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As mentioned in one of the prior define evangelism articles, we shared a brief description of the Gospel from Scot McKnight’s book Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us (order from Amazon).
I have finished reading McKnight’s book and want to share some of my thoughts on it. Prof. McKnight was one of my professors when I was in seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is a prolific blogger at www.Jesuscreed.org
The takeaway point is that the gospel is not only about individual conversion, but the fruit of the gospel in the life of an individual should work itself out in the transformational development of a community in advancing the evidence of God’s kingdom.
What is the gospel?
He defines the gospel as “embracing grace.” Yet behind that definition is a book of over 170 pages to tease it out via stories, examples from lives of others, and personal testimony, and lots of Bible quotes to keep the development of his definition anchored in the Bible.
What I found refreshing was the fact that the gospel is not just about individual decisions to follow Christ. McKnight carefully lay’s out how the gospel affects more than just the individual’s relationship with God. It spills over into community — working towards changing the world, which eventually spills into the ultimate redemption of creation.
The fact that McKnight doesn’t keep the gospel confined to an individual conversion speaks towards the trend in evangelism to integrate a person’s conversion with the outward working of that faith. That’s missional faith. To embrace grace personally should lead to grace performed in the local community. Several chapters show the connection in real live examples of how “proclamation and performance of an authentic gospel combine into credibility.”
McKnight introduces us to the term “Eikon,” referring to the image of God after which humans are created. We are cracked icons, our community is full of cracked eikons. Embracing grace allows cracked Eikons to be released into serving their community and sharing that same grace with others.
Order Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us from Amazon.
Let me ask you this?
What do you think is the relationship between the gospel and transformation of a community? I invite you to share it here in the comments.
Comments (0) Posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008
Our definition of evangelism (from the PCUSA) has both:
- A message to share (”joyfully sharing the good news of the sovereign love of God)
- A destination (”calling people to . . . . . “)
The good news is the gospel. This is what gospel means in its most basic form: “good news.”
However, we have developed a rich theological heritage around that word that gives it a more fuller meaning. As such, we should ask “What is the gospel?”
What is the Gospel?
The PC USA definition of evangelism elaborates one aspect: “the good news of the sovereign love of God.” It doesn’t contain a mention of sin (though indirectly in the call to action part in “to repentance”).
This week, I’m reading Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us, Scott McKnight. It is subtitled “A Gospel for all of us.” Scott is a prolific writer at www.JesusCreed.org and has a large following on his blog. I had him as a exegesis professor during my studies at Seminary in the 1990s. I’ve commented on him before (see category Scott McKnight).
In his introduction he writes that to get a conversation started among his students, he’ll ask the question “What is the gospel?”
He typically receives answers that fall into three categories:
- Jesus came to earth to die for my sins so I can be forgiven and go to heaven to be with God for eternity.
- Jesus came to liberate us from oppression, systemic evil, slavery, so there would be justice and peace.
- Being part of the church.
How does Scott’s answer the question? It takes him the book to develop this:
“The work of God to restore humans to union with God and communion with others, in the context of a community, for the good of others and the world” (Introduction to Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us, xiii).
Scott’s answer goes beyond focus on the love of God and into restoration of covenant community.
In fact, God’s destiny in history is a redeemed community (I’ll have more to say in a few weeks about this).
Let me ask you this?
How would you define gospel? (I can’t believe I’ve not asked this question here before). I invite your comments.
See our prior posts
Comments (3) Posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008
In a post over at Jesus Creed » Letters to Emerging Christians, Scott McKnight does a good analysis of the “Romans Road” as a script for evangelism.
He says two things that are worthy of pondering:
The third thing now: the Romans Road works for some. It is just as important to say it doesn’t work for others. We have a big “golf bag full of metaphors” and there is no reason to use the same club every day for every shot on every hole. And this leads me to another point.
Fourth: I’m not sure the entry door into a kingdom relationship with God through Jesus has to begin with sin. Not all agree with me, but I want to ask you this: How often does Jesus begin with sin? How many times does he “evangelize” (which he did often) by getting people to realize their sin and then asking them to accept him and then tell them they are forgiven? Now, if you are a good Bible reader — and I know you are — you will know that Jesus did emphasize “repentance.” In fact, Mark summarizes the message of Jesus with three words: kingdom, repent and believe. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the best entry today is the word kingdom — a visionary word of what God is doing in this world through Jesus and in the power of the Spirit. Kingdom vision seemed to evoke response to Jesus.
He goes on to say:
Jesus called people to enter the kingdom. That’s his style of evangelizing. He wanted recruits, kingdom workers, ministers for God’s redemptive work in this world, and he was out and about summoning folks into that kingdom. When folks encountered him, they became aware of sin and Israel’s problem — how little they cared about God, about themselves, about others, and about the world. And they also saw their need to turn around and their need to turn to Jesus and their need to follow him and their need to get united with themselves and the other followers of Jesus. They also would have perceived their need to embrace in grace all humans and look after this world as God made Eikons to do. That’s how Jesus did it. Lots today get the needs and problems up front and they never get to the kingdom part. I suggest we learn more about evangelism from his summoning folks into the kingdom.
This last point is something very similar to what is presented in Logic of Evangelism by William J. Abraham.
Let me ask you this?
Is McKnight correct? Feel free to read the entire post at JesusCreed
Comments (0) Posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007
I’ve read some stuff on emerging churches, and by no means am I complete expert on it. However, I’ve read enough to be fluent on what it is and where it might be going.
One issue that comes up for our context is evangelism and emerging churches.
Scott McKnight, one of my former professors at seminary, and now a college teacher offers this warning.
This emerging ambivalence [in emerging churches] about who is in and who is out creates a serious problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish it were. Unless you proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, there is no good news at all—and if there is no Good News, then there is no Christianity, emerging or evangelical.Personally, I’m an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind. I spend time praying in my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home the message of the gospel.
So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.
read the entire article here: Five Streams of the Emerging Church. I recommend the whole article because I think it fairly portrays the Emerging Church.
A reaction:
A blog writer that I found today offers this reaction:
There are a couple shifts in EC theology that cause them to arrive at different methods of evangelism.
First, What is the Gospel? Most in the EC have shifted focus from the Epistles to the Gospels to understand the nature of the gospel (Emerging Churches, 48). Hence, the gospel is “simply put, Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was arriving” (EC, 53).
Second, this shift of focus from cross to kingdom does not eliminate evangelism, but it does help reduce the modern, individualistic, consumeristic gospel that is packaged and sold as “Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven.”
The EC maintains the truth of Christ’s passion and redemption and retains the belief in the uniqueness of Christ and his sacrifice, however the emphasis has shifted. Repentance still means changing ones direction and reorienting oneself toward God, but the recognition of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God by Jesus takes central focus. What results is that evangelism is word AND deed.
The author cites this book: Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures
What do I think?
The Emerging church has a good focus on “belonging” before belief.
The danger that McKnight points out is that if the focus is on belonging, than helping people come to belief in Christ may be neglected. To call people to repentance is a call to change belief in many things: who is Lord of my life, what authority will rule my life. The call to repentance by definition requires an either/or decision that will cause some people not to want to belong. Some groups may choose to neglect the call to repentance simply because of the potential harm to the sense of belonging. Some groups may so focus on belonging that they neglect calling for a committment to Christ — everything is acceptable because belonging is more important than belief.
On the other hand, the emerging church allows people the time and space to discover what they believe in a safe context of community. Most traditional / mainline types require belief (here meaning full agreement to a set of propositions) before belonging. “You are not one of us if you have not made a decision, said a prayer, and / or get baptized. Until you do, you cannot serve in our midst, play an instrument, or even work in the tape ministry or homeless shelter with us.”
The strength of the emerging church is allowing people to belong first while discovering their faith in Christ.
I do believe that evangelism happens in emerging churches. The form is very different than what prior generations may have become accustomed to. It is word and deed. However, in some places, evangelism may not happen because its just a neglected priorty.
Let me ask you this:?
Put the Emerging churches aside. Do you do evangelism at all either in your daily walk or in your church?
Comments (0) Posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007
