You’re riding the bus to work and suddenly you have the opportunity to share the gospel with the person sitting next to you. (I won’t take the time to explain how that happened. I’m sure if you get creative, you can come up with something.) She’ll be getting off at the next stop, so you only have one minute. What are you going to say? There’s no pressure here, it’s just her eternal destiny that hangs in the balance. Are you up to the task? Can you share the good news in one minute or less? Ready, set, go!
Okay, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. But that’s still the impression I’ve gotten from some of the evangelism training I’ve been through over the years. Every good Christian should be able to share the gospel in one minute or less. Otherwise you might be unprepared for situations like these, which apparently happen to other people far more often than they do to me.
And last week I gave several reasons that I think there’s some value to being able to summarize the gospel quickly, clearly, and concisely. In that sense, the One Minute Gospel is a useful tool. But, at the same time, I think it’s a tragic mistake. Actually, I think it’s several tragic mistakes rolled into one.
Let me explain.
Mistake #1: We forget that it’s only a summary.
I often hear people summarize the gospel, and I have no problem with that. My concern is when people summarize the gospel but say that they are sharing the gospel. When we do that, we give the impression – to ourselves and to other people – that our summaries are the gospel. But they’re not.
If I tried hard enough, I’m sure I could summarize Les Miserables or The Lord of the Rings in one minute. But even if I could, no one would make the mistake of thinking that my summary was the same as the whole story. A summary is necessarily different than that which it tries to summarize.
But I think we forget that with our One Minute Gospels. We offer our concise summaries, but we think that they are the gospel itself. And that’s tragic because it blinds us to everything else that the gospel is about.
Mistake #2: We leave out too much.
As I mentioned in my previous post, every summary requires people to establish priorities. You can’t fit everything into one minute, so you have to make decisions about what’s most important and what can be left aside for now. But that means the usefulness of a summary depends on how good our priorities are. And when I listen to our summaries, I worry.
I won’t take the time to walk through this carefully. But try this. Take a few seconds and consider the things that you would include in a One Minute Gospel summary. Then read Acts 2:14-41. This was Peter’s great opportunity to share his gospel summary with the people on the day of Pentecost. And I see at least four things he does that are different from most of the gospel summaries I hear: (1) he grounds the gospel in the story of Israel, (2) he spends most of his time on the resurrection (vv. 24-31), (3) he emphasizes the importance of David and ruling on his throne, and (4) the gift of the Holy Spirit gets mentioned right along with forgiveness. There are others, but you get the point. Acts 2 isn’t a long summary. You can roll through it in less than a minute. And yet Peter still has time to include a whole number of things that we typically leave out.
The same is true with other gospel summaries in the New Testament. Most include things that we haven’t made priorities in our own summaries. That suggests to me that we’re doing something wrong. If our priorities aren’t the same as the biblical authors, we’re missing something. And that’s tragic.
Mistake #3: We think summaries are for beginners.
Of course, part of the reason that Peter and Paul can pack so much into their gospel summaries is because they can assume that their readers have a fair amount of background knowledge already in place. Peter doesn’t have to explain who David is because his hearers are mostly Jews. Paul can say that we need to understand the gospel “in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3) because he’s already explained to his readers that this is the case. So their summaries aren’t for beginners; they’re actually for people who know quite a bit about the story.
Summaries are often most effective for those who already know the story. A good summary helps a person put all the pieces fit together. But, for that to work, you have to know the pieces already. And that’s how most of the biblical summaries work. They’re not for beginners.
But we create our gospel summaries as though they were for people who don’t know anything about the gospel. That’s a very different task, and a much more difficult one. I could summarize Lord of the Rings in one minute for someone who already knows the story. But to do that for a newbie, that’s much harder. I’m far more likely to leave out some important piece of information, and they’re far more likely to fill the gap with something they already believe to be true. Both are tragic errors.
A good rule to remember here is that any summary assumes a fair amount of knowledge about what is being summarized. If the person hearing the summary doesn’t already have it, you’d better get it to them quickly. Otherwise, the summary itself will create problems.
Mistake #4: We forget that summaries matter.
The way we share the gospel impacts the way we try to live out the gospel. Think about it. If the gospel is the central truth of the Christian life, and if our gospel summaries emphasize the things that we think are most important about the gospel, then our gospel summaries communicate a lot about what we think the Christian life is most fundamentally about. Evangelism and Christian living are inseparably linked.
That should cause us to spend a lot more time reflecting on our gospel summaries. Presenting the gospel poorly has implications not only for those hearing the gospel, but also for those sharing it. If our gospel summaries say nothing about the power of the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, what does that say about how we understand the Christian life? It doesn’t mean that we deny these things, but it certainly suggests that we see them as less essential, even optional, for the Christian life. They’re secondary matters that you can get to once you’ve understood the really important truths.
That’s tragic. Our gospel summaries omit some things that are critical for how we view the Christian life. And, as a result, our own summaries work against us. They’re like a hammer in the hands of a clumsy carpenter. Instead of being a constructive tool, they become a means for pounding our own thumbs into painful mush.
I could probably come up with a few others mistakes that we make with the One Minute Gospel. But I think you get the point. Summaries can be useful. That was all I was trying to argue in my previous post. But they’re only useful when we remember that they are summaries and when we construct our summaries carefully. Otherwise they become a tool that turns against us. And that’s tragic.
About Marc Cortez
Thanks for the follow up post Mark. I believe I understand what you are asking, and in terms of an exercise, I think there is some benefit to it rehearsing a one minute Gospel. But in terms of a ‘practical’ application, I find setting priorities to be lacking, and dangerous, as you suggested, for this reason: It is just another dry, worn out methodological approach to evangelism in my opinion. It’s as technically random in it’s approach as handing someone a Gospel tract without knowing any of their life issues. I agree that our summaries cannot be the Gospel, and it is tragic to think they are (Mistake #1).
On a side note: Regarding Mistake #2, do we know whether the Acts passage you use was Peter’s entire message, or was it his summary of the Gospel; or was it Luke’s summary of Peter’s entire sermon? Knowing this would strongly impact our understanding of how they chose their ‘priorities.’ I would suggest that Peter mentioned the four items you list because he knew the hearers, and knew how to most effectively impact them with his message/summary.
You said, “If our priorities aren’t the same as the biblical authors, we’re missing something.” That to me misses the point entirely of what we are doing in sharing the gospel because it makes evangelism about ‘methodology,’ and that does not seem to be the New Testament formula. The whole point about making priorities seems to suggest that there are certain things to include that *are* priority; I would suggest that there are no methodological priorities at all to be made if our appeal is without knowing where their knowledge or world view has taken them first. Otherwise, it’s all just a shotgun approach to evangelism, and we’re wasting our time. Priorities can’t be effectively made without knowledge of the person’s point of view.
Evangelism approached correctly necessarily requires us to abandon any kind of methodological approach. Our goal is to hear and understand the person’s perspective and to show him or her how that perspective relates to a biblical worldview and Scriptural perspective. (In that sense then, evangelism is ‘correcting errors in someone’s point of view). We can’t set ‘priorities’ until we know these things.
Here’s an example: How many times have you mentioned the significance of ‘righteousness, judgment and self-control’ as the three priorities in sharing the Gospel? These are not standard in Paul’s seeking to evangelize the lost. There is nothing in the Bible that suggests that someone’s eyes are more likely to be opened to the truth when we mention righteousness, self-control, and judgment (anymore than mentioning any other random priority) as crucial elements of the gospel. There is nothing random or magical about Paul using these three particular things in Acts 24.
‘Self-control’ is not normally a constituent of the Gospel’s truth. That’s one of the three priorities that Paul uses in Acts 24:22-27 with Felix; that was a necessary constituent and priority for Felix because of his marriage to Drusilla and not a ‘priority’ for people in general. Felix had a yearning for young women. Paul undoubtedly gleaned that information from his repeated discussions with Felix and Drusilla and mentioned that particular truth because he knew it would most impact him the most. Verses 22-27 suggest they probably had repeated meetings prior to this gospel discussion.
I believe a first century approach to evangelism is not ‘sound bite’ oriented; rather, it abandons all methodology in favor of finding the person’s issue or theological misunderstanding at the moment of sharing. Paul’s first-century evangelism brings some aspect of the gospel to a particular issue that the individual is struggling with and answers that particular need in hopes of getting him to think about his belief system rather than using a random, shotgun approach to evangelizing him. This is the same approach it seems to me in Acts 13 & 17.
We all have a great connect with everyone as the basis for preaching the Gospel to them. They are going to die at some point and face God. Unless they trust Christ to take away their sin and impute His righteousness, they will go to Hell. This can be share with complete strangers and cuts across every cultural “defense” and ethnic stronghold. 30 So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 The place in the Scripture which he read was this:
“He was led as a sheep to the slaughter;
And as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
33 In His humiliation His justice was taken away,
And who will declare His generation?
For His life is taken from the earth.”[b]
34 So the eunuch answered Philip and said, “I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of some other man?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him. 36 Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?”
37 Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.”
And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”[c]
38 So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. 39 Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was found at Azotus. And passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea.
Notice that Phillip “preached” to the Etheopian a supposed no-no in witnessing as it is taught today. Perhaps we would have more results if we ralized that God not onl gave the message, He also gave the method of conveying it. Dennis Clough
Mark Cortez,
Yes, Peter started with a summary of Israel when he was talking to Jews, but Paul didn’t start with the Israeites when he was talking to the Athenians because it would have meant anything to them. He spoke of the God who created the heavens and the earth.
Mary Spaulding
Yes, Paul definitely starts at different places depending on who his audience is. Not only do I not have a problem with that, I think it’s critical for presenting the gospel effectively. My post isn’t about where one begins talking about the gospel but about what things are part of the gospel. Many evangelicals don’t include things like the kingdom, the spirit, or the resurrection in their gospel summaries because we don’t really see them as essential parts of the gospel. But the NT authors almost always included them. That suggests to me that they thought these things were really important.
It’s also important to read the broader context of Paul’s speech in Acts 17. Notice that he’d already spent days preaching in the synagogue and marketplace about Jesus and the resurrection. And it was those sermons that caused the people to bring him to the Areopagus in the first place. So what he says in Acts 17:22-28 is only part of what he was telling the people about the gospel. And in that part, he’s emphasizing God as creator of everyone who calls people everywhere to repent. That is definitely part of the gospel, and it’s the part that he thought the people needed to hear at that time.