Monday 5 March 2018

What is the Gospel?






I have been noticing on some of the facebook groups I belong, that many have been falling out over evangelism.  One post reminded everybody of clause three of the Baptist unions declaration of principle, ‘that it is the duty of every disciple to bear personal witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to take part in the evangelisation of the world’.[1]  Arguments followed… what does it mean to be Baptist?  How do we bear witness?  But I think the most vital question is, what is the gospel of Jesus Christ?

As I have said previously, I feel like my faith is being stripped down and rebuilt as I missionally listen.  One way this is happening is in my understanding of the gospel.  Though I never tried to actively preach it, I believe deep down I have been shaped by a reduced gospel.  Many evangelical churches place their strongest emphasis on conversion, what matters is that individuals are saved from their sin.  Over time the gospel has been reduced to four or five claims, seen most evidently in the literature used for Billy Graham crusades.  Those claims: Step one: God loves you; Step two: You are a sinner; Step three: God paid the price; step four: If you confess and believe God will forgive you and step five: You can live as Gods child.[2]  Here we have the Gospel of Salvation.  A reduced gospel.  Guder understands this type of reductionism to be the ‘precise point of challenge to Western churches if they are to become faithfully missional in our changing world’.[3]  

There is much to criticise with the reduced gospel of salvation.  Murray believes it relies on eloquent professional persuaders for evangelism.[4]  McLaren has a growing unease with its limitation and fears that for too many Christians, personal salvation has become another personal consumer product and Christianity has become its marketing program making salvation ‘all about me’.[5]  For McKnight, the salvation culture only asks one question, ‘who’s in and whose out’ and fails at discipleship.[6]  One example of this is the self-reflection of megachurch Willow Creek community church in Chicago.  They conducted a study to measure the progress of their mission to raise up ‘fully devoted followers of Christ’.  Their question was simple, do the thousands of people that they attract lives’ look different to others?  The answer was that though they were excellent at making believers they had a long way to go when it comes to forming disciples.  Dallas Willard believes reducing the gospel to just that of salvation:

 presumes a Christ with no serious work other than redeeming humankind… [and] they foster “vampire Christians,” who only want a little blood for their sins but nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven.

 Claiborne concludes, if our gospel is only about salvation then it is incomplete.[7] Marshall states that it has been staggering that we have reduced the New Testament to nothing more than a message of personal salvation.[8] He writes:

 We need a gospel with ethical content restored. We need a gospel with political vision restored. We need a gospel that is good news for the world and not an offer of escape from the world.[9]

 Most worrying for me, is this gospel does not speak into the big issues in our world today.  McLaren helpfully groups those big issues into four dysfunctions:  The prosperity crisis, environmental breakdown caused by the unfair unsustainable global economy; the equity crisis, the growing gap between rich and poor; the security crisis, the danger of cataclysmic war; and the spiritual crisis, the failure of world religions to frame a story capable of healing the three-previous crisis.[10] 

We can conclude that by reducing the gospel this way we find a God only interested in the individual, a missional strategy reliant on persuasive professionals and programmes, a membership that are not discipled and as a result no different to those around them in everyday life and we live in a world we want to escape, to reach our eternal destination.  Most tragically the reduced gospel of salvation leaves us with little in the way of answer to McLaren’s four dysfunctions of contemporary culture.  Marshall is right, we need a new gospel. 

Rob Bell in 2009 did a five-part film series devoted to reclaiming the sermon.  The first was entitled ‘beginning at the beginning’.[11]  His premise is where the story begins and ends shapes the story that you tell.  There is much to learn here regarding biblical mission.  The story begins in a garden with the creator who creates a creation and calls humans to be responsible and participate as co-creators.[12] We are on this earth for a purpose that flows from the creative purpose of God.[13] In the garden all is blessed with all the blessings summed up by the one word shalom, meaning:

complete reconciliation, a state of the fullest flourishing in every dimension–physical, emotional, social, and spiritual–because all relationships are right, perfect, and filled with joy.[14] 

The story ends in the city.[15] Here humans will participate in the reordering of creation.[16] Once again all will be blessed with all the blessings, shalom.  Bell suggests, if you were to remove sin from the bible you would have the four chapters that describe these places, and here you have a journey from a garden to a city.  What’s a city?  Bell suggests a series of well-ordered gardens.[17] Here we see a movement of enlarging shalom with which humans are called to participate in. It is in the third chapter of Genesis that sin comes into the world and we have disrupted shalom.  Bell reminds us that this passage is not the beginning or the end of the story.[18]  Sin is important but temporary and God invites us to repent and return to be co-creators.  The story considering Genesis three is now about God renewing all things,[19]restoring all things[20] and reconciling all things.[21]  If the story we are telling begins in Genesis three it becomes about removing sin but if we begin in chapter one the story becomes the restoration of shalom.[22]  This still includes the removal of sin but in its proper place within the bigger story of restoration. If we begin in chapter three the starting point for mission is that ‘you are a sinner’ but if we begin with chapter one our starting point is God’s creation and how good it is, our role within it and a call to repentance because of our part in the disruption of shalom.  If we start with Genesis three we look for how we are going to escape our present context, Bell calls this ‘disembodied evacuation’, but if we begin in Genesis one we see ‘participatory physicality’ as joining in with the restoration of shalom.[23] 

 From the bleak narratives of Genesis three to eleven we see God begin restoring shalom with His great promise to Abraham[24] It is here we know that God is completely, covenantally, eternally committed to the mission of blessing the nations.[25]  Israel came into existence as a people entrusted to join in with this mission of God for the sake of all the other nations.[26] 

Bell then discusses the signs of the kingdom in John, concluding the eighth, the resurrection of Jesus, begins a new creation right here amid this one. Mary’s intuitive guess when she sees Jesus at the tomb is he must be the gardener.[27]  Wright believes that on one level she was wrong but on another deeply right.  This is the new creation and here he is: ‘the new Adam, the gardener, charged with bringing the chaos of God’s creation into new order, into flower, into fruitfulness’.[28] The story now is about anticipating the coming day when heaven and earth are one again.  Our task is now of praying for and being called to live on earth as it is heaven now and participating in it forever.  Now we can remove modernity’s divide of the secular and sacred realm and we can see all things, such as, business, arts and justice as ministry and in need of redemption. Bell concludes, the Gospel is Gods desire to restore shalom. The gospel is because of the resurrection of Jesus, a whole new world is coming right here and now, and everyone everywhere can be a part of it.  We are called to bring ‘hope not rooted in escape but in engagement, not in evacuation but reclamation, not by leaving but staying and overcoming’ and we should never be surprised ‘when grace, beauty, meaning, order, compassion, truth and love show up… in unexpected good people and places’ because it has and always will be Gods world.[29]

 I appreciate this approach from Bell and others.  Though he doesn’t mention it – it is based on the missio Dei – the major biblical truth that the God revealed in scriptures is a missional God, personal, purposeful and goal orientated.[30]  Barth originally showed the concept of missio in the early church is to be found in the trinity, Hartenstein built on this when he coined the phrase Missio Dei, he wrote:

Mission is not a matter human activity or organisation, ‘its sources is the triune God himself’. The mission of the Son for the reconciliation of all things through the power of the Spirit is the foundation and goal of the mission.[31]

 The same view is found in Mission shaped church:

 The mission of God as creator through Christ, in the Spirit, is to bring into being, sustain and perfect the whole creation… The mission of God as redeemer, through Christ, in the Spirit, is to restore and reconcile the fallen creation… the mission of the church is the gift of participating through the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mission from the father to the world.[32]

The gospel of the kingdom insists on participation with what God as creator is doing.  It insists on seeing all things as needing redemption.  A gospel of a loving, compassionate God is possibly still welcomed, a gospel that speaks of new beginnings and envisions a radical vision for a different world might be listened too, a gospel that is candid about injustice, cruelty, of disrupted shalom may be respected but a gospel that unswervingly focuses on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will encounter resistance.[33]  Here is my only critique of Bell is that he knows of this resistance and he underplays the importance of the cross for personal salvation.  He does see the need for repentance from our role in disrupting shalom but fails to link that forgiveness to the ultimate act, ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’.[34]  With this critique added to Bell’s argument I think we can agree with Newbigin that the gospel is

the announcement that in the series of events that have their centre in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ something has happened that alters the total human situation and must therefore call into question every human culture.[35]

This Gospel of the kingdom offers much in our engagement with contemporary culture.  Evangelism would move from recruitment of those outside of the church to an invitation of companionship.  The church would show that their hope is in a God who reigns in love and will bring about good for the whole earth.  The testimony of the church would be the hearing of this announcement and knowing it already breaking into the world.  They would confirm that they now know the open welcome and can invite others to join them as those to whom God's welcome has also been extended. The church would offer those invited assistance into the reign of God, the kingdom, and travel with them as co-pilgrims.[36]  I conclude with Marshall, this approach of humility is long overdue.[37]  Most importantly, it frames our story in a way that it speaks to McLarens four dysfunctions.  It is a story that needs to be heard and can be spoken with confidence in our post-Christendom culture. 

I am loving my emerging understanding of the Gospel!  Let us share the wondrous story!















[1] Fiddes, P., Haymes, B., Kidd, R. and Quicke, M. (1996). Something to declare. Baptist Union of Great Britain. Retrieved January 9, 2018 11:09 from Baptist union of Great Britain: http://baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=111290. p. 28. 
[2] McKnight, S. (2011). The King Jesus Gospel. Revised ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 90.
[3] Guder, D.L. (2000). The continuing conversion of the church. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 98.
[4] Murray, S. (2004). Post-Christendom. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. p. 226.
[5] McLaren, B. (2004). A generous orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.p. 107.
[6] McKnight. (2016). P.30.
[7] Claiborne, S. and Campolo, T. (2012). Red Letter Christianity. London: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. 10-11.
[8] Marshall, G. (2013). ‘A missional ecclesiology for the 21st century’. Journal of European Baptist Studies.  Holland: International Baptist Theological Seminary. p.16. 
[9] Ibid. p.16.
[10] McLaren. (2007). p. 5.
[11] Bell, R. (2009). Beginning at the beginning. Robbell.com. Retrieved January 10, 2018 9:41 from YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2cwMOcMDjhc.
[12] Genesis 1 and 2. (NRSV).
[13] Wright, C. (2003). ‘Truth with a mission:  Reading scripture missiologically’, in Gardner, P., Wright, C. and Green, C. (eds). (2003). Fanning the flame. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 227.
[14] Keller, T. (2010). Generous Justice. London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 174.
[15] Revelation 21 and 22. (NRSV).
[16] Isaiah 65. (NRSV).
[17] Bell. (2009).
[18] Ibid.
[19] Matthew 19. (NRSV).
[20] Acts 3. (NRSV).
[21] Colossians 1. (NRSV).
[22] Bell. (2009).
[23] Ibid.
[24] Genesis 12:1-3. (NRSV).
[25] Wright. (2003). p. 226.
[26] Ibid. p. 227. 
[27] John 20:15. (NRSV).
[28] Wright, T. (2002). John for everyone. London: SPCK. p. 146.
[29] Bell. (2009).
[30] Wright. (2003). p. 225.
[31] Robinson, M. and Stängle, G. ‘Missional – The new paradigm in our heterogeneous contexts’, in Badenberg, R. and Knödler, F. (eds). (2015). Missional – Embracing a paradigm shift for missions. Hamburg: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. p. 28.
[34] 1 Corinthians 15:3. (NRSV). 
[35] Newbigin, L. (1986). Foolishness to the Greeks. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. pp. 3-4. 
[36] Guder, D.L. (1998). Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 97.
[37] Marshall. (2013). p. 17. 

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