What are the key things you would want to cover in a conversation about the Gospel with people in your local community? I would suggest that there are five things we would want to talk about in any given situation. Now, how we talk about them, and even the order in which we talk about them might change based on cultural context but these are still the five biggies.
How do you know?
We are about to talk about questions of truth and belief. How do we know what to believe? How do we distinguish truth from lies. In a lot of cultural contexts today, there is a preliminary question which is “Why bother knowing?” Truth is seen as relative and people are apathetic. “What is truth” is less a philosophical question with hands open and more (as I suspect it was with Pilate) a dismissive “who cares” with a shrug of the shoulders. We want to show people that the truth is important and that they can only know it through God’s revelation.
Who is God?
This question picks up on the themes that we are not alone and that there is more than this. Our true heart desire is to worship. Everyone must in fact accept that there is something eternal, infinite and foundational. The question is “What … or rather who is that?”
Where did we come from?
We want to talk origins stories. Again this is about pointing us back to the creator God. We can talk too about a person’s individual origin story. Here we talk about the good God who creates a good world. We also talk about the problem of the Fall. We cannot talk about the good news of the Gospel without addressing the problem of sin.
Who am I?
What is being human all about? What is my identity. People are searching for meaning and status. When we talk about being human this also brings us to the point where we talk about being in Adam (sinful nature) or being in Christ (New Creation). We cannot talk about who we are without talking about Jesus, grace and The Cross.
Where are we going?
Is there life after death? If Putin and/or Biden hit the big red button is that it, game over? The Gospel is not just about personal salvation here and now but about future hope of resurrection and new creation.
As I said at the beginning, these are the key “touch points” I find it helpful to cover in evangelism and discipleship. You’ll see that these are the key themes I keep coming back to at Faithroot.com too!
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