Interview with Greg Boyd

Dr. Greg Boyd is an author, national speaker, former college professor at Bethel University and currently pastor of Woodland Hills Church in Maplewood, Minnesota. His many books, including the classic Letters From a Skeptic, have made him a sought-after voice in Evangelical circles. His Kingdom-affirming views and thoughts on Christians and politics have caused a fair bit of controversy, but have also situated Boyd among the leading Evangelical thinkers in paving a new way for Christians to view interaction with the culture, including the political world. In this interview, Boyd discusses his controversial “The Cross and the Sword” sermon series (which became the book The Myth of a Christian Nation) that resulted in some 1,000 members (roughly 20 percent) of his congregation leaving the church and how he sees Evangelicals interacting with the culture in the future.

Burnside Writers Collective: Describe “The Cross and the Sword” sermon series.

Greg Boyd: I had a conviction about the distinctness of the Kingdom of God and how important it is to keep it from getting mixed up with anything in the world - the kingdom of the world - even good stuff in the kingdom of the world. It just stands by itself: the Kingdom of God. But over the years, it became more and more of an intense passion. Before the 2004 election, I was, like most mega-church pastors in America, getting a lot of, a lot more than usual, requests to, or calls even, from people in my congregation and from elsewhere to really “steer the flock” on their responsibility as Christians to vote and vote in a particular way. I saw this as a good teaching opportunity to say “Why?”

And so I preached a series in April of 2004. I called it “The Cross and the Sword.” The Kingdom of the Sword, which is about having power over people, passing laws and legislation and controlling society and stuff. And the Kingdom of the Cross, which is about having power under people. It’s the power of humble, self-sacrificial love. It’s being Jesus to people.

I just explained that we are called to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of the Cross, not to see ourselves as sort of the wise and Caesar advisors of the Kingdom of the Sword. I explained why we don’t have a flag in our church, and why you’re not going to have us endorsing or supporting the military, and why we are not going to get on any political platform and things of that sort. Trying to show how politics is almost always ambiguous, and [how] good and decent and Bible-believing people can disagree about that. And that’s fine, but what we rally around is not a political position and it’s not a nation; it’s not a military, it’s nothing of the sort. What we rally around is Jesus Christ and committing to follow His example and serving the world and proclaiming the Good News.

And there were just some people who were very, very offended by that. Some people loved it. I had people coming up with tears in their eyes thanking me for preaching a Gospel where they felt welcomed, because they often felt unwelcomed in Evangelical churches. We estimate about 1,000 folks ended up leaving as a result of [the sermon series].

BWC: What do you see 25 or 50 years from now in terms of American Christians approaching politics - different from the way we do it now?

Boyd: I can’t answer that descriptively. And so I can’t describe in fact how it’s going to be. I can only answer that prescriptively: how I hope it will be. I hope that American Christians will embrace the idea that you lead by example—by humble example—and you transform people by humble example, by being the Church. Live a life that looks like Jesus: caring for the outcast, feeding the poor, proclaiming the Good News.

But even more, proclaiming with your life. Living the life that is freed from the idols of the culture, and you lead by the beauty of that example. And you influence people by the beauty of that example. A community that illustrates what it is to care for the poor. A community that illustrates an effective way of getting people off of drugs and out of their bondage. And if we do that, then government, which has a hard time making anything work, they’ll be looking to you for answers. Because they’ll say, “How do you do it?” And now you can proclaim the Good News.

That is how I think we’re supposed to transform society, and my hope is that the Church of the future realizes that we - Kingdom people - have the power to transform the world. But not by passing the right laws, and by thinking that we’re wiser than other people on what government should do, because Jesus never did that. Our job is to follow Jesus. Rather, we have a power to transform society by being faithful to our King. And so I’m hoping that Christians of the future won’t be fighting over what Caesar should do.

What we have now is a profoundly broken Church trying to fix Caesar. I hope we fix the Church, and Caesar will take care of itself. That’s my hope. But I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I don’t have any prophetic insight on that.

BWC: Do you think the mega-church model of pastor as CEO is going by the wayside?

Boyd: I suspect so. I think we’re going to have apostles and prophets and evangelists and teachers and pastors. The churches that have that [the pastor as CEO model] are usually because you have a superstar, with a great personality and a great gift and who can build a superstar team. But there are a lot of drawbacks to that model.

Posted on February 2, 2009 10:02 AM