An Efficient Gospel?

Last fall Andy Crouch invited me to write an article for Christianity Today's Christian Vision Project. The question he invited me to consider was really rather limited in its scope: "Is our gospel too small?" See what I mean.

Anyway, I appreciated the opportunity Andy gave me and took this assignment as a challenge. I submitted my piece in November and while the finished article has been edited to half its original length, I am pleased with how it turned out.

It recently ran in the winter issue of Leadership Journal, one of the magazines in the Christianity Today International family of publications. The magazine came out around one month ago but they have just now made my article available online. Marshall Shelley, editor of Leadership Journal, has decided to make this question, "Is our gospel too small?" the focal point of the Christian Vision Project for 2008. My article is the lead offering. They retitled my piece, "An Efficient Gospel?"

An excerpt:

Asking "Is our gospel too small?" implies that something is off kilter—that somehow we have gone off course in the way we answer "the gospel question." But it may not be just our gospel that is too small. It may be that we have been living in a world that was too small—the small, reduced world of modernity.

One of the features of the modern world was "reductionism": the belief that complex things can always be reduced to simpler or more fundamental things. To reduce something is to take it out of context and to take it apart. Church leaders have become experts at reductionism. Ministries that are successful in one context are reduced to "models" that we try to duplicate in other contexts. Sometimes such reductionism is effective. But when we use reductionism indiscriminately, we end up in a world so simplified it is barely recognizable.

So in a modern world, we tend to reduce the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to simple systems, even when our systems flatten the diversity and integrity of the biblical witness. We reduce our sermons to consumer messages that reduce God to a resource that helps the individual secure a reduced version of the "abundant life" Jesus promised (John 10:10).

You can read it here.

Comments

[Rocky]

Nice work. Especially this:

"First with Israel, then with the church, God has animated a people to enact his saving way of life as a prophetic witness against, and a hopeful alternative to, the destructive narratives of the surrounding world."

As well-put a picture of mission as I've seen.

Thanks for writing.

[Adam]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea behind redcutionism. It's my job to take things apart, to look at the individual pieces, and see how they all work together. Doing that has never made it simpler. The further I take something apart, the more pieces I have, and the more complicated the situation becomes. It's the whole, functional piece that is simple. But the whole functional piece doesn't work unless all the other little pieces work as they supposed to.

I think what has happened more is isolationism. This piece doesn't affect that piece. Your experiences have no bearing on my experiences. My point of view is completely seperate from your point of view. Somehow, we created the idea that a few pieces are just as good as all the pieces.

The 'gospel' as presented by today's church, is which pieces do you need and which do you not. You need the Roman's Road to be saved, you don't need Job. You need Genesis 1 to understand creation, you don't need Genesis 2. So, I wouldn't say it was really a reductionalist mentality that caused confusion, but something more like a Cliff's Notes mentality.

Details are hard and we Americans don't like that.

Anyway, it may just be semantics, but those are my thoughts

[Ty]

I thought the article was very interesting. Whether you float on a reductionalist idea or an isolationism or or any other 'ism' you may want to believe, as Ferris says, there seems something lacking.

College comes to mind. Sitting in my room as two men came in to tell us the Gospel. Me sitting there, having grown up with this message and my roommate, who had studied religion from every spectrum and decided that he wasn't overly interested but respected others' beliefs. We sat there listening to this elaborate message of how God loves us, sent his Son and wants a personal relationship with us. We were told to think it over and contact this other person (different from them) if we were interested. Then they left. I was fascinated as my roommate turned, began laughing, and said, "Good to know God wants a relationship with us even if they don't." That's stuck with me...however you deliver the story of Christ, void of relationship - I wonder, does it mean anything or is it more hamful? If the message is true, and I believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, and you do as well...aren't we then brothers? Shouldn't you love me too? If you don't, doesn't that seem to slightly negate the message you're relating?

Perhaps that aspect of the message has been reduced or isolated out. I'll have to think more on the article Tim but I appreciate all the thoughts and effort you go to in spreading the message, continually challenging yourself and others, and living the message! Miss you guys but according to the weather it's freezing there and almost 50degrees here! So, I'll take it!

[brad brisco]

Very nice article.

I like the way you finished by contrasting questions with a Kingdom of God perspective. Is not the gospel the fact that we now have the opportunity, through Christ, to enter and actively participant in the Kingdom? Asking how can I participant today is most certainly a "bigger" and a better question than something like "do you know if you died tonight..."

Keep up the good work!

[Will Randolph]

I thoroughly enjoyed the article. I was curious, though, if you had a link or a copy of the full length article. It would be interesting to see some of the ideas more fully explored and see some of what only made it to the cutting room floor.

[Tim]

Hey everyone - thanks for the feedback.

Tim