After churches embrace the concept of the priesthood of all believers and teach their members how to interact with the Bible and follow the Holy Spirit, it is important for them to impart competency in some basic ministry skills. I will cover some of them in the following articles.
Sharing the Gospel
Every follower of Christ should be “gospel fluent”. I have a teaching series designed to equip people with a working knowledge of the gospel, which is much more than the “plan of salvation,” the “Roman Road,” or “Four Spiritual Laws,” despite how handy these summaries are. It is wonderful to watch people awake to the glorious nature of the gospel, which has always been there right in front of their eyes. We have short changed ourselves by trying to reduce it to a few steps or points. The first apostles never did this, and neither should we. The Book of Acts is a wonderful place to examine how the early church presented Jesus. We can learn a lot. In fact, I wrote a series of articles to help you with this, entitled, The Gospel in a Minute. I encourage you to take a look at it. It contains many insights and tips on how to effectively share the good news. I also recommend a couple of books that powerfully influenced me: The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight and Salvation by Allegiance Alone by Matthew Bates. The links will take you to my summaries of these two seminal works.
The gospel is the proclamation of the true story of who Jesus is, what he has done, what he is going to do, what it means, and what we need to do as a result.
We have four gospels recorded in the Bible. Each contains lots of information about Jesus. John’s starts in eternity past. Matthew’s begins with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. Luke introduces his gospel with the birth of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, who was the forerunner of the Messiah. Mark also begins with John’s ministry, too, and shows how it set the stage for Jesus. Each gospel includes information about how Jesus fulfilled Messianic prophecies, ministered in the power of the Spirit, modeled how to live in dependence on the Spirit, taught the truth, proclaimed the good news of his coming kingdom, died for our sins as the Lamb of God, rose from the dead in power as Lord of lords, revealed himself with many convincing proofs, commanded us to fulfill the Great Commission, ascended into heaven, poured out his Spirit to equip and empower the church, and will return again one day as the glorious Son of Man to raise us from the dead and judge all mankind. His is an eternal kingdom. That is the gospel.
The gospel demands a response. The proper one is to declare our allegiance to Jesus, the risen and glorious Lord.
We do this by being water baptized, which is our formal and public declaration of allegiance. When we believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess him as our Lord, we are saved. This means that all the benefits of his death and resurrection become ours – forgiveness, justification, redemption, reconciliation, and sonship. It makes us a follower, a disciple, whose mission if to fish for people and make other disciples.
Every believer needs to understand the gospel, know its makeup, and be able to share it competently. Imparting this knowledge and charging disciples with their responsibility for sharing the good news is the work of the local church. (Click here to learn more.)
