Well-put, as usual. I spent some time in churches that taught this and coming from a secular home, I always thought, “If earning entrance to heaven is the point, why do we have to listen to low-intelligence sermons and kitschy songs?”
My refuge during that period was in books by writers like Lewis and Tozer. Thank God for them or I don’t know if I would have stuck with it.
I have become passionate about a variation on the Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world): God calls us to join him in fixing the world. We may not be able to finish the job, but neither are we free to refrain from starting (to paraphrase a saying from rabbinic literature).
Derek Leman

The problem is Evangelicals are always looking for the best thumbnail sketch — the elevator presentation — of the gospel. They want the part that is sufficient for salvation, the part that can be imparted in a few minutes, even a few seconds if necessary — they want to share the gospel, at least plant a seed of sin-faith-repentence to everyone they can. I understand and even agree with that goal.
But after that discipleship should take place to broaden our understanding of what it means to live out the gospel. That too often doesn’t happen.

Yes, I agree, too. Perhaps that’s why I’m enamored with the idea of spiritual formation; learning we are God’s beloved, saying ‘yes’ to God’s offer of love in Jesus Christ (and turning away from the old or false ways of living) – and then journeying with Jesus. In community – becoming more like Jesus, and, in the process, allowing God to direct us in ways to restore the world, relationships, and be restored as well.

So say we all, Scot. The challenge is learning this for ourselves and then helping others to see it who have been brought up on a “five-star” gospel. There is something nice about simple presentations, and off the top of my head, what if, to start the conversation we were to say something like this (realizing this too is missing things, as like any presentation, it is a sort of Cliff’s notes of the grand story of Scripture):
- God has a wonderful plan to create a people for himself who live with him and participate in his work
- We separate ourselves from God, his work and his people by our sins
- Jesus showed us the way to live life with God and opened up the way for us to participate in God’s work, which is called the kingdom, through his life, death and resurrection
- By entering into life with/in Christ through the power of Holy Spirit, we are able to live out God’s plan with God and his people in this life and eternity

This is why I keep coming back here; it is so nice to hear from other people who “get it”. The problem is how to move these ideas from a place like this into church communities. It seems to be far too rare a thing to have both leaders and congregation ready and in agreement that church is vital and about more than “how to get to heaven and not get into too much trouble until that happens”. In some places, people are still busy fighting denominational battles even – although that is thankfully becoming less and less so. But still, how do we move these ideas out to the ground level?

We have to think bigger. Our good news is too small. And that impacts all of it, including the five star gospel itself.
Good, helpful post. I need to keep working on this. To know or believe a few things is not enough.

I am enjoying the conversation and continuing to learn and grow.

Allowing for the moment the argument that the “5-star” gospel is too small, is there such a thing as the gospel being too big? After all, for all we know the firmament is endless; is the gospel like that as well? Is everything in life “the gospel?”
A problem that I think might arise from this expansive vision is that we make things that ought to be matters of Christian prudence central to the gospel (e.g. political stances).

The central question Paul seems to be answering in Romans is: Who are now the covenant people of God with Gentiles streaming in and most Jews rejecting Jesus? Has God abandoned Israel? Has he been faithful or not? Who are the people of God?
So when you read Romans in such a way that you screen out its central point, it’s not surprising things get a little … distorted.

I was part of a college/church environment that could spit out those points from Romans on unsuspecting converts faster than anything. something never quite set right with me about that all. Something is wrong when there are contests to “win” people. Years later, coming into an understanding of God’s work as story is indeed a beautiful thing. Now I see every single person as being on a journey and my desire to share with them has gone from fear and being forced to wanting to simply help them find their place in God’s story. Don’t give up on kingdom teaching, Scot.

Along with the industrial revolution came a mindset of value equaling what we can do with it. It got into christian thinking and the what can we do with it was make more christians. With such thinking I doubt we’d have Bach or Rembrandt, creating for the joy of creating. Before the industrial revolution one could enjoy a flower just to enjoy a flower, it didn’t need to “do” anything. The way it got into the church is that the message is valued, the right message is valued, and making more christians is the right message and is what being a christian is about. That leaves out the value for example of enjoying a relationship just for enjoying it, it hasn’t room for the dirty/ugly side of real life, like people dying in car accidents, without pushing a smiley christian twist to it.

“God’s work in this world is to form communities that visibly demonstrate the power of God at work in this world.” My experience is the organized church is all about the gifted but isolated Senior Pastor, so is that what God is doing in this world?

Well, if we think of ‘kingdom’ more as God’s active reign or his right to lead, provide for and organize all life, large and small scale, then the problem is that there are individuals, families and whole societies where this is not happening in varying degrees and ways, where the creation is working against itself and its Creator, where life is organized and working against Life.
Jesus, the one “Christened” to inaugurate God’s reign on the earth, shows us how to quit working against ourselves, others and Life itself and work with and for them, how to let our cancerous agendas die and let God heal and restore through us, making us alive with his own Spirit and bringing healing to those around us.
My most recent blog post (March! ugh.) was about the cross within the story of God’s government coming (back) to earth, breathing Life into cancerous cells, making them part of his healing work. IMO, we need that larger context of God seeking to lead and organize and give life to his creation as it’s most loving and rightful leader. We need to see the return of God’s leadership of and provision for creation more at the core of the good news and salvation itself, within which amnesty and training in cooperation (discipleship) can make sense.

Scot, the only thing I don’t like about this post is that I did not write it myself. Thank you, and keep playing this song (as opposed to plucking one string), the people of God desperately need to mbrace and be part of God’s active rule — now, not later; here, not “out there” some place in the eternal future.

The Gospel, as I have been given to understand it, amounts to this:
1. We were created by the Relational God to live in a specific lifestyle with Him, in tune with and in stewardship over the world.
2. We rejected this existence for short cuts.
3. God has spent the last several thousand years preparing humanity at different steps to come back into alignment with the original intent of creation. Within this program, he has:
A. Created a separated people who lived by a law which existed to point them to God, even as they refused to know Him.
B. Promised a perfect King, who unlike the other rulers of earth, would not enslave them, steal from them, use their children as soliders, their earnings as taxes, and would bring blessings, peace, and healing to the world.
C. Promised that this perfect King would bring rest and restoration to the world.
4. In the coming of Christ, the beginning of His ministry was the reading of Isaiah 61, which sums up a lot of the above, and states that this is, indeed, that time of the perfect King, the Messiah, who will heal all wounds, and be unlike any previous ruler. As a sign that he does not rule through the manner of the Prince of this world, He allowed Himself to be subjugated and executed by the powers that be, to show that:
A. He has all power over the natural world, including life itself,
B. That without the power over death, the powers of the natural world cannot threaten or rule the people of the Kingdom
C. That even the power of sin dies before the true Messiah, and so he put it all to death in Himself, suffering spiritual separation from God to spare us all from this infection that we had chosen.
5. Rising from the dead, Christ not only embodies the fulfillment of the promise of life, but also inaugurates the coming of the Kingdom of God, the beginning of the building process, through the ongoing discipleship of the church, in tune with the Spirit of God.
So the focus is not sin, or hell, but rather our coming back into line with God’s Kingdom, and the healing, peace, and fulfillment found within that. The alternative to the Kingdom of heaven is destruction by being in line with the kingdoms of this world, who operate to precisely the opposite ends of Christ.

I find it interesting (and appropriate) that you use the phrase “Jesus as blue parakeet” shortly before an embedded Twitter button.
As Twitter is basically a nonstop torrent of tweeted trivia, so Jesus as Blue Parakeet becomes a nonstop torrent of Christian (TM) platitudes and attitudes. Trivial platitudes and attitudes. And a lot of Blue Parakeet Christians are summoning the Fail Whale without realizing it.

Ben Wheaton @ 8, “…is there such a thing as the gospel being too big? After all, for all we know the firmament is endless; is the gospel like that as well? Is everything in life “the gospel?”
I think the answer to the last question will ultimately be yes. I think as long as we draw on the Biblical story, we won’t have to worry about being too generalized. Jesus frequently described the kingdom in everyday, simple terms.

I keep thinking that, while the “bullet point” gospel that Scot laid out is too small and narrative-less…we need, as faithful evangelicals, to be able to find ways to share the whole story (creation, fall, cov-com, Christ, consummation) in a way that is concise enough to express “on the fly” when we have to, and robust enough to dive deeper into in the context of our communities. I personally still think there is some hope for relationship evangelism (at office, park, etc), but I want a way to tell the WHOLE story in a concise way. I also think finding a way to do this precedes any kind of “transaction” moment. We tell the story, let people know God wants them to be a part of it, and then and only then, if they desire to understand how to enter into that story do we reveal their need to confess, repent, and be baptized. For me it’s a two stage process: tell the Good News (whole story in a concise way if possible) and then invite people into it.
This is what I’ve been pondering for a while now. A “narrative evangelism”. Hopefully the Origins Project will move in this area.
P.S. The church as a Gospel Community plays a huge role in this by living counter to other stories. That said…we do need to equip people to share the story in meaningful ways in their everyday lives.

Re: trivialization of church (in the OP)
This marginalization of church in God’s divine order (and thus in the life of the believer) is dead straight on, and it gets worse. It is a vicious downward cycle: The church trivialized the gospel as described; the revised gospel trivializes the church; the church now acts out, behaving ever more trivially! (Sadly the high church traditions trivialize the church too, reducing it to an authority structure. Ironic.)
I sum up this truncated gospel as “mere atonement”, which predictably earns me withering criticism, and I guess I intend to be provocative. Atonement is priceless beyond measure, but there is more to the cross than atonement, it embodies the victory of God in the earth. The kingdom.
A gospel without a kingdom is not a gospel. It is a shame we leave people groping through christianity to discover the kingdom incidentally on their own. Especially when the kingdom of God is hoti eggus!

Scot, I love this post. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. I particularly liked, “It is like taking five stars from the sky, knocking them out of their orbits and solar location, and lining them up like ducks in a row and then saying, ‘Here’s our starry sky!’”

In contrast to several of the posters here, I’m not at all sure that an “on the fly” or “thumbnail” gospel is either desirable or helpful. Anything that means anything–”Jesus is Lord & King,” “It’s the community, stupid” (OK, that’s not a great summary), or the four laws–has still got to be unpacked to actually convey a shred of the important meaning it contains.
If we believe we have to have an elevator gospel to be able to share, we’re forgetting who plants the seed and who actually gives the increase. Successful evangelism, while it needs evangelists, will always be more about faithfulness than a good success strategy.

As Ben Witherington says in his critique of Bart Ehrman’s newest book, before you boil something down, you first must boil it up. That is, before you summarize something to others, you yourself better know the details.
The challenge and trouble of summarizing the biblical story is that something inevitably gets left out or deemphasized. What I hear you saying Scot is what gets left out is community aspect of the gospel– Christ died for “our” sins (1 Corinthians 15:3) and the Acts community that formed thereafter. What you’re not saying is that the gospel simply boils down to the last paragraph of your article.
This article is definitely thought provoking.

Great post! Community is central to our faith and the evangelistic effort. I’ve learned the importance of community in the past couple years of my life as a missionary. For example, in the past, missionaries could go to churches, share their call and gobs of people would support them and churches were even willing to jump on board. Today, the support raising endeavor works completely differently. You can no longer speak in a church and expect Christians to be excited about your work. You can’t go up to a Christian you do not have a relationship with and share your vision for cross-cultural ministry and expect them to be excited. When we shared in congregations we found that maybe (if we were lucky) 1% of the listeners would want to join our ministry as a financial or prayer partner. If we can’t convince Christians to be excited about our ministry, to pray for us on a regular basis or to give a tiny fraction of their salary to the work God has for us to do, how do we think we can convince people to drastically change their life and allegiance to our Lord and Savior? I think the days of “sharing the gospel,” formulaic representations of what God has done and is doing, and converting people with biblical truths are over if not soon to be. People don’t want our formulas and they don’t want our systems. People want to see that Jesus has actually changed our lives. Until we begin to truly live in community with each other, we really have nothing to offer the world around us. If our truths are not lived and if our Christian communities do not reflect something different, people will continue to regard us a clanging gongs and clashing symbols. The time for speaking has passed; the time for living is now.