The Gospel and the Present
I have been thinking a lot lately about the gospel. Not as in the books of the Bible, but of the actual “good news” that we talk so much about in church. It seems that a lot of people think that the gospel is salvation from hell, or just plain fire insurance. I don’t want to diminish that, but, if that is all it is, I wonder if that is useful or helpful to most people in the American church beyond what happens when they die.
I was talking to some teens about this the other day. I asked them if they would be excited about getting a life insurance policy for Christmas. Most of them looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears, but I’m used to that. The point was, is it good news to know that something will happen when you die that doesn’t benefit you at all during your life. I think that is the way that many people approach the gospel.
If I were an evangelist, think I would have a hard time finding someone who hadn’t heard that Jesus died for their sins so that they could have eternal life.
Jesus seems to have a very different view of the gospel though. He got personal with people, sometimes even downright confrontational. He made the good news something that started in the moment and led to something even greater. The woman at the well, the centurian, the woman caught in adultery, Nicomdemus, the disciples, the people he healed, the people he fed all experienced a good news that was more real because it was present almost immediately in their lives.
What I’m thinking through is not, is this true, but how do we do this today. I don’t know if a single evangelistic training out there that does this, teaches this, preparespeople for this kind of meeting with people. And I wonder why we don’t.
