This is the historic gospel which the early Christian leaders urge their followers to 'guard' carefully (2 Timothy 1:14). Although this good news might have a different appeal to each person, churches committed to a sense of urgency (2 Timothy 4:2 JPB) about persuading people to receive Christ (John 1:12) are the only ones growing throughout the world.
A few years ago I wrote a little book called Recent Trends Among Evangelicals in which I pointed out the dangers of too narrow a definition of 'evangelicalism'. The word comes from the Greek euangelion, meaning good news. At the Protestant Reformation the word came into vogue to describe those who emphasised the authority of the Bible and salvation by Christ's grace through 'faith alone'. Now this gospel idea is a sound one, provided that we don't become too individualistic, disregarding the ways in which the Lord of the church works through the Christian community, past and present. For example, most well-read 'evangelicals' hardly know any of the great spiritual masters who lived between the third and the fourteenth centuries. Apparently God was dead for a thousand years!
It is also possible to narrow the 'gospel' to an other-worldly 'pie in the sky when you die bye and bye', opting out of our social responsibility, a strong feature of the Judeo-Christian faith.
A further problem is that of dogmatism - the refuge for the insecure. Many of the 'sects' despise scholarship; but we need the best theological and biblically-literate minds the church can produce. Education on its own doesn't produce better Christians: sometimes a theological education can lead people to miss the point completely. We need both heat and light - fervour and knowledge. And never forget that the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word!
Another issue is polemics - majoring on our controversies and disagreements rather than on the great affirmations we can make together. I happen to believe in the existence of a personal Devil (I think Jesus did too), who's out to divide Christians from one another, so they'll forget who their real enemy is. And we've fallen for it! The Pharisees in Jesus' day had this problem: they defined 'doctrine' so narrowly there were always squabbles as to who was orthodox or not. Christian sects have done this ever since.
I believe there is an even greater danger from such a Pharisaic mind-set: majoring on dogma rather than the dynamics of our faith. For example: love and justice were, for Jesus, the two greatest 'kingdom values' (Matthew 22:36 ff, 23:23, Luke 11:42). And yet I can find no creed, confession of faith, or evangelical doctrinal statement before about the 1960s (except for John Wesley's) - and very few recent ones - that mention explicitly either love or justice! It is very easy for 'evangelicals' to be Pharisees!
The Christian faith is much more than believing propositions in your head: it's being open to a God whose other name is 'Surprise'! A W Tozer has written somewhere: 'The God of he modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much within the constitution. He never breaks any of our by-laws. He's a very well-behaved God, very denominational, very much one of us... The God of the modern evangelical isn't a God I could have much respect for. But when the Holy Spirit shows us God as he is we admire him to the point of wonder and delight.'
OK, you ask, we must agree on what we agree on - so what's that? Let me respond in two ways: (1) We accept, in full fellowship, all whom God has accepted (Romans 13:7). Isn't it crazy that some Christians have their names written in the 'Lamb's Book of Life' in heaven, but we wouldn't have them on our church rolls?! (2) The New Testament says confessing Jesus as the risen Lord is the essence of being a Christian (Romans 10:9). As the old saying has it, In all things essential, unity; in all things doubtful, liberty; but in all things, charity!
Further Reading: Rowland Croucher, Recent Trends Among Evangelicals, John Mark Ministries, 1996.
Discuss: (1) Try putting into about 50 words the essence of the Christian 'good news'. (Use passages like Matthew 23:23, 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Acts 10:34-43 to help). Share your summary with the group, and discuss variations in each person's attempt. Remember, however, the gospel is 'many-coloured': each N.T. writer gives a slightly different perspective on it, so our understandings will have a rich variety about them too. (2) If you had to put together a 'minimal creed' - the very basic affirmations all Christians should agree on - what would it say?
These missionaries told others of the 'good news about the Lord Jesus' (Acts 11:20). The 'gospel' is more than a code of morals or ideas about civic duty; it is more than 'good views about the Lord Jesus' says Stanley Jones. It is the good news that God loved us so much that he has taken the initiative to come to us (John 3:16), live among us as one of us (1 John 1:1), inviting us to turn from our sins and be reconciled to him (2 Corinthians 5:20). He even died for us (Romans 5:6-8), and now offers us 'life in all its fullness' (John 10:10), as we are obedient to him as Lord in the church and in the world (John 14:21).
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