the Kingdom of God so we can discuss:

Audio - NT Wright: Jesus and the Kingdom
Audio - NT Wright: Jesus and the Cross
Audio - NT Wright: Jesus and God
Audio - NT Wright: Jesus and the World's True Light
Creation Regained
Engaging God's World
Gospel of the Kingdom
Bible Study: Introduction to a Kingdom Perspective

peace
kc