It’s a joy and privilege to be able to address people and brother pastors with the gospel. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your ministries to think and pray about these matters.

I have had the odd, odd experience when it comes to evangelism of actually helping to divide groups, supposedly of evangelical Christians, over the gospel. I have done that kind of unintentionally over my life. I’ll tell you about one time.

I was invited to be a part of a council of people from all evangelical denominations. In the second year of this activity, I began to wonder if one of the people really knew the gospel. I figured that there is no point in talking if we don’t understand the gospel. So, I asked if we could take five minutes and write up on the board what we think the gospel is. I thought that would be met with approval. The leader was very reluctant and it became evident why when we got started. We didn’t agree about what the gospel was.

I cannot think about what else I should talk about in this first talk than what the gospel is. You may know what the gospel is, but if you know the Lord, you will enjoy sitting and hearing what the Lord has done in saving you.

In our membership class at my church I explain to people what the gospel is. When I get to the section on justification by faith, I tell people that this is the most important thing we will talk about.

When I travel I watch television and see horrible religious programming. I hear things like, “Do you have high blood pressure? Become a Christian and it will be better for you.” Or I’ll hear people that are into Jewish backgrounds and say we should live like Jesus lived. I just want to clear our heads, because there are a lot of faces doing a lot of things with the name of Jesus. I want to make sure we are on the same page with this.

If you have friends you’ve come with, talk to them about the gospel. Make sure you are understanding it the same way.

The gospel is the very heart of what we’ve been called to do. I pray your hearts will be warm as we talk about this. The more I study the gospel, the more I become excited about talking about it.

I used to be an agnostic, and there are a lot of reasons the Lord should not have saved me, and I’m so thankful he did. The more you meditate on the gospel and help your people meditate on the gospel, the easier evangelism will become to them. The more they’ll see implications of the gospel for various areas of their lives. Christians will have a magnificent armory for conversations that will lead to God.

Take anthropology, for example. Do our people understand that we are made in the image of God? If they do, then they won’t be shocked when people do some amazing things. People are made in the image of God.

Christians also have in our understanding of humanity the idea of sin. The fall of our parents has affected us radically, and so we understand that all of us, even the redeemed, have a capacity for great evil.

One thing I have noticed that has declined over the years is a willingness to offend people over the gospel. I have been to many seminars on contextualization, and I’m not opposed to it, but I don’t agree with us translating the gospel in such a way that an unbeliever is not offended. We want to translate the gospel into understandable language, but it doesn’t mean translating the gospel in a way that our hearers will like.

Look at Peter in Acts 2. Peter wanted to be relevant. He didn’t want to speak in an unknown tongue. But his relevance gave his words more bite, not less.

Acts 2:36: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”