Midweek Question: Different Ways to Present the Gospel
For a long time now, I have been thinking about the various ways that Christians evangelize. More specifically, about how Christians frame the gospel and present the gospel message to nonbelievers. This is a huge topic, and there are many schools of thought on it. For this present discussion, I am going to grossly oversimplify. Let’s suppose that Christians are divided into two different camps with opposing opinions about how a gospel presentation should begin.
The Myth of Multiplication, Part 3
In Matthew’s version of the Great Commission, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19, NIV). For most of my life, I interpreted the phrase “make disciples of all nations” as “create individual disciples within every nation.” With a mindset shaped by modern western individualism, it is natural for me to think of discipleship in terms of individual persons. But a more literal translation of this phrase from the original Greek is “disciple all the nations.” Is it possible that the intended targets of Christian discipleship are not individuals but nations? Does Jesus intend to transform whole communities, people groups, and social networks?
Yes, I believe that this is what Jesus meant. In the Old Testament period, God worked out his special purposes within the nation of Israel. But the change from B.C. to A.D. was accompanied by a huge paradigm shift in the way God would continue his salvation plan. The good news of Jesus was to be proclaimed to the nations and take on a new life within each of those nations. A nation is not a collection of isolated individuals. It is an organism, a living system, with a unique God-given character and identity. When the gospel is implanted into a complex living system, it can be transformed into something new and beautiful without sacrificing its special identity and vitality. Implanting a gospel into a complex living system is tricky business. God knows exactly how to do it, but usually we do not.
The Myth of Multiplication, Part 2
In the first installment of this series, I challenged the popular notion that the church expands primarily through multiplication. Multiplication is the exponential growth that would be generated by highly committed, self-replicating followers of Christ. If every disciple were rigorously trained to make two or more disciples every few years, then the whole world could be evangelized in a few decades. Multiplication is a nice theory, but it doesn’t seem to work in practice. After a few years, the zeal for disciplemaking wanes; the enterprise sputters and runs out of gas. It is very difficult to find historical examples of intentional, self-replicating Christian discipleship successfully converting a city, generation, or culture.
If multiplication through discipleship training is not the primary engine of church growth, then what is?
A Church in Denial and Infatuated with Itself
I recently ran across a presentation by Gary Hamel, an author and management consultant who has been called “the world’s most influential business thinker” by The Wall Street Journal. Hamel advises Fortune 500 companies and writes for Harvard Business Review. He is also a deeply committed Christian. In 2009, he was invited to speak at the Global Leadership Summit, an annual gathering of pastors and church leaders organized by Willow Creek Community Church. Hamel spoke with thoughtfulness and passion about the need for churches and ministries to change. Some of his basic arguments are found in this WSJ blog post. But if you can do so, please watch the full 57-minute video presentation; you won’t be disappointed.
The Myth of Multiplication, Part 1
If you’re as old as I am, you might remember this annoying TV commercial from the 1970’s.The executives who came up with this ad imagined that, if each satisfied customer convinced two of her friends to try the product, then sales would go viral, and soon every woman on the planet would be using Fabergé Organics shampoo.
Did that happen? Of course not. In retrospect, the idea that consumers would, simply by viewing this commercial, be transformed into an aggressive and unpaid sales force was preposterous. This ad may have sold a few bottles of shampoo to desperate young women who were willing to try anything to have hair like Farah Fawcett and Heather Locklear. But the brand didn’t experience anything like the exponential growth in sales that this commercial envisions.
How Do You Understand and Explain the Gospel?
One of the issues that I perpetually struggle with is: How do we understand the gospel and faithfully articulate it in these times?
Formulaic presentations of the gospel — for example, the much celebrated and maligned Four Spiritual Laws — have never appealed to me. Not because they are wrong (they aren’t) but because they seem so reductionistic. The gospel is a living Word. It is like a beautiful multifaceted jewel that deserves to be examined and reexamined from every possible angle. When preaching of the gospel becomes stale, simplistic, habitual and tired, the spiritual life of a community is sapped and discipleship (if it exists at all) degenerates to rules, principles and practices that no longer capture the essence of what it means to follow a risen Savior.
Walking in the Light of Absolute Honesty
One word that appears frequently in UBF messages, testimonies, mission reports, and prayer topics is absolute. If you type “absolute” into the search engine at www.ubf.org, you will see the phrases in which it appears:
- absolute attitude
- absolute faith
- absolute commitment
- absolute obedience
- absolute command
If you use one of these phrases in a meeting, and you speak it with a loud and emphatic voice, you are almost guaranteed to evoke from your audience a hearty “Amen!”
Bringing Reality to the Spiritual Life (Part 2)
Francis Schaeffer wrote True Spirituality to address the sense of unreality that pervades the faith of modern Christians. Schaeffer was a philosopher, not a storyteller, and readers who are unaccustomed to his dense, abstract writing style may find this classic book hard to digest. In this series of articles, I will try to unpack and explain the major ideas.
This installment focuses on Chapter 1, where Schaeffer discusses rules of Christian behavior. When the implications of the gospel are reduced to outward behaviors, our relationship with God becomes superficial and trite. True spirituality is not found in any set of rules. Nor is it found in setting aside rules.
He Descended into Hades
Many of us recite the Apostles’ Creed during our Sunday worship services to profess our faith and to affirm our membership in the universal Body of Christ. But we are puzzled by that short statement in the middle of the Creed, “He descended into Hades.” Where did it come from? What does it mean?
Some Protestants object to this statement. They remove it from the creed or remain silent during that part.
Behold the Lamb!
The death of Jesus is intimately connected with the Jewish feast of Passover.
The Seder, the traditional meal eaten by Jews at sundown on the first day of Passover, recalls the events that brought God’s people out from slavery in Egypt. The Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his death was a Seder. Jesus kept many of the traditions associated with this sacred meal. But he also made significant changes, introducing new elements to show his disciples that God was about to do something astounding. The disciples were on the verge of witnessing a new and greater exodus that would change them and their world forever.
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