A few years after I encountered Jesus personally, I became a volunteer\nin a ministry that preached on the streets. As part of the orientation process\nwe were taught to share the gospel and it went something like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGod sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die\non a cross as a sacrifice for your sins and Jesus was resurrected back to life\nso that if you confess your sins and believe in Him through faith, you will be\nsaved from judgment and gain eternal life.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I looked back on\nthis experience I realise this presentation was true, but not the whole truth.\nThat version of the gospel becomes something you can shout into a megaphone,\nsomething you can print on a tract and drop in mailboxes. While God may use\nthose efforts, they are not the best reflection of how God himself delivered\nthe good news (gospel).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This version of the\ngospel is disembodied truth. It makes the Gospel just a concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later in my Christian walk I was taught to\nshare my story with people. What I discovered is that Evangelicals love a good\nstory. We\u2019re all about \u201csharing our testimonies\u201d and \u201ctelling our stories\u201d and\nrecounting our \u201cspiritual journey.\u201d But there\u2019s a subtle danger lurking here.\nBecause of our emphasis on conversion stories and testimonies, we can unintentionally\nmake people think that the gospel is personified in your experience. We\ninterpret The Great Commission\u2019s \u201cGo make disciples\u201d as \u201cGo tell your story.\u201d\nThey are not the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This version of the\ngospel is embodied but it makes the gospel about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gospel at its\ncore is not a disembodied claim or centred on us; the gospel is a person and we\nare to introduce people to Jesus himself. The good news is incarnated in Jesus.\nIt is personified in Jesus. The gospel was communicated in flesh, not just in\nwords or testimonies. \n\nThis is done both inside and outside the\ncommunity of faith. We must take individuals seriously. Each person is a vital\npart of a network in the broader society. Each person is an object of God\u2019s\neternal compassion. The message itself must remain compellingly related to the\nrelationship between an individual and Jesus. This way it is infectious and\ntimeless in nature. The message is viral and can readily be passed on. Without this\ngospel we are definitely on the way to death, precisely because the gospel (the\nevangel) is what brings new life.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years after I encountered Jesus personally, I became a volunteer in a ministry that preached on the streets. As part of the orientation process we were taught to share the gospel and it went something like this: \u201cGod sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross as a sacrifice for your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n