Jesus Creed » Letters to Emerging Christians

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