What is the Gospel?
It is interesting how much we have been conditioned by church culture. I just finished listening to a podcast from Nomad Podcast based on the idea of re-assessing the message of the gospel in terms of how it is communicated by the Bible vs. the way that it has been communicated through churches during the last 50 –100 years (at least as a starting point).
Tim and (sorry can’t remember the other guys name and couldn’t find it on the site) interviewed a writer by the name of Scot McKnight. His premise was essentially that the ‘gosepl’ as communicated by icons such as Billy Graham, that focusses specifically on the ‘sinner to salvation’ but has missed the need of discipleship.
I found the discussion quite intellectually stimulating and engaging. The truth is that I found the last few )months quite dry in terms of christian growth and this is the first christian discussion that I have found inspiring for a while.
In thinking about non-institutional church and the practical living out of christian community the theological basis for this modality can be a little out-weighed by the get saved model of evangelism (well, in terms of the literature that I have read and been exposed to ).
McKnight has presented the question, what does the Bible say the Gospel is? rather than (as he put it) the hijacking of part of the Gospel. He suggested the point is understanding who Jesus is, what he did and what he said, in the context of being Jewish, in Israel at the turn of the Century.
It is interesting that this topic (in a sense) has reciently come up in discussion with a friend who referenced the work of scolar (fill this in) who is Jewish and has looked at the Jewish context of the gospels (ie. the readings of the first four books of the NT).
McKnight contends that the message that we are to convey to people is not simply that people are separated from God by sin and that it is through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus that we can be reconnected (consider the Bridge to Life and other tracks), but that the Gospel is the whole story of Jesus and to a further extent - the person of Jesus. He goes onto say that the complete Gospel needs to be understood in terms of Jesus being the Jewish messiah, the Jewishness of which is imperrative to understanding the Gospel.
This is also reflected in the naming if the first four books of the NT (gospels), acknowledging that the Gospel is bigger than one or two catch line summaries. It is (obvious as it might sound) because they simply tell the story of Jesus.
Having listened to this podcast has given me the encouragement and motivation to once again engage in a fresh way with the Bible (and more specifically the Gospels) in reviewing and assessing my personal reading of the Gospel message, and clarifying it in a way that is true to scripture and not just my personal emphaisis or hijacking.
