I gave a presentation there on evangelism, the central question being How can we reclaim (verbal) proclamation of the gospel? In other words, we have talked for a long time about how not to do evangelism and the limits and failings of traditional models and tools (some folks even call themselves post-evangelicals), but I wanted to turn the tide of the conversation and start getting practical about what we do want to do and say.

I argued that we need to move toward biblical language rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and create new metaphors. (New metaphors are fine and even necessary, but I think this is a secondary move after recapturing the biblical language). And I suggested three clusters of language that we should start using again: 1. kingdom/reign language, 2. promises/inheritance/family language, and 3. slavery/powers/liberation language.

I closed my talk by taking a stab at a 2-minute gospel presentation using each of those language clusters. A lot of folks asked me for copies of those afterwards and I promised I would post them online, so here they are. (Apologies it took so long, I’ve been sick since the Commons).

1. Jesus’ message was that “the kingdom of God is coming,” that God was finally initiating his reign of peace and justice and brotherhood. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the first Jesus followers began to understand that THAT was how God had begun the kingdom. Jesus’ death was the end of the reign of sin and death, he took them on himself by taking on our human flesh, and they died with him at the cross. And Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of the reign of life, God’s announcement that all his and our enemies have been defeated. One day God will bring that kingdom to completion. In the meantime, God’s Spirit has been made available to everyone who trusts that God has done this through Jesus, anyone who looks at Jesus and has faith God’s kingdom has begun and follows him as King. And his Spirit allows us to participate in the kingdom now, to be people who “reign in life through him” (Rom 5.17). We can come out of what Scripture calls the “kingdom of darkness,” have our sins forgiven, and begin a new life in this new kingdom.

2. Scripture says that when God created the world and humanity, everything was “very good” (Gen 1). And after humanity fell into rebellion and sin, and brokenness and chaos spread like a disease, God set out to fix that, to accomplish what Scripture calls “the redemption of all things.” He started this redemption project by initiating a relationship with Abraham. And God promised Abraham and his family 3 things: that he would make him into a people, that he would give that people a land, and that he come and dwell among then and be there God (Gen 15 and 17). After Jesus’ death and resurrection, his disciples came to understand that he was the way God had fulfilled all these promises. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection God had been faithful not just the promises he made to Abraham/Israel, but to his broader purposes of liberating humanity and the creation and restoring them to “very good.” When Jesus went to the cross, he purified his followers of their sins, so that when God raised him from the dead, God’s Spirit could dwell in them. So now, anyone who trusts and follows Jesus becomes an heir of the 3 promises, a member of Abraham’s/God’s family. They become part of a community of the redeemed (the people promise), they have a renewed relationship with the creation and the assurance of God’s provision (the land promise), and they have God’s Spirit dwelling in them (the God promise).

3. God is a perfectly free God who created us for freedom too. But because of human rebellion, the forces of evil were unleashed and reign over humanity and the creation (think Pandora’s box). So our sin and all the brokenness in the world are a much bigger problem than the individual choices we make. People, communities, nations and the creation itself are enslaved to what Scripture calls “the powers.” Like addicts we are in bondage and can’t just stop on our own strength. So to set us free, God emptied himself of all power to defeat those powers on our behalf, and to show us that real freedom comes from another kind of power: the power to heal, the power to forgive, to reconcile and create community, the power create justice without using violence. This upside-down kind of power was demonstrated at the cross. Scripture says that on the cross Jesus, “disarmed the powers of this world, and triumphed over them” (Col 2.15) so that we could be freed from slavery to the powers, including the power of death! We access that freedom through “faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” If we believe in Jesus’ resurrection, then we understand that his death was his victory, not his defeat. And if we are “baptized into his death,” and embrace this upside-down power as our way of life, then we are “made alive together with him” (Col 2.13).

Hope these are helpful to anyone trying to do kingdom work. For all you theology geeks who want to give feedback, I would say #1 is a presentation of the Christus Victor model based on the gospels and Romans; #2 is a presentation of a re-Judaized penal substitution model (i.e., keeping covenant promises as the broader context) based on Genesis, Romans, and Galatians; and #3 is a hybrid of Christus Victor and moral influence model based largely on Colossians. In all three attempts I tried to A) paint a more holistic picture of salvation/move beyond an after-life-centered account, B) narrow the gap between faith and faithfulness/heart and actions caused by the strong Lutheran dichotomy between faith and works, C) include the Spirit as a part of the fundamentals of the gospel, to move away from the Binitarianism of traditional evangelism.

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