“Tearing Us Apart focuses on harm. Indeed, each of the seven chapters is titled some version of ‘Abortion harms X.’ This is a brilliant strategy” - Public Discourse

“Many search team mistakes are inevitable, yet most are avoidable. Here are five common mistakes pastor search teams can avoid.” - Lifeway

“almost 3 in 4 (73 percent) are familiar with the concept of deconstruction, and more than a quarter (27 percent) of those say people in their churches have deconstructed their faith.” - BPNews

“it was the spirit of honest inquiry, not polemical argumentation, that prompted me to write the article, inviting atheist readers to respond” - Michael Brown

“In the ’90s, WWJD merch appeared on everyone from Christian teens to their non-Christian friends to athletes to pop stars to politicians. Here is the story of how it happened.” - Relevant

“In the U.S., FBI hate crime statistics show that incidents in churches, synagogues, temples and mosques increased 34.8% between 2014 and 2018.” - BPNews

Introduction

In our previous article, we sought to clarify the nature and goal of biblical evangelism. We noted that evangelism is proclaiming the good news of Jesus with the goal of persuading people to repent and believe in Christ. In today’s article, we want to clarify the message of evangelism so that we can faithfully proclaim the gospel.

Defining the Gospel

Definition: The gospel is the good news that sinners can be saved from sin and reconciled to God through repentant faith in Jesus Christ.

“Are we to assume that the majority of Americans, by virtue of their opposition to the overturn of Roe, are necessarily pro-abortion? If we dig a little deeper, public opinion is not as disheartening as these numbers may seem to suggest.” - BPNews

“To anyone who has been burned by Christians, I gently offer a simple insight: those representing (or misrepresenting) Christ are not Christ. You probably know that, but it bears repeating.” - TGC

“This sort of ‘try harder, guys!’ cheerleading may be helpful for some men, but it’s not ‘why the Christian Church is here,’ and it’s certainly not the Gospel.” - Relevant

“The lawsuit comes amid a slow-moving schism in the United Methodist Church largely over the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members.” - RNS

“Despite my belief that many churches today are far too programmatic and pragmatic, I would still go back to having an old-fashioned ‘High Attendance Day’ (though I would not call it by that name)” - Chuck Lawless

“With church funerals and burials no longer the norm, pastors hope to restore occasions to gather and remember.” - C.Today

“To some, this is seen simply as a lack of moral courage, an unwillingness to take a stand for Jesus. They want an unequivocal judgment of right or wrong. Anything less, and you’re just a ‘nuance bro.’” - Kainos

“We start our service with our ‘one another’ time. We give announcements and greet one another, but then we clearly shift to a God focus. We tell people this is what we are doing with a transition statement that goes something like this.” - Kevin Schaal

“People under the age of 40 start risking their health if they consume any more than two teaspoons of wine or two and a half tablespoons of beer per day, a new study suggests.” - Fortune

“The disproportionate secularization of white Democrats represents a danger for the Democratic Party, for the country, and for American religion. The danger for the Democrats is clear. America may be more secular than it’s been in generations, but it is still a quite religious country.” - David French

“Church leaders and members enjoyed all these and more during the 2022 GARBC Conference June 27–30 in Grand Rapids.” - GARBC

by Bob Stevenson

I was in college when I encountered my first real conspiracy theory from a real person who really believed it. It was during a street evangelism session at Moody Bible Institute. After the session, I approached a bystander and asked what he thought of the presentation. Ten minutes later my head was reeling. The fellow had lots of thoughts about the Bible that sounded like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, Bart Ehrman’s writings, and a few tabloids thrown in a blender. As a Bible student studying textual transmission, I knew this guy was off his rocker, and I tried to engage rationally. But he was a believer. He had it all worked out. Nothing I could say would change his mind.

“There are different opinions among reasonably informed people about whether, from a Jewish perspective, Dobbs bodes well or ill…. What isn’t arguable is that our religion considers abortion forbidden in all but rare situations.” - RNS

“The nearly 1,600-year-old mosaics were uncovered by a team of students and specialists as part of The Huqoq Excavation Project… at a synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Lower Galilee.” - C.Today

“…starting in the early twentieth century, archaeologists began to uncover clues….The earliest pictographs, hieroglyphics, cuneiform, or runic writings of discovered or excavated cultures pointed to an original monotheism which became more and more corrupted into animism or polytheism” - AiG

“for a reporter, it’s not enough to just ask questions. You have to actually get answers. The people who attempted to fact check the Indianapolis Star’s reporting had plenty of questions about the story itself, but publishing those questions in and of itself does not constitute a fact check.” - Relevant

“Motivated in part by a ‘fundamental dissatisfaction with having to rely on others for the information,’ Griffith recruited others of like mind to volunteer for a fact-finding mission.” - The Dispatch

“Obviously, if the choice is between the gospel and religion, I’ll take the gospel. But what if by relentlessly denigrating ‘religion,’ we are creating as many problems as we are trying to solve?” - Kevin DeYoung

Read the series.

The Genius of Covenant Theology

Now that I have given sufficient coverage of the main tenets of Covenant Theology and have inserted some critiques, I want to pause to appreciate the comprehensiveness of this approach. This comprehensiveness adds substantially to its appeal. Here then are my thoughts on what makes Covenant Theology so formidable and attractive. I divide my observations into four braid categories which consider its coherence, its teleology, its Christ-centeredness, and finally, its ability to address different important aspects of Christian discipleship and teaching.

“The Novavax vaccine is made of copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus, packaged into nanoparticles that to the immune system resemble a virus….Like the other vaccines used in the U.S., the Novavax shots have proved highly effective at preventing COVID-19’s most severe outcomes” - C.Index

“The research team counting all the nondenominational congregations in America did not add any marks to their tally when a conservative Christian think tank in Washington, DC, declared itself an association of churches.” - C.Today

Related at RNS: Religious right groups’ tax-status changes demean both church and state

“…conservative Christian groups have a lot to celebrate. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and delivered a big win to Christians who want to pray in public schools. These are big, historic decisions and they don’t square with a narrative of diminishing religious liberty for Christians.” - Relevant

“Bavinck defines [natural theology] as theology that is ‘through’ the natural order compared to supernatural theology (Scripture) that is ‘from beyond’ the natural order. … Therefore, natural theology should be understood as knowledge of God the Creator through his creation.” - London Lyceum