One of the things many people that I speak with strugle with is how to describe the good news, the gospel, of Jesus as our Messiah. Â One one hand you can make it very simple. Â He came, he died, he rose again. Â We are forgiven when we accept those truths. Â Quick, clear and to the point.
On the other hand you can easily make it so etherial that it feels almost impossible for someone who is not a seminarian to ever figure any of it out.
Honestly, I have been to both of those extremes.
What is left is a simple question that is not very simple at all. Â What is the good news? Â What is this hope that we who follow Jesus claim to have access to?
asked 50 people to try to describe what they thought the good news was. Â This group has activists, philosophers, artists, blue and white collar workers, authors, and yes, pastors and seminarians. Â We are from different walks of life, we are of different ethnicities, and we have different backgrounds. Â His question to all of us was the same; could we describe what the good news, the hope of Christ, is like? Â But he threw in two caveats; we had to address it as if it were being written up in our local newspaper, and we couldn’t go over 700 words.
Many months later it was thrilling to see the fruits of those descriptions bound up in the first release of , ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (And Everything in Between). Take a look at the trailer, produced by the Brothers Nee.
Rob said...
1Hey Jim,
I got the book… haven’t quite finished it. With different authors, it’s nice (yet sometimes almost confusing) about the “angles” that they write from and their audience. Some are very hard to connect with, others very easy.
Some, I don’t see eye-to-eye with that well, and others seem to resonate much more clearly and closely.
Each small essay within the book really demands it’s own comments or ideas — it would be an interesting book to read in a community sense and share some ideas around the ideas.
Don’t worry, I read your book first though (as I bought them @ the same time)
07/19/10 7:11 PM | Comment Link
said...
2Thanks for the thoughts Rob. I agree, even being one of those different authors. I think the differences make it much more widely accessible. Great thought about reading it as a group. Our summer undergraduate homegroup is doing just that. Glad to hear you read mine first :), what did you think?
07/20/10 2:07 PM | Comment Link