The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited

At the most conservative of estimates, we lose at least 50 percent of those who make decisions. We cannot help but conclude that making a decision is not the vital element that leads to a life of discipleship. Much higher correlations can be found between routine Sunday school participation, youth group participation, and families that nurture one

Evangelicalism is known for at least two words: gospel and (personal) salvation.

nearly all of my Christian students tell me that the gospel they heard as they grew up primarily had to do with their sin, Jesus’ death, and going to heaven.

I believe the word gospel has been hijacked by what we believe about “personal salvation,” and the gospel itself has been reshaped to facilitate making “decisions.” The result of this hijacking is that the word gospel no longer means in our world what it originally meant to either Jesus or the apostles.

What has happened is that we have created a “salvation culture” and mistakenly assumed it is a “gospel culture.”

“For most American Christians, the gospel is about getting my sins forgiven so I can go to heaven when I die.”

It is a view of grace and salvation that, supposedly, gets one ready to die, but leaves them unprepared to live now in the grace and power of resurrection life.

What has happened is that we have created a “salvation culture” and mistakenly assumed it is a “gospel culture.”

However, this story is not the same as the gospel. The gospel fits into this story, but it is not the story. Further, the gospel only makes sense in that story. Now a very important claim: without that story there is no gospel. This leads to a second claim: if we ignore that story, the gospel gets distorted, and that is just what has happened in sa