Scot McKnight is worried:
He’s not the only one. I’m currently reading Michael Frost‘s book ‘The Road To Missional‘, in which he builds on the work of N T Wright and the late David Bosch to say that mission is alerting the world in announcement and demonstration to the fact that Jesus is King.
What they all seem to be getting at is that we have reduced the gospel to easy-believism. ‘Just accept Christ as Lord and Saviour.’ ‘Repent and believe.’ Well, yes, except the emphases on ‘Lord’ and ‘repent’ often fail to connect with Jesus’ frequent command in the Gospels to follow him. Indeed, these approaches are often embarrassed by the Gospels, drawing purely on a certain reading of Paul and only concentrating on the death of Christ, plus perhaps his birth to prove he was divine. The bits in between seem irrelevant to this approach.
How, then, should we summarise the Gospel? How would you summarise the Gospel? Indeed, can we summarise the Gospel briefly?
Big Circumstance 
Dave, just found this blog, only because I was referencing the Bruce Cockburn album of the same name at the time – it’s great. I have really enjoyed browsing and found much that I resonate with. I am on the same missional direction, but as a headteacher of a church school in Milton Keynes that is trying to straddle the world between a godly education and the church. Amazing adventure. We are an ecumenical school, which can mean lowest common denominator Christianity from time to time, but am also a big fan of Tom Wright’s and Brian McLaren’s writing that keeps me focused on the nature of the kingdom among us, so we are starting to see God doing some quite evangelical and a few strangely charismatic things in school even in the midst of the missional focus. It is a wonderful place to be – thank you for your blog, which has cheered me up no end!
Huw
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Huw,
Welcome here and thank you especially for such kind words! Cockburn fans are always welcome, too – have you read Brian Walsh’s recent book ‘Kicking at the Darkness’ about the theology in his lyrics? Your school situation sounds amazing. I look forward to learning more – will check out your blog, too.
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