Can You Share the Gospel Simply?

I was talking to a lady in another church I was a member of. She was involved in our AWANA ministry, and had just returned from some month-long retreat put on by a horrible ministry. I asked her how she would share the Gospel with a 9-yr old child in our AWANA ministry. She said,

“I would tell him that he needs to put on the robe of Christ’s righteousness and join himself in union to Him, and be made a part of Christ’s righteousness by His grace.”

I asked, “Cool. That’s meaningless to a 9-yr old. What does that actually mean, anyway?”

She stammered and couldn’t explain it at all.

This is true in any context in which you have conversations only or largely with the already conversant.

Using my own experience working in banking, when I try to explain what I do to someone else it’s much easier to explain it to other bankers, even if they don’t work in the same subfield as myself. If I start using jargon like Cost of Funds, LIBOR, UCAP, Reg E, BSA, and a plethora of other “insider” terminology to someone who isn’t an insider, I will just get glazed, blank looks in return.

We have to remember that to non-Christians, or even new Christians, a lot of the “jargon” we use may seem just as incomprehensible.

It’s vital to have an ability to explain things in a way that your audience can understand, particularly when we’re trying to get across something as eternally significant as the Gospel. Then it’s absolutely essential.

It is always really refreshing to me to teach middle-school kids (which isn’t often - usually only at VBS for me). I’m forced to take concepts and distil them down so the kids can understand. How do you take “justification by faith” and explain it to a child?! Being forced to do that makes you aware of how theologically loaded some of our usual sermons are. I always try to make things plain and simple for the congregation, without being shallow. I’m not sure if I succeed, but I try!

1 Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

Why I like to start here:

• It’s a compact easily repeatable sentence
• It’s has these essential elements:
  • Man’s sin problem. And it is presented in a non-threatening way. Paul says he is a sinner. I am sinner. You are a sinner
  • The name of Jesus: means YHWY (the name for God) is salvation
  • His position: Christ = Anointed One - the promised Jewish Messiah (can branch from there in follow-on discussion to fulfilled prophecy
  • Why He came: “to save sinners”
  • It’s a true statement accepted by Christians for 2000 years
  • And it is worth the acceptance by all

I’m interacting with people with no religious background whatever.

—God made you and own you and expects you to do what He says. If you don’t, you’re in BIG trouble.

—Not doing what God wants you to do is called sin and God’s penalty for sin is death.

—God demands perfection.

—Those are God’s rules and we’re helpless and hopeless.

—Here’s the Good News. God sent His Son Jesus to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Preparing the messages for VBS this year for little kids, I actually felt like I understood the Gospel better because I was forced to be very clear, plain and simple about things!

It’s also important to remember that even those who still have enough religious training to be familiar with the theological terms will likely have been fed an alternative definition by their religious group of choice. Mormons, Catholics, JWs, etc. have all appropriated Christian terms and rewritten the definitions to fit their own theological ideology.

I’ve adapted the “Bridge” that the Navs us.

God is love (1 John 4:16)

Man is sinful (Romans 3:23)

Sin is death (Romans 6:23a)

Christ is life (Romans 6:23b)

Those who accept Him as savior have that life (John 1:12)

……and it fits on your fingers. (wiser men than I may play with this one a bit) I also like Jim’s point on 1 Tim. 1:15. Agreed wholeheartedly with Tyler that working with kids is a great way to escape the tyranny of ten dollar words. That said, I also had fun at a former church with some junior high kids using the big words as a “key” to help them remember the principles. As long as you explain “Christ is fully God and fully man” before saying “hypostatic union” and the like, it’s golden.

My hyper-Calvinist Gospel presentation:

• Consider this truth: “Jacob I love but Esau I hated”
• God has predestined some to salvation … others to hell
• Which one are you?

* I was banned from VBS … can’t understand it! :)

Actually the Romans Road starts in Gen. 1:1. :)

My Gospel in a nutshell: God, Sin, Christ, Faith (credit to John Piper). Of course, each of those components requires some explanation.

I agree with Tyler that it is helpful to have to teach young people. I was a youth pastor for over 6 years and then a children’s pastor for another 6 years, and it sure helped me to be able to explain theological concepts simply and clearly.

I taught kids at camp this summer and instead of just using the term “saved,” I explained that it meant being rescued from our sins. I fear that sometimes even good terms like “saved” have been thrown around so much that people end up missing their simple meaning.

I also think the article raises an important issue about coming in contact with unbelievers so we can be salt and light. As a pastor, I want to be careful about having so much going on at church that there are few opportunities for the most faithful saints (the ones who would show up no matter what you had scheduled) to interact with others. I want to be especially sensitive to this around the holidays etc.

I learn a lot about simple witness to others by watching new Christians.