Yesterday I launched a new short ebook to help people understand the gospel Story so they can share that Story with their friends and neighbors and coworkers. It’s four chapters and the appendix from my first book, and I’m calling it God’s Story of Rescue: A Guide for Sharing the Gospel. I’m pleased to offer that short guide for NOOK and Kindle, and at only $2.99.
Today I thought I would post the 1800 word preface I wrote to introduce the book. It explains more of my passion for understand and telling God’s Story of Rescue, and my passion for equipping and encouraging Christians to know that Story so they can share that Story.
As I wrote yesterday, this book isn’t another gospel sharing method or a step-by-step guide to sharing the gospel. Instead, it’s about knowing and understanding the Story we are called to share. Before we can tell the gospel Story we need to know the Story. That’s what this guide does. It helps you better understand each of the four acts of God’s Story so you can share that magical, revolutionary gospel with your friends and neighbors and family.
“If you were to die today are you certain you would go to heaven, or is that something you’re still figuring out? Say you did die and stand before God, and He were to say to you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?”
Now there’s an interesting way to start a conversation. No wonder Christians aren’t invited to more parties!
These two questions are the opening lines to one of the most well-known and well-used gospel sharing techniques in the evangelical world: Evangelism Explosion. Growing up I had heard these questions, but I didn’t know where they came from. I found out when I joined a ministry in our nation’s government that was founded by the same person who started EE, Dr. D. James Kennedy. And then I became throughly indoctrinated in this evangelism method.
After starting in this unique ministry to our nation’s leaders, I flew down to Ft. Lauderdale, FL to learn the finer points of this gospel sharing method and become a certified Evangelism Explosion trainer. Once I gained my gospel sharing street creds I returned back to Capitol Hill and hit the ground running. I was eager—perhaps over eager—to put to work my newfound passion for sharing the gospel and newly learned techniques for doing so. So I started using these questions. Everywhere. With everyone.
I would work them into happy hour conversations at receptions on Capitol Hill, hors d’oeuvres in one hand and mixed drink in the other. I introduced my Christian congressional staffer friends to the questions, and urged them to use them at their office like a clever pick-up line. I even recall using them during a visit with a new Member of Congress when I delivered a Bible to him, sort of our way of welcoming him to the neighborhood—I think he would have preferred brownies or a potted plant.
Yes, I was that guy. Like I said, no wonder Christians aren’t invited to many parties!
So I was eager to see people saved and tried to work my EE mojo as often as I could. But the more I used this gospel sharing method, however, I began to notice a few things. First, I noticed that it just didn’t work like it was supposed to. We were given visions of conversion grandeur when we were trained, but people were as eager to listen to me as they were a Kirby Vacuum salesperson. That’s probably because that’s what I was doing: selling Jesus like a vacuum cleaner or set of kitchen knives, but without the nifty accessories.
As much as my evangelism trainers trotted out their statistics proving the workability of EE, the numbers just weren’t there. That’s probably because of the second thing I noticed: the questions that EE asked were not the questions people themselves were asking. And consequently, the answers EE gave were not the answers my twenty-something friends on Capitol Hill needed. Evangelism Explosion was entirely concerned with people getting to heaven when they died. But the conversations I hijacked with my gospel sharing spiel were much more earthy; they wanted to know and understand what Jesus meant to their life right now. Not necessarily their life after death, but their life before death. They’ve seen from afar the death and destruction around the world because of disease and poverty and terrorism, and they want to know if Jesus and His Story has anything to say about that. They’ve also witnessed up-close the cold, hard truth that this world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be—their parents split when they were young; they’ve woken up in more after-binge-drinking beds then they’d care to admit; they wonder if their life can mean something more than the bling and booze and booty our culture trumpets at every turn; and on and on. So they wonder what Jesus and His Story might mean for their story, right now, in this life.
After several eager-beaver moments several months later I saw EE wasn’t working and it wasn’t connecting with the lives of real people. As important, but far deeper, than these two observations was a third observation, more of a question than an observation, really: What if we’ve gotten the plot to the Story wrong? And right after that question, What is the plot to the Story? To the gospel? Is the point of the gospel to simply save people from their sins so they can go to heaven when they die? Does God’s good news begin with how screwed-up we are (sin) or about the opportunity to escape this screwed-up world and hell to go to heaven? Sitting with the plot to the story Evangelism Explosion told (the free gift of heaven) for several months got me thinking about the true nature of God’s Story, the true nature of the gospel.
I haven’t been the same since.
Since that experience I have thought a lot about how we share the gospel, how we tell what I call God’s Story of Rescue. In fact, four summers ago I set out to sketch how it looks and what it means to tell and retell and tell again this magical, revolutionary Story. That sketch became a book, called the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, which I’m pleased has been well received.
In it I pose two questions of my own that I believe are crucial for the modern American Church to wrestle with: Who is the Jesus we’re showing? What is the Story we’re telling? It’s this last question about the Story that has mostly consumed my ministry and writing life for the past few years, a question that sits at the heart of this gospel sharing guide.
Another question right around the corner from this one is “What is the Story we should be telling?” Or maybe, “How should we tell God’s Story of Rescue? What should I say or not say?” Perhaps these are question’s you’ve asked yourself, questions that brought you to this short guide.
As someone who has been in ministry almost a decade, I know many Christians struggle with what to say and how to say what they’re supposed to say when they share the gospel. Their heart is in the right place. They want their friend or cubicle neighbor at work to find salvation in Christ, but they just don’t know what to say or how to say it. That’s why I’ve put this guide together, to help you better understand the “pieces” of God’s Story of Rescue in Jesus Christ so that you can confidently and effectively share God’s gospel Story in any situation.
I must admit, though, that what I’ve written isn’t all that new. And the framework that I use to walk through the parts of God’s Story isn’t new, either. The way I talk about and frame the gospel, using four “acts,” was originally used by a Dutch Christian thinker by the name of Abraham Kuyper. His creation-fall-redemption-consummation framework has sat at the heart of how some Christians have talked about the gospel for years. I’ve just reframed it in a more memorable format: Creation, Rebellion, Rescue, Re-Creation.
What I love about this format is not only is it memorable, but it follows the grand story of Scripture itself. This means that when you walk someone through the four acts of God’s Story, you’re walking someone through the Story of Scripture itself, which means you’re sure to cover what’s important.
This Story begins in the right spot where Scripture itself does, at the beginning with creation. It is honest about the reality that this world is not the way it’s supposed to be, and we aren’t either, because of our rebellion against God. But this Story is as hopeful as Scripture itself, because it carries with it the hope of rescue in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and the possibility of being re-created anew in Him right now and in the life to come.
A few years after I wrote and published my first book where this Story framework first appeared, some friends encouraged me to take the chapters that outlined God’s Story of Rescue and put them in a smaller book. They thought it might be nice to give people a resource to help them understand the four acts of God’s Story in order to help and empower them to share that gospel with their friends and family and neighbors and coworkers. So after updating my original book for a second edition, I decided to take some of the chapters from that book to create this guide. Here are four chapters and the appendix from the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus that explain the four acts of God’s Story of Rescue—creation, rebellion, rescue, and re-creation. At the end of each chapter are some discussion questions to help start conversations with a small group or even with yourself about the pieces to God’s Story.
A word of warning, however: This book is not another evangelism method, like Evangelism Explosion. It’s not a step-by-step instructional guide for sharing the gospel. There are good books for that if that’s what you need, but this book is not one of those books. (If this is one of the things you were looking for in this book, don’t fret: the Appendix at the end can help you know what to say when you’re called to say it.) Instead, this book is about knowing and understanding the Story we are called to share. Before we can tell the gospel Story we need to know the Story. That’s what this guide does. It helps you better understand each of the four acts of God’s Story so you can share that magical, revolutionary gospel with your friends and neighbors and family and coworkers.
Now, more than ever, we need people who are passionate about sharing the gospel, the full gospel Story with the right plot. People are desperate to connect to something, anything, they think will put them back together again and rescue them from their anxiety and despair. As Christians, we have the real remedy for which everybody longs: rescue and re-creation through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus is what people have been waiting for their whole lives, whether they know it or not. And we are called upon by King Jesus Himself to share the complete Story so that people can give their stories to Him as Lord and Rescuer.
There’s an old hymn that goes something like this at the chorus: I love to tell the Story, ‘Twill be my theme in glory, To tell the old, old Story, Of Jesus and His love. I hope you will never grow tired or complacent or bored with telling the old, old Story of the rescue and re-creation that’s available to every person on the planet thanks to Jesus and His love. And I hope this guide helps you do just that, I hope it prepares you and helps you to actively, deliberately, carefully tell and retell and tell again that old, old Story of Jesus and His love.
Jeremy Bouma
Grand Rapids • July 2012From God’s Story of Rescue: A Short Guide for Sharing the Gospel • Copyright © 2012 Jeremy Bouma
