FROM FOUR LAWS TO FOUR CIRCLES
This is the most refreshing, balanced evangelistic move I've seen.
Interview by Andy Crouch | James Choung has found a way to tell the old, old story to a new generation.
Your version, though, has a different emphasis from some previous diagrams.
Well, what was missing from the diagrams I had learned was anything substantial about one of the most important themes in Jesus' own preaching: the kingdom of God. I was reading a lot about the kingdom of God, in the Bible and in recent scholarship, but when it came to sharing the core message of the faith, I'd always fall back on an evangelistic diagram that didn't include it. And it dawned on me: Even though there are tons of books out there about the kingdom of God, very few people will be able to share it with their friends unless they are given some tool or aid—some icon—that will help them remember the key points. So even though I'm not a fan of canned presentations, I felt that creating a diagram was essential to help us understand a bigger picture of the gospel that Jesus taught.
How does sin—a central part of the biblical vocabulary—enter into your presentation of the gospel in the Big Story?
Evangelicals have traditionally assumed that we have to start every gospel message by helping people see they're sinners. If we don't, then we can't move on to salvation or how Jesus gives them assurance that they will be in heaven when they die.
It's not that this message isn't true, but the approach is jarring. We haven't created any common experience or authority so that our message will have any weight. We just come out and say it's the truth. And in a postmodern setting, that sounds arrogant. How do we know it's the truth? Have we ever been to heaven?
So at the beginning of the Big Story, we instead talk about our common perception: the world is not the way it's supposed to be.
We all agree with that. And we all agree that it makes us sick to our stomachs when we think about it. No one thinks that our world is great as it is. We hunger for a better world. And up to this point, there is no disagreement. We all experience this.
It's from this point that we can move on and say that our hunger actually must be evidence that a better world did exist, or will some day. Because our hunger points to food, and our thirst points to water—shouldn't our hunger for a better world point to something? And then we can share that the world was "designed for good."
But we still come back to the concept of sin in the context of a broken world. Each person contributes to the mess. We all do. And when we present sin in the context of the results we see in the world (instead of, to a postmodern, an arbitrary set of rules that one tribe happens to live by), then our sinfulness is much easier to accept. It's still sin: our failure to love our neighbors is ultimately our failure to love God. And then sin seems much deeper and more real. And our need for a Savior becomes stronger, not weaker.
Jesus' invitations into the kingdom seem to be summed up in a couple of words: "Follow me." Jesus didn't always require people to see the depths of their sin before they started a journey with him. They just needed to be willing to change.
read the rest here!
or James Choeng's website
Interview by Andy Crouch | James Choung has found a way to tell the old, old story to a new generation.
Your version, though, has a different emphasis from some previous diagrams.
Well, what was missing from the diagrams I had learned was anything substantial about one of the most important themes in Jesus' own preaching: the kingdom of God. I was reading a lot about the kingdom of God, in the Bible and in recent scholarship, but when it came to sharing the core message of the faith, I'd always fall back on an evangelistic diagram that didn't include it. And it dawned on me: Even though there are tons of books out there about the kingdom of God, very few people will be able to share it with their friends unless they are given some tool or aid—some icon—that will help them remember the key points. So even though I'm not a fan of canned presentations, I felt that creating a diagram was essential to help us understand a bigger picture of the gospel that Jesus taught.
How does sin—a central part of the biblical vocabulary—enter into your presentation of the gospel in the Big Story?
Evangelicals have traditionally assumed that we have to start every gospel message by helping people see they're sinners. If we don't, then we can't move on to salvation or how Jesus gives them assurance that they will be in heaven when they die.
It's not that this message isn't true, but the approach is jarring. We haven't created any common experience or authority so that our message will have any weight. We just come out and say it's the truth. And in a postmodern setting, that sounds arrogant. How do we know it's the truth? Have we ever been to heaven?
So at the beginning of the Big Story, we instead talk about our common perception: the world is not the way it's supposed to be.
We all agree with that. And we all agree that it makes us sick to our stomachs when we think about it. No one thinks that our world is great as it is. We hunger for a better world. And up to this point, there is no disagreement. We all experience this.
It's from this point that we can move on and say that our hunger actually must be evidence that a better world did exist, or will some day. Because our hunger points to food, and our thirst points to water—shouldn't our hunger for a better world point to something? And then we can share that the world was "designed for good."
But we still come back to the concept of sin in the context of a broken world. Each person contributes to the mess. We all do. And when we present sin in the context of the results we see in the world (instead of, to a postmodern, an arbitrary set of rules that one tribe happens to live by), then our sinfulness is much easier to accept. It's still sin: our failure to love our neighbors is ultimately our failure to love God. And then sin seems much deeper and more real. And our need for a Savior becomes stronger, not weaker.
Jesus' invitations into the kingdom seem to be summed up in a couple of words: "Follow me." Jesus didn't always require people to see the depths of their sin before they started a journey with him. They just needed to be willing to change.
read the rest here!
or James Choeng's website
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