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0 : The Gospel: A Story
1 : The Gospel
2 : Four Spiritual Laws (1960’s)
3 : Evangelism Explosion (1970’s,80’s)
4 : Continuing Witnessing Training
5 : Fundamental problems
6 : The Story
7 : Beginning of the Story
8 : Middle of the Story
9 : End of the Story
10 : The Bible is mostly stories
The Gospel: A Story
— What is the Gospel?
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Andrew Fountain — Sept 4th, 2011
The Gospel
What is the minimum you need to know to become a Christian?
I recently listend to a talk by a guy called “Harry Lee Poe” on what he called “the corruption of the Gospel”
He argued that over the last 50 years people have tried to reduce the Gospel down and down to a bare minimum
He feels that this has caused some real difficulties:
No backstory in our culture, so not understood
No backstory in our culture, so does not even communicate
Becomes the theology of the church
Does not connect with real problems
We actually tend to live our lives out of stories
He gives several examples:
Four Spiritual Laws (1960’s)
God
loves
you and offers a wonderful
plan
for your life.
Man is
sinful
and
separated
from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
Jesus Christ is God’s
only
provision for man’s sin. Through him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
We must individually
receive
Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
What background does this assume?
God, sin
No beginning or end
Evangelism Explosion (1970’s,80’s)
Jesus purchased our salvation by offering his blood to “God”.
(does mention that Jesus was and is God, God almighty himself, but this is blurred.)
Death of Jesus was “the great transaction” where Jesus paid God for our sin and purchased heaven for us.
The issue of forgiveness of sin does not come up.
Talks about going to heaven but not being born again.
Poe was particularly concerned that Jesus seems to be pacifying “God”, but not clearly God himself
Continuing Witnessing Training
(Southern Baptist Home Mission Board)
Modifies and “simplifies” E.E.
Jesus bares our sin, (but no reference to ransom.)
Jesus seems to act as an agent for God, (although they do say that he is God.)
They omitted all reference to the Holy Spirit
They said that was deliberate because “they didn’t want to confuse people”.
Fundamental problems
People connect much better with stories than logical steps of argument
Our culture has no widespread knowledge of the Bible that we can draw on
so a minimal message is misunderstood
it does not even communicate
The church tends not to go much beyond it’s Gospel message, so if this is impoverished, so is the church
Does not connect with real problems
e.g. woman asking about suicide
We actually tend to live our lives out of stories
The Story
Beginning
Middle
End
Can you tell me what is the story at the beginning?
Beginning of the Story
God (plural in one)
What God is like (relational, powerful, generous, just...)
Created outside of himself
Existence of evil, which corrupted the creation
He promised that in the future he would destroy the evil
Middle of the Story
One of the members of “God” (Father) revealed his love by:
Sending another member of “God” (Jesus) into the creation,
Who at enormous cost defeated the power of the evil.
He made forgiveness and restoration possible.
Together with the third member of God (Holy Spirit):
He established a totally new creation, free from evil.
He began to bring people into into it.
Father Son and Spirit embraced these people as part of their “family”.
End of the Story
Jesus is coming again
Everyone who has ever died will be raised for the judgment
Jesus will judge everyone and perfect justice will be done by a judge who knows everything perfectly
All evil will be banished forever
A new era will begin in which God’s people:
are united with Jesus in a “marriage”
are made responsible to rule over a new kind of creation
have no more sorrow for eternity
The Bible is mostly stories
We mostly learn the big story from lots of little stories
This is the best way of spreading the Gospel
What Stories tell the Beginning?
The Middle?
The End?
What Stories tell the Beginning?
Adam & Eve
John 1
What God is like (relational, powerful, generous, just...)
Abraham
(
tell story
)
Israel
many others, most of them in fact
The Middle?
Jesus
Touch a leper, ate with sinners (
tell story
)
The Lost Son
The End?
Parable of the wicked tennant farmers