We can’t keep trying to improve the mechanics of the system because they’re not the problem. The problem is that the system is doing what it should do because it is energized by a badly shaped gospel.

We can’t keep trying to improve the mechanics of the system because they’re not the problem. The problem is that the system is doing what it should do because it is energized by a badly shaped gospel.

IT WAS 1971. I was a seventeen-year-old high school senior fresh into a brand new experience of faith. I was also full of zeal for evangelism but clueless about how to evangelize other than just telling my friends about what I was so passionate about — God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, and the rapture.

Precisely because (so Christians believe) God wants every single Christian to grow up in understanding as well as trust, the Christian faith has never been something that one generation can sort out in such a way as to leave their successors with no work to do.

Precisely because (so Christians believe) God wants every single Christian to grow up in understanding as well as trust, the Christian faith has never been something that one generation can sort out in such a way as to leave their successors with no work to do.

A salvation culture does not require The Members or The Decided to become The Discipled for salvation. Why not? Because its gospel is a gospel shaped entirely with the “in and out” issue of salvation. Because it’s about making a decision. In this book we want to show that the gospel of Jesus and that of the apostles, both of which created a gospel

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.”

The gospel of King Jesus and of his kingdom-now is indeed “the power of God that brings salvation/deliverance.”