New Waters S2 | Episode 3

New Waters Season 2 Episode Blogs 3.png

Our Gospel Lens

In this episode, we explore the grand narrative and cosmic implications of the Gospel through the following lens: God is restoring all things—including you and me! 

With thoughtfulness and vulnerability, our Season 2 cast members confess where mis-framed views have affected how they personally follow Jesus and their ability to disciple others. They also consider the implications of a more involved and expansive understanding of the Gospel and its effect on the Canadian Church's ability to navigate the future.

+ Show Notes and Resources

+ Full Episode Transcript

ROB CHARTRAND: Well, hey, thanks for listening in to The New Waters podcast. I'm posting this episode, my name is Rob Chartrand. I'm the lead pastor of Crosspoint Church, and so excited to have our friends back at the table here for this conversation. The New Waters podcast, we're talking about navigating faith and future in a sea of change. Our first season, we really focused on looking at the present, and this season we're focused in on the future. Today, we're returning to a topic that we talked about last season. I wasn't around the table when we did this, but I had a really great conversation about a topic that seems to be on the tips of the tongues of a lot of people in the podcast world and in the church world. The topic we're looking at today is the gospel. It's interesting, Tim Keller, he makes this statement, he says that, "The gospel affects everything, but not everything is the gospel." We can throw the word gospel around and we apply it to so many different things, but we don't actually have a good understanding of what the gospel is. That's kind of what we want to do. Is we're going to have a conversation, we're going to answer everything. We're not going to have everything fixed by the end of this. But it'd be interesting to hear everyone's perspectives on the gospel today. Before we do that though, I think I want to go around the table and I want to get everybody to say, "Hello," and introduce yourself to everybody out there who's listening.

DOMINIC RUSO: Sure. I'll go first. It's great to be back again and I was part of that first conversation on the gospel, so looking forward to this episode. My name is Dom and I'm the lead pastor church planter of the 180 Church, in the greater Montreal area. It's great to be back and get in it with you guys.

NATHAN WESELAKE: My name is Nathan Weselake, I'm the lead pastor of Prairie Alliance Church. I'm wishing you guys so that we had a YouTube channel or something, just so you could see how angry Dom is right now.

DOM: So angry. I hate Nathan.

NATHAN: He slept on the floor, had a nice cold shower.

DOM: I hate Nathan.

NATHAN: He's living like a hard man, which is good for him, because he's a little soft.

ROB: Yeah. He needs some calluses on those hands.

DOM: He's preparing me for Armageddon.

MILISSA EWING: My name is Milissa Ewing and I am the family pastor in Vancouver, British Columbia at 10th Church.

LYDIA STOESZ: My name is Lydia Stoesz, and I am the pastor of Educational Ministries at Prairie Alliance Church and also the principal at West Park School.

RAJA STONE: Hi, I'm Raja Stone. I'm the lead pastor church planter of Uptown Community Church in Waterloo. For those listeners who think they know what cold is, I want you to know that the water up here is so cold that it makes you numb. If somebody was to put a scalpel in your skin, you wouldn't feel it. I just want them to understand the context of what we're saying here, because I think clarity is important in these conversations.

LYDIA: We're refreshed.

DOM: That's about the gospel, for sure.

ROB: Yeah, that's a great segue into today's conversation because we are focusing in on clarity, and clarity around this important topic, which is the gospel. Let me just start out with just saying that, I think the reason why it's so important is because as we think about the future and we think about navigating the future, how we see is really critical and important. I think we can agree on that principle. The gospel lens, we all look at the future through a lens of the gospel as believers, followers of Jesus, and so that how we frame that lens is really important for us. That's the importance of the topic. But I thought I'd just go around this, open it up here for everybody else to talk about this. Why is this idea of the gospel so very important as we try and navigate the future? So just open-ended question, what are you guys' thoughts?

DOM: I think one of it is that so many Christians have different perspective on it. So by its very nature, this question causes a type of division within the Christian circles, which is going to be one of the challenges. As we head into the future, we're going to, I think, be looking for, are going to need some points of unity where we work together. This word every time we get it, emphasizes the disunity of how Christians are wrestled around this word. Why we might have different denominations and how we understood the salvific aspect of the gospel, how it's connected to who Jesus is and what He's doing now. I think that's one of the connections I think with the gospel conversation and the future. What that's going to mean.

RAJA: Yeah. I think it's also encouraging to know that even the early church didn't get the gospel right, right? In Galatians, Paul says, "That's not the gospel," right? They've always wrestled with this concept. What's interesting about the gospel is that, everybody comes with their own baggage when they talk about the Word, "This is my history, this is my past, or this is my experience with the gospel." Good news for me is financial gain or good news for me is healing, or good news for me is, "I'm comfortable in my life," right? Which isn't really a gospel, it's more about a narcissism and our self-involvement. The gospel says we need to wrestle with and always through fresh eyes, have a conversation about what it could mean and its application to our culture, to our community, to our landscapes.

ROB: We were talking about why we get the gospel wrong and why that's so important. What about getting it right, what happens when we get it right?

NATHAN: When we're thinking about the future, you're never imagining a future where somebody wakes up in the morning and goes, "Geez, I really want bad news today. I really want to hear something that's going to depress me and make my life bleak, and make it feel like a dead end." It's not really articulated this way, but most people-

DOM: But we are oriented towards a wanting-

NATHAN: Most people wake up wanting good news, and when Jesus announces the good news of the kingdom of God, I don't think He's imagining, "This is only going to be appropriate or relevant for the next 80 years." There's going to be a timelessness to it, so we have to capture that fullness of it so that it's relevant in the future.

ROB: Now that's great.

MILISSA: The fullness of it will be appealing to those who have not heard the gospel or experienced the gospel before, and so are we presenting a gospel that is good news?

ROB: Fantastic. I think we're going to dive into the topic in greater detail, but before we do that, we're going to send Dom and Raja to sit back, jump out of this conversation with-

DOM: You mean at a distance?

ROB: -observe and then join us a little bit later, and ask us some more probing questions, and give us even greater sense of understanding of what they're hearing. Why don't we take a break and you guys jump on out and then we'll dive into the next aspect of this conversation.

DOM: Let's do that.

RAJA: All right.

ROB: Someone has said that we need a more robust definition of the gospel. I was reading Scot McKnight a little while ago, in his book, "King Jesus Gospel." His contention in there is that we have a bit of a truncated understanding of the gospel. In other words, we've taken the gospel and we've reduced it to this simple little formula. He breaks it down this way, he says, "The gospel essentially is good God loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life." We've heard this and-

NATHAN: This is going to be good.

ROB: Well, that's the good news, but here's the bad news. The bad news is that you are sinful and you're eternally separated from God. The problem is you can't really get into that love, but God had a solution. His solution was, Jesus died for you, to deal with your sin problem. The good news at the end of it is, if you trust Christ, you can be admitted into God's presence and you get to live with him forever in a future heavenly paradise where you'll sit on clouds and eat cream cheese, and float like cosmic amoebas throughout all eternity together. That's good news, right?

LYDIA: It doesn't sound fun.

ROB: No, okay.

NATHAN: At some point, it stopped getting exciting.

ROB: Does that reflect a pretty common understanding of the gospel that we've got out there? Give me some feedback on that.

LYDIA: I do think it's a really simplistic view and I think it's taking out a lot of things in the Bible, and just boiling it down to, what do I need to know to get myself out of hell? As opposed to engaging in the story of the Bible, and engaging in the story of Jesus and the life of Jesus. There are a way more in the life of Christ than just that. He'd like us to get a get-out-of-hell-free card.

ROB: Right.

LYDIA: But I do think that that's out there. I was parked one time at a shopping center, a pretty big one. I came out to my car and there was a little monopoly looking thing on my windshield wiper and it literally was a get-out-of-hell-free card.

MILISSA: Wow.

LYDIA: "Just pray this prayer on the back and you will get out a hell for free," that's what it said.

ROB: And that's it?

LYDIA: That was it.

ROB: Full story, full stop.

LYDIA: Yeah. Definitely, I think Dallas Willard talks about it being a sin management problem. That's not that dividing line, that's not a full picture of the gospel, that's not the whole thing.

MILISSA: I think that simplistic view doesn't present a robust, compelling gospel to people who haven't heard the gospel. We were driving down the road in the lower Mainland in Vancouver, and there are these billboards that have gone up. One of them has this dividing line that says, "Destruction" on one side and "life", or it might be "death" and "life," I can't exactly remember. But on the destruction/death side, there were a bunch of people and they actually look like they're a really fun time. The life side is like these bright letters that are glowing and very ethereal, and very spiritual looking. My astute ten-year-old who's quite witty and wise says, "Oof, I think I'm choosing destruction. That looks like fun." There was nothing about the life side that she wanted.

NATHAN: Yeah. When Jesus talks about the gospel, most of the time I think he adds on of the kingdom, right? The gospel of the kingdom or the good news of the kingdom, so it's automatically fuller. Anybody who has just a primarily extraction narrative that you get this card on your Honda Accord and you pray the prayer, and Scotty beams you up at some point and you're saved, is missing the kingdom part of it.

ROB: Yeah. It's interesting each of the examples that you guys present here, they're all coming from a different vantage point, and they're all presenting a different view and understanding of the gospel. But I think it's critical to have a working definition of the gospel, and this is something I've been wrestling with for the past, man, 20 years I've been in ministry, is continuing to grow and refine and what do I believe what the gospel is, scripture teach about the gospel? I'm going to throw out a definition. For me, the gospel is the good news announcement that through Jesus Christ of Nazareth, so; His life, His death, His resurrection, His glorification. The gospel is this good news announcement that through Christ, God is restoring all things, and that includes both you and me. I realize that it's a bit of a pregnant definition. It prompts questions, it begs answers. But for me, I think there's two aspects of it that I'd love us to converse about today. First of all, that the goal of the gospel is restoration, and second that the gospel is not just personal. It's not just me and Jesus living forever in eternity, but there's what are called cosmic implications to the gospel. I'd love to hear you guys and your feedback on that.

NATHAN: You know the show, "Love It or List It"? If you don't know it, I'll give you a quick rundown on it. There's a family that's not satisfied with their home. There's these two hosts and they're going to either renovate the home, and make it satisfactory for the family to stay there; another bathroom or a master suite, or something like that. Or they're going to find a better spot in a better neighborhood, closer to schools, that kind of thing. If you don't like the house after it's renovated, you're going to list it and move. If you do like it, you'll love it and stay. It's a not a bad way to understand the fuller gospel, is a loving gospel. God loves creation, He's got plans for the whole thing. He's never going to list it, He's never going to destroy it. He's going to see it through to its completion. He's going to keep us all there partnering with us on the way, in this divine renovation. Those two phrases just recently have helped me not only understand it, but to explain it pretty quickly to people who are familiar with that idea.

LYDIA: I like that idea too of the story. I like the idea of the fact that this comes out of story. It's God's whole story from creation to restoration of all things. That, the personal relationship there, and my personal part in that is that my little minuscule story that might not be significant actually is part of that greater story. It then becomes extraordinary. It then becomes massive, because it's part of God's story and I get to graft into that. That's where my own personal relationship with Jesus comes in. But it's not me and Jesus against the world, it's me with Jesus for the world.

MILISSA: That's part of that story.

LYDIA: That's part of it. Yeah.

MILISSA: And locating ourselves in that story. So that means understanding the story and our place within it.

NATHAN: Yeah. This actually I think elevates to a higher value in some sense, the truncated gospel. It's about personal salvation because personal salvation doesn't just fit me for heaven to live with him there. It fits me to transform earth. As I become the pure temple that the spirit can dwell in, I'm uniquely suited to engage with culture around me. Really using supernatural means, like reaching through the portal into the kingdom of heaven and bringing it to earth in a unique way. It doesn't take anything away from the cross, and sin and forgiveness. That's still absolutely essential, but it's not to extract me, it's to equip me.

ROB: Yeah. I think we don't talk enough about the end of the story, about where the story is going. We talked about the three, four acts that NT Wright talks about, and we don't spend much time talking about the fourth act. In your church experiences, how much time are you guys spending on the fourth act?

MILISSA: As in the restoration of all things-

ROB: Restoration of all things. Yeah.

MILISSA: The kingdom coming, already here.

NATHAN: Yeah. Not enough probably but when you do it, does it ever get a response? Sometimes it really gets people excited. I remember using the phrase like, "Can you imagine what a tree will look like when the sin falls off of everything?" When the sin falls off of your eyes, when the sin falls off the trees, when the fall and whatever is the residue of that is there, what are we going to see, how are we going to look to each other? That was pretty exciting for some people to think that the best parts of this world, we only like because they're appetizers of what's really coming. When the sin falls off your taste buds, what does it actually taste like?

ROB: Lydia, Milissa, you both work with emerging generations and that's a big part of what you do. Oftentimes, I'm not going to broad brush stroke here. But millennials, emerging generations and whatnot can tend to be pretty myopic, and can be focused on the now and not the not yet. This aspect of the gospel, the cosmic aspect of great and future hope that we have, how is that helpful in helping the emerging generation in their faith and in their growth?

MILISSA: Well, on the West coast, I live in a culture where environmental care is very important. When I'm hearing the restoration of all things, generally, I'm including the restoration of creation of the created world and God's call to us to partner with him in the restoration of all things. What I see in the next generation is this incredible fear and anxiety around what's happening in the environment. You can't miss it, it's in the news every day now. It's entered into mainstream media and this is what our young people are living in. I was reading a report recently that was talking about a new form of anxiety, "eco anxiety". The fear of the future because, "What am I inheriting, what am I going to come into as an adult, is the world still going to look the same?" You hear people talk about, "Is this the new normal when it comes to smoke and wildfires, and flooding, and whatnot?" The restoration of all things and our call to participate in that, is incredibly good news to a younger generation.

ROB: Yeah. Oftentimes in faith circles, it's not uncommon that when we talk about environmentalism it automatically gets lumped into a political worldview, well you're in that political party. But if we could remove politics from that, and just talk about our view of our great and future hope, and living in the now, environmentalism... We should be incredible environmentalists as followers of Jesus, because of our living in the now as we think about the world that's going to be, that pulls us along into this future.

MILISSA: One of our original callings was to steward the earth, to care for the earth well. If we take that seriously, we should be leading the charge to care for creation.

ROB: Yeah. That gospel lens, it has very practical implications. This is a great example of how we live our lives as followers of Jesus in this world. I was thinking about a movie that I think we're all very familiar with, is the Lord of the Rings. There's the third movie of the Lord of the Rings. I want you to imagine this scene: Mordor has been destroyed, Sauron has fallen and all of that, and all the calamity and tragedy is over. Frodo wakes up in his bed and he's kind of all alone, right? All of a sudden in walks, I don't know who's first, if it's Boromir or if it's Aragorn. But all the cast of characters start walking in, Aragorn and Gimli, and everyone. Two of the Hobbit friends walk in as well, right? Then in the end, Sam walks in, right? Then the Hobbits come in and they get up on the bed, and they just start jumping around on the bed, and they're so ridiculously happy, right? Now, I want you to imagine that if you saw that scene, but you didn't see the rest of the movie. All you saw was a Hobbit waking up in his bed, these slow-mo cameos of characters walking into the room. Three little guys getting up on a bed and jumping around for joy. What would you think of that? You would think, "This is a ridiculous story, right?" I think that's a great example of, when we miss the cosmic implications of the gospel. We don't see the fuller story, we can't rejoice in that moment of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the now. It's a point, an example for me of what we often do, is we miss this bigger lens.

[Interlude]

ROB:: Well, I want to shift gears and I want to ask you a question. Where in your life has a greater realization of the gospel transformed you personally or your ministry? Can you think back of a time where suddenly God gave you this greater understanding of the gospel?

MILISSA: Yeah, this is a really a simple story and it goes back to my kids actually. As you guys know, I have some food allergies and can be limiting, and my daughters have inherited those food allergies. I think there's something about Lydia working with kids, where you actually catch glimpses of the gospel or the kingdom in a way that sometimes adults we forget. We're talking about the restoration of all things and we were talking about that future picture. My daughter says out of the blue, "You know what, mom, I just can't wait. I can't wait to be with Jesus and walk into that kingdom, and we're allergic to eggs and dairy." She's imagining this table full of ice cream and scrambled eggs, and creme brulee and milkshakes, or-

ROB: Bacon?

MILISSA: We can have bacon, yeah. It's not that bad. But for her, it's a very real thing and so she actually often brings it up. That, "Someday, when I have my new restored body, I'm going to be eating that ice cream with my friends." It's pretty simple, but it's a powerful picture for me.

NATHAN: There's so many different places where big and small, the fuller understanding has changed things. Probably, one of the places that hit me the hardest is with suffering. When you're imagining an ethereal non-physical heaven, it's very hard to anticipate that everything could be made right somehow. It's still hard to fathom, given some of the suffering that people have gone through in history, that it will be made right. That it will be just, that the scars will be trophies and all of this, every tear past, present and future wiped from people's eyes. Still difficult to imagine, but a lot easier to imagine in a physical world; that's more beautiful, that's more enhanced. Easier to imagine with a redeemed physical body that can not only eat whatever it wants, but has a different relationship with time and space. That's been real fascinating fodder for my imagination. Not that it's not a practical necessarily, but it's really changed how I think about suffering.

ROB: Yeah. We talk about the truncated gospel, which Dallas Willard talks about the gospel of sin management. There seems to be, when we understand the gospel in some of the circles we run in, it's just that Jesus came to deal with the penalty of my sin. But what about that restoration piece for the rest of life? The implications of the gospel for us personally, and it is cosmic but it's personal, it runs deep, right, and in our churches. How does that good news find its way in your lives and in your ministry now, in terms of restoring lives and not just managing my sin?

LYDIA: I think of the picture, Nathan, that you had earlier of the renovation show. One of the things that's really fun when you watch those renovation shows is, at some point in time, the expert carpenter brings the homeowner together with them. They say, "How about you help me with this ceramic tile back splash in the bathroom." This person who's never touched a ceramic tile other than one that's on the wall in a hotel room or something, stands back after a couple of hours and goes, "Oh my goodness, look what I can do, I did this." We're all sitting at home going like, "Well, I'm going to go out and buy ceramic tile too." Because when you have that expert carpenter who's shaping your hands and telling you what to do, and showing you and saying, "I'm going to do the first row, now you do the second row," and you do that. That's something that gets caught up so much bigger than yourself.

For the work that I do with people, empowering them to work with kids, that's what you want to do. That's what I see me doing, and so I can be really focused on saying, "I want to have these kids have this opportunity to reach out and change the world around them." Then I realized that actually what I'm seeing is God doing that with me. There's an example of a couple of years ago, our school started to kind of want to get more in empowering kids to hear from God. How do you get yourself to understand that you're part of this humongous story that God is painting?

We took the kids in kindergarten to grade six, and they each were assigned a city counselor from our town. They were just given the name, they weren't given their portfolio or anything, and they were just to pray and ask God what he saw for these people. All the grades did this, but one that was interesting was the grade three class. They prayed and one kid got a picture of this guy in the middle of the town and he was handing water up to everybody.

Then another person got a picture of the guy, and he was standing in a stream and there was a waterfall. They kept on getting these water images of this man. Then they had words like he was kind and he was generous, and he was a good leader, and they had all these words for him. After all of this had happened, the teachers and I were sitting around going, "Okay, what's the next step? We make these counselors present based on these words that God has given us for them."

We were just chatting about them, then like, "I wonder what these counselors actually, what their portfolio is." We go to the grade three kids person, well, he's the guy in charge of the waterworks in Portage. The students, they made this little bucket and they put a fountain in it. They put these little messages in bottles for him of the words that God had given them for this man, who's not a Christian. The great forests, we're going on a field trip to city hall to understand, because we learn in grade four about how the civic government works. We took them there to the city hall on a field trip. They presented these gifts and they left them for them. This guy called the newspaper over his gift, and he just bawling on the newspaper about how these kids were so thoughtful, "How did they know that I was the water guy?" They told them the story about this. I'm going, "This is great. We're connecting these kids with this and we're showing them." But then as I step back, I go, "Oh, this was God going as the master carpenter saying, "So Lydia, I'm going to do the first row for you." I noticed that I wasn't part of it, I wasn't asking God what this man did. I was kind of directing that, but noticing how he was changing me through that. A few weeks later, we had our church family's district conference, was hosted at our church. These little guys came out and they were prophesying over the pastors and leaders of our denomination in our province, because I'm hearing what God had said and it was just incredibly powerful.

ROB: You really believe kids can hear from God?

LYDIA: Absolutely. It's in the Bible.

ROB: Wait a minute.

MILISSA: Amazing. I love that story.

ROB: Yeah, that's great. We can get the gospel right, and when we get the gospel right, it changes, it transforms. Paul talks about the power of the gospel, right? The salvation of all people and that salvation, of course is more than just me and Jesus. That's what I understand, forever in heaven.

MILISSA: We had a youth retreat recently. There was a young woman there, I want to say she was in her late teens and fairly new to faith. In fact, at that point, I'm not sure exactly where she was in her walk with God. At this youth retreat, after a powerful time of worship and a great message by our student ministries pastor, people were standing around and praying with one another. Grade 10, 11, 12 boys huddling up and crying, and praying with one another. The Holy Spirit was present and we knew something was going on. This young woman leans over to her friend in the middle of this thing. She's just sitting there watching and she says, "I feel like I've entered into another dimension, what is going on here?" Her friend who had been- grew up in the church, had been very much a Christian her whole life says, "Welcome to the family," and just kind of opened it up like that. No explanation needed, it was just this picture of people being transformed by God. Then this open posture that, "We want you to be part of our family."

ROB: Yeah. That's beautiful. It's not just the individual restoration but it's community restoration?

MILISSA: Yeah. It's restored into the family.

ROB: Life in the kingdom is, yeah. I think you both give great examples of how the gospel transcends all things, in all cultures, all ages, all demographics, right? It's not only something for the adult community in the church, it's for children, for the emerging generations and that's the beauty of the gospel. The challenge is with the gospel though, is that sometimes it can get diluted or it can be misunderstood. When that happens, it can have an adverse effect. I think of a good example of missing the gospel is a kind of the gospel that the emerging generations have inherited from the older generations. I'm speaking as somebody who's in his mid-forties and has kids who have graduated from school. If I would paint with broad brush strokes, one of the ideas that we have of the gospel out there is this kind of idea that God is there and He loves us, and generally that's accepted. He's not going to intrude on my life unless I really absolutely need Him. His goal is just to give me a good life, to fix me if I'm maybe broken. Basically, I just have to be a good person, right? Of course, in our Canadian context, you add to that this idea of pluralism, which is basically to say that there's one God or there's one belief system, or that there's one gospel, is kind of antithetic to the spirit of our age and how can you declare that, right? The gospel that the emerging generations is perhaps hearing or have heard is, it's negatively affecting them and negatively affecting their faith. You have a chance, an opportunity to work with millennials. When I say millennials and people automatically think emerging adults. But I the millennials are in their 30s now, the mid-30s, right? So they're growing up.

MILISSA: That depending on your dates, may be even 37.

ROB: Yeah. Exactly. When we think about the young parents, young adults, emerging adults, how do we see a misunderstanding of the gospel negatively affecting them? Can you think of some examples?

MILISSA: We have, like many churches, a leadership agreement. A standard by which we measure, for lack of a better word, whereby people agree to uphold certain tenants of faith, to be in a position of leadership. Then we've defined that as, in a place of spiritual influence over others. We've come across this new phenomenon this year, that we weren't anticipating. It's come out of left field, and I think it speaks to what you're talking about. Where, as we've come to our young adults to renew this leadership agreement, which has a statement of faith. We're asking them to sign off on it, that, "Yes, I believe that the 10th Church, this is the 10th truth statement of faith, and I also abide by this." Or "I try with the Holy Spirit's help to live by this statement of faith." The first person who caught us off guard said, "I can't sign this." We were really surprised that she couldn't sign it. After pulling it out of her and figuring out what she was talking about, basically she agrees with it, she believes it, but she thinks it's wrong of us as a church to get people to sign this agreement. That what if my friend who can't sign off on this, wants to serve and can't sign off on this? She wasn't actually saying, "I don't believe in this gospel or how we've defined the gospel, but I think it's wrong of you to define that as the absolute truth." Basically what she's saying, I think is, "This is right for me, but it's not necessarily right for somebody else." She's missed that picture of the good news, that this is the good news for everyone. This is the good news for all of creation, for all humanity. She was just the first, and so we have a handful and so now we're kind of scrambling. What does this mean and how do we backtrack to actually help instill a better understanding of the gospel, the story, really. The story of God's restoration and our partnership in that.

ROB: That's a great example. I wonder if the rest of you maybe have some stories that you can share. I wonder if you can think of maybe having that experience, but there is maybe a turnaround or a bit of a pivot that happened and it worked for the greater good, through a better understanding of the gospel?

NATHAN: There's some situations that I can think of where, it hasn't been because we explained it better. Not explaining the supremacy of Christ, but leading people to a place where they can experience the supremacy of Christ. When Christ proves Himself to be supreme, instead of the pastor or the parent reasons really well, and explains how logically this is how it works. Jesus is doing the New Testament things that we read about Him doing. The 19, 20 year old who wasn't so sure if what they believed was any really different than what their friend believes. They're suddenly going, "Oh, there's a whole bunch of stuff I don't see my whole life and now I'm experiencing it." It is about the supremacy of Christ. They begin to shift as they experience it. It's important though to understand that that experience isn't the fog machine strobe light experience, so that there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. The experience is going to be creative and personal for them as Jesus takes away or demolishes something in their life that nobody else could.

One of the things that's happened for me, I hope, I think it's happened for me. Is that I've gone from a truncated gospel, because I was a heck of an evangelist, right? I remember having a summer job and being like, "I got 60 days with Robert." Oh, it was just crazy. It was like just every chance- He's just like, "Let me buy my scratch and win." I did this, just leave me alone. But I remember in that season, I was going to be a church planter and my buddy was dreaming about this with me. We were at this camp with a bunch of peers and none of them were following Christ. I was so excited talking to them about how God's going to use me to win all these people and they're going to come to our church. He's like, "They're not going to come to your church." I was like, "Why?" "None of them like you."

ROB: Oh.

MILISSA: Ouch.

NATHAN: But literally, my thought was- well it should have been "ouch", but it was also "What does that have to do with anything?" I can explain to them that Jesus is supreme and it doesn't really matter, right? Because at some point, they'll pray the prayer. When you have that fuller gospel, the pressure to close the deals go on and you end up becoming more gracious. That draws more people in a fuller sense than any of your tactics ever did.

LYDIA: It also makes it a little bit more messy, I think. Because, if you've got a list of different things that you need to cognitively assent to, cognitively say, "I think these things, and I have thought to my way into the kingdom of God or whatever." You can logically have these reasons and then say, "Well, you either take it or leave it. Here's the line, the gospel is the dividing line." I remember growing up with songs about like, "I'm on the inside, on which side are you?" It's kind of literally na-na-na-na boo-boo, this is literally the tune. But it's way more messy when you say, "I'm going to trust Jesus to show Himself in a powerful way to these people, and He's going to show how supreme He is. I'm going to walk alongside them and He's going to show me as well, and we're going to walk through this experience together."

But when you see that experience as someone has with really who Jesus is and showing them how He can use them to partner, to restore things around them. That galvanizes faith in a way that logic never can. That's what I am noticing about us walking into this whole realm of teaching kids how to listen to God. Because they know that they know, that they know that the creator of the universe, told them something about who they are or about who their teacher is, or about who their friend is. That is an experience that you can't take away, but it is a messy experience. It's not an easy thing to do, because you have to trust them with God and He doesn't always do the four things in the same four steps that you'd like Him to do. You can't systematize it, you can't make it into a curriculum, you can't make it into a list. You just have to allow that to happen, and so it's hard to mass produce it in some ways.

ROB: Restoration works that way. If you've done any home renovations, you go to renovate a kitchen, sure you kind of start out with a bit of a linear idea. It's never just a clean perfect process unless maybe you're one of those guys on TV, but they make it look that way.

MILISSA: How often do you open up the walls and you realize, "Uh oh, there's mold back here or something. There's something hiding, there's something underneath?"

ROB: Never. No. We don't want talk about that in my home renovations.

MILISSA: It's never straight forward. There's always going to be something that surprise you, when a good home renovation is done.

NATHAN: It always takes more time.

MILISSA: Yeah.

NATHAN: That's the truncated gospel, is like this split second, okay. One of the places where I've seen, I think culturally, people in churches are getting more suspicious of that, but they don't have the replacement articulated. So they're drifting into things like you talked about, that really don't make sense and aren't helpful. But I was talking to somebody who's on the board of a national Christian camp organization, and their funding has dried up. Largely because what did you send in the camp newsletter? 45 kids gave their lives to Christ this week. 50 gave their lives to Christ. But there's a suspicion I think among evangelicals, even though they may not know how to replace that, that they're going, "That's actually not what it's about." The money is showing that we don't actually really think that's what it's about, even if we're not sure how to replace the gospel narrative.

ROB: Yeah. What I appreciate about what you said, Nathan, is how it ties into the premise of the beginning of this podcast's season two, is the importance of it. As we look at the futures, we think about the future, we try to navigate the future in our own lives and in our own ministries. It's not so much about trying to predict the future or even create the future. That's all very important but it's who we are, and it's our character and this idea of Christ in us, the hope of glory being transformed into His image. I think that's really important. When we talk about the gospel, the center of the gospel, the gospel is centered in a person. It's centered in the person of Jesus Christ, our risen King, our glorified King. We seek to become more and more like Him. The restoration plan includes becoming like Jesus, and that only happens as we are centered in Christ. We're with Christ, we're in relationship with Him. That is our hope, is this character is being developed and formed. Obviously in this life, that's not going to be done perfectly. We're not complete, we're not finished products, and that's where the cosmic implications of the gospel find their way into us. That is our hope, is that one day, we will see Him and we will know Him fully, even as we're fully known. That's good news, that's really good news. Well, I think we're going to invite our friends back to the table and looking forward to hearing their feedback as we jump into the next section of this podcast.

[Interlude]

ROB: We have Dom and Raja at the table here with us. Guys, so good to see you again. We've missed you. It's been a long grueling 12 hours without you.

DOM: Yeah right. We've been listening in. It's been great.

ROB: Yeah. Give us your feedback, give us your insights, or where questions have emerged as a result of you just observing and listening in.

RAJA: Nerd moment, Boromir died in the first movie of the Lord of Rings.

ROB: You're right.

RAJA: It was Faramir who came through.

LYDIA: Spoiler alert.

ROB: I knew that.

NATHAN: I caught that too, but I was too polite to say anything.

RAJA: We just want to make sure that all the middle earthers out there, and aren't angry with-

ROB: Yeah. That's right.

NATHAN: Was Aslan part of it, does he- is he anywhere?

RAJA: No. Darth Vader killed Aslan.

ROB: No, Voldemort did.

RAJA: Yes. I think that might be true, he who shall not be named. No. I'm sitting over there and I'm listening, and I was just really impressed with the complexity of the conversation. Because as you are unpacking the gospel, it's not an easy topic, right? It's not an easy topic. I loved what I wrote down here, the discomfort with an easy solution or an easy definition. I like that. I think that tension ... In our conversations we've been having, there's a lot of tension coming up. I think those tensions are important. Because when we've swayed to either side for an easy answer, we actually miss out on the part that's going to expand or actually move us into some more maturity and development, right? Intention is what is it there. I was just saying, actually, I was so impressed with the depth of the conversation and just the honesty with saying, "You know what? The gospel was this." Nathan, I thought your story was so authentic in the sense of saying, "When I was younger, I thought the gospel was this easy answer; one plus one is two." When you confess that, that was in my early days and now as a hardened elderly man that-

NATHAN: -grizzled.

RAJA: Yeah, grizzled. No, but I loved the fact that-

DOM: Jungle Book boy-

ROB: Sleeps on the deck.

RAJA: He is Tarzan. No. But Nathan, what I thought I loved about what you said there was, there was transformation. There's development, that you weren't stagnant and it stuck in a posture. But instead through feedback, it's like, "Oh, I can actually have a different view or a mature view, or a greater view of that."

NATHAN: When the gospel started giving me personal joy, is when it got strangely contagious. When it was just something that I agreed with took it, it was a hard sell.

DOM: I think for me, I was feeling like really encouraged that the stories that we were thinking of, the personal way we need to expand our definition of a ticket to heaven gospel. But at the same time, I felt like we got stuck at some point. I felt like why are we having this conversation, how are we going to kind of correct some of this? Because some people might be like, "Well, is it okay if I stick to my version of the gospel?" And your generation just does this newer, bigger picture of the gospel, is that okay? Or are we trying to move people to this place? One of the ideas that kept going around in circles for me in my head was that, I don't think we've learned yet how to share about the good news about Jesus outside of how we became Christians. Meaning that, if I go to the altar to become a Christian, if that's your narrative, I will share with you about how to meet Jesus by going to the altar. My invitation is always connected to how I met Jesus.

RAJA: I'm sorry, can you clarify? Is that a negative or a positive, I'm not quite sure.

DOM: No. It's a limitation of this conversation. It will limit how we talk about the gospel, because I only know how to share with you the good news, the way I heard the good news. What we're going to feel is, that we're going to have to make room for people. I think this is one ... Nathan mentioned about this a little bit. Your story where you had that summertime camp and you're like, "I know I'm going to reach these people," right? You realize, "I better figure out how people story works and the brokenness they feel, before I think I can bring them an expression of the good news the way I received it." I think it's going to be an important part of our learning. Rob, you addressed this, that the good news is a person. All right, number one; and one of the things I wish we would have done more in this episode is to emphasize that the good news that we're talking about is trinitarian. It's not just Jesus, and so I think we almost landed back to the simplistic-like Bible Sunday school answer. I'm like, we did this 45-minute talk to just say, "It's Jesus at the end really," just go to the end. No. It's a trinitarian thing. Jesus begins His conversation about the gospel, by talking about Isaiah the prophet and preaching from Isaiah, which is when He begins.

ROB: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me", sure.

DOM: The Father and now the Son, and you wait because the Spirit. I think we have to find a way to let that trinitarian way that God has revealed Himself to us, shape what the good news is for us today. Those have to all get weaved together.

MILISSA: The trinity as a relationship comes back to us in a relationship with one another as a community. Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is Jesus' priestly prayer in John 17. I'm just going to read it here because I think it encapsulates some of what we've talked about, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message." Their message, kind of a personalized message in a way. The message that we have in our story, "That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me, and have loved them even as you have loved me."

DOM: Yeah. It's crazy.

ROB: The reason why we became so focused on this, one aspect of the trinity, Christ, is partly because we were talking a lot about the other gospels, right? Or the truncated gospel, and we're almost getting pulled into that narrative. That narrative really is one-sided in the trinity, focused on the work of Christ. Which is great, which is fantastic. But I think about that and I just think about the restoration work that God wants to do, absolutely has to include a more robust view of the Trinity. The work of the Spirit our lives, the love of the Father. The Father sending His people out on mission in the world, sending the Holy Spirit, it's all of that. And as you shared, Milissa, the importance of community, you can't talk about community fully without understanding the Trinity. God living together throughout eternity in perfect community, in perfect love. As He seeks to restore the image of God, the Imago Dei in us as followers of Jesus, He wants to restore us back to what was originally intended. That means being recreated in the image of God, who is community, perfect community. So Trinity is so important. I agree with you.

DOM: I just think that so many people who even use this image of the Imago Dei, the image of God, make it such a personal thing. That's why you have Lydia's illustration of this and even Milissa loved your story about why your friend won't sign the document. We've never given them a gospel articulation that requires a church. They're like, "I believe in the good news and I'm being made in the image of God, thanks. If I have a problem, I'll come back and visit you." But in no way have we given them a picture that you need to be part of this new family we call the church, right? In which the trinitarian life now is embodied in our midst, as we gather in community. We are confused, I'm like, "How is it that you guys don't want to be part of this community, you don't want to sign here?" There's a whole host of people that are going to push back in the same way. This is going to continue to happen until we orient our good news proclamation through a lens of the essential nature of the church, in this conversation.

ROB: In our local context, in our church, we do an introduction to spiritual formation class for every newcomer who comes across what we call it, the journey. We talk about five aspects of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Every one of those aspects is framed around our understanding of the Trinity. God's restorative work in our lives to get us back to the intended, His original intent for humanity, the image of God, image bearers in the world.

DOM: But they can do that alone.

ROB: The third aspect is community. You cannot do it alone, you cannot become a spiritually formed disciple in isolation.

DOM: No, but people get community, but I think that people ... "Yeah, I have my community. I went to Starbucks with my friends and read the BIble".

ROB: No. Then we defined Biblical community.

DOM: Right.

ROB: You can't. We say, we like to say this: you can't one another, yourself.

DOM: Well, I just tell people in our church-

ROB: You need another to one another.

DOM: You can't baptize yourself and you can't serve yourself-

ROB: Yeah. You need another to one another. You think of all these New Testament commandments, "Love one another, bear one another's burdens," you can't do that in isolation. You can't be faithful to the gospel in isolation, is just not possible. Raja, you're going to say something.

RAJA: One thing I wanted to say about that one another part, the community part. I love how Jesus says that, "What good is it if you love those who love you?" Oftentimes, our communities are those we love and love us.

DOM: I don't like you, I'm out.

RAJA: Right. It's just like, "That's not community," because community is people who don't like you as well. Community people, if you don't quite agree with it, it's this uncomfortable iron sharpening iron, it's clashing of personalities. It's like the only way community really works and exists is if everyone takes a posture of a servant. If that doesn't happen, then somebody will try to exert control or exert narrative, or exert that. Again, like I said, sometimes I just sit here listening, "Wow, this is really a great conversation, we should record this." Oh wait.

DOM: We are.

ROB: Everybody loves the idea of community, until they have to be in one.

DOM: In Luke chapter four, if we just want to live in this tension and maybe we can end on this, like what the heck? Is that, Jesus preaches for the first time, his big kind of, I'm here. It's showtime now. Takes Isaiah, the scroll, he preaches, he shares this and the people want to kill him. You're like, "Wait a second, did he just preach the introduction to the good news and talk about the expansive way that God's kingdom now is going to invite others?" They say, "They look to bring them over to the cliff or the hill to throw him off." This is even before the crucifixion, he's even on the radar. There's something about the way we can hijack Jesus or God for our own preference, that we don't even want the good news.

MILISSA: Before they're going to throw him off the cliff, he talks about Elijah and he talks about Elisha, and he talks about them serving people inside of community.

RAJA: But also remember too, right? In Luke's narrative of that, what happens to Jesus before he reads the scroll? Is a showdown with the enemy in the desert. But what does the Bible say? He comes back full of the power of the Spirit, walks into the synagogue and reads this passage. It's like the trinitarian aspect of it comes into full bloom, because he's empowered by the power of the Spirit.

DOM: Well, that's somebody who's full of the Spirit and the people of God want to kill him, is ridiculous to me.

RAJA: Yeah. I know. I agree. The only thing I want to say, and I'm going to bring it back to the whole, we were talking about gospel and I don't want to drift off too far. Because one thing I did write down, I'll say something about. Whenever I think about the gospel, I think of the gospel in three parts, right? Because as we've been talking about the gospel, we've been saying different aspects of it. When I think of the gospel, I think that the gospel as personal, the gospel as community, but also the gospel as future as well too, right? Whatever the gospel is, first and foremost, it has to happen to me, right? Nathan had mentioned this, right? It has to be personally transformative, right? But then if it is truly personally transformative, and we talked a little bit about with revival, renewals in one of our previous conversations, so then the gospel then becomes something that I want to share. It has to be something that I want to ... I get what you're saying, Dom, as far as, let's not make it too overly simplistic.

DOM: But it's just limited on how you can share it. You can only share it through your experience.

RAJA: But that limitation is authentic, right? Your personal story of your transformation is what ... You can't sit down and extrapolate someone's lifestyle and say, "Here's a gospel. It's going to fit the narrative that you need to." All you can share is, "I don't know, but this is what Jesus did to me," right?

DOM: This is how he came to me.

RAJA: Right. Then the third part of the gospel though, is the future, right? Is this idea of a restoration. We talked a little bit about this resurrection, the realignment of all things, right? The gospel in three parts is kind of how I understand it. So it's always moving me not just simply to myself, but to others and also to creation, and to seeing this trust in what the future might look like.

ROB: For sure. Yeah. I think Rob, you did a great job at helping us pay attention to the way our culture is ... almost giving us, again, these moments of sabotaging of the way we're trying to live in the truth of what the gospel is.

DOM: Well, have you ever heard the quote? You guys maybe have heard the quote, it says, "If all you own is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail." I think that's really where we're at with this debate in our churches, right? That all we have is a gospel that looks like a hammer and we have to make everybody's narrative a nail. We have to find the nail so that we can hit with it, rather than listening to a more robust or a more, a deeper way. What I call it in my own thinking right now, I don't know if there's a better way of saying it, but we need new narratives of unbelief. Because I was given narratives of why people don't believe, it's because they worked for the devil. There, they did drugs, they listened to rock and roll music and played video games. Now, look how far they are from the Lord. That allows me to hit everybody with my hammer, because I know how to convert you when I have that story. So I almost have to make you have that story. How do we teach people in our churches to listen carefully to these new narratives of unbelief that are, I think are going to catch us all off guard and our gospel package, our EvangeCube version of the gospel? He's just not going to feel like, I don't even know how to preach to this.

ROB: When you listen in on social media and you hear Christians talking back and forth across the great divide in this polarized social media-

DOM: The Twitter world.

ROB: Yeah. So often the dialogue is about being right. It's so often about how I can zing you and-

RAJA: It's digital conquest.

ROB: Yeah. But I often wonder and I dream about, what would it be like if we just told a better story? Then the story of the gospel. My daughter's wedding was a few weeks ago and our goal for parenting was, we just want our kids to love Jesus. That's it. At the end of the day, I don't care what they do with their lives.

DOM: And they have to go to church?

ROB: And they love the church and they don't resent the church. We didn't ever want ... Being a pastor and you know the stories of PKs, pastors' kids and all the things that can happen. Our oldest daughter, she's actually in theological training. She's working in a church right now.

DOM: She need an internship? There's a place in Montreal-

ROB: Yeah. She's married, just threw a wedding.

DOM: They can come together.

ROB: But when she did her wedding, it was just such ... She's an uber planner, so we didn't have any role in planning this wedding and all. She just planned it herself. But it was just a beautiful portrayal of the gospel and telling the story of Jesus at the end. She had friends there from, not church backgrounds, not faith backgrounds and whatnot, but just to tell the story. I was a wreck through this whole thing. I'm crying through the whole wedding and the reception, and all that. I'm a big guy, but I'm a big teddy bear. I was just crying and whatnot, and I'm out on the balcony during the dance. We dance, for us, we bust a move.

DOM: What! Edited this out.

ROB: Yeah. I used to be a break dancer. Anyway, so we're out on the balcony and one of my young adults comes up and he's from a family where brokenness was normal, right? He's just asked the question, and he's a peer to my daughter. He says, "I just see how your kids love Jesus, and I'm coming from a family of brokenness. How do I raise kids where they love Jesus?" I said, "You know, I'll just share with you the best advice that was given to me years ago. Is that, you've just got to give your kids a better story than the story the world has given them. They got to hear a better story and they have to see a better story in your lives." He says, "Well, how did you do that, what do you do?" I said, "I'm just going to tell you one thing. This is the one thing you need to do. Is you need to get on your knees and fully surrender your life to Jesus and say, 'Jesus, I give you my all. I give you my entire life, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I am yours,' and allow Him to work in your life." He says, "It's that simple?" I said, "That's all I can say. It's that simple and then let that story work its way out into the next generation, and leave a legacy of faith in the gospel."

DOM: How do we live in the beauty of that and not in a sense, in the same way, part of my brain is tingling spidey-sense that you just gave him a truncated view of the gospel right there. This simple prayer, you say a prayer to Jesus-

ROB: Oh, yeah.

DOM: You've got to take it-

ROB: No. It's not simple.

DOM: A lot of people will hear that, and then they're like, "Great, I'm in."

ROB: I have a close relationship with this guy and he's been in my home. I did his premarital counseling.

DOM: And he lives in your space. He knows you-

ROB: He's worked on our staff as an intern, so he knows our lives inside and out very, very personally. For me to say that to him, he knows my story and I was him 20 years ago. Coming out of brokenness, trying to figure this thing out and God's restorative work in my life could not happen. I could not be spiritually formed if I wasn't surrendered.

DOM: Yeah. I think it often develops on my mind like this, when I think of the scriptures and the story of the churches that were witnesses before were apologists, right? That our witness gives us authority to defend something, right? Without that, we have a generation of people who love being defenders of the truth, and graphs and things. Yet the witnessing way that their life has been or should be formed in this new good news way is for a lot of people, missing. They're just, "I wanted the bait." I'm like, "Really, who cares?"

NATHAN: This language is surrender. I see what Dom's saying, pushing back. The gospel doesn't get fuller when we talk about it broader.

DOM: Yeah. That's so important.

NATHAN: That surrender will have to lead to sacrifice of some kind. When that sacrifice surprises you, there is a transformation that surprises you and yourself, and the people around you. One of the things unfolding for me, and it was amazing to see in my daughter in grade 12 is, in sort of like a surprise to everybody that knows me, I'm an introvert and give me my space-

DOM: Sleep outside.

NATHAN: Sleep outside. We brought in two boys into our home, 11 and 14. It's stretching me like crazy and we're trying to love them, and there's just some bad stuff in their past. It was just clear that this is what Jesus wanted me to do and wanted us to do. But I was teaching my daughter's grade 12 Bible class, and to prepare them for next year, "What's something that you learned in your Christian home of origin that doesn't seem that Christian, that you'd like to change for yourself and what's something you'd like to carry on?" She's a little turkey. She puts her hand up, she's like-

DOM: I see daughter's going to throw you under the bus now.

NATHAN: Yeah basically, in front of all her friends ... the teacher, you know I'm technically the teacher supervisor, and she says, "What I don't ever want is to bring workplace stress into my home the way that my family has done." I'm like, "Okay, ouch, but I'll blame mom for that," right? "That's not me, I don't do that, right?" But then she started talking about hospitality and sacrifice, and it was specific to this recent event in January. It was powerful for me because for years, she's heard me preach and she's seen me make pseudo sacrifices. Which is like talking about my life in a sacrificial way so that people in the congregation are impressed, and so maybe they fall for it. But she knows where dad is maneuvering. She sees this one place where I'm out of control, right? I just laid down and we're seeing what happens, and that's the thing that gets traction in her. The gospel is alive in my home in a new way, and it's not words. But there's something that happened with surrender that led to the actual sacrifice.

ROB: Could you have got to that sacrifice without surrender?

NATHAN: No. It was the funniest thing in the world. It's like, "Lord, do you want us to bring these kids into our home?" Literally the response is you have to ask. Okay. That's pretty clear. No. Not at all. But out of that sacrifice, comes incredible intimacy as well. The gospel becomes more alive in you as it's resonating in the people around you.

ROB: Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. What I've appreciated about it is, we're not just talking about big cosmic ideas and doctrine, but we're talking about living grounded in the gospel. It finds its way into our everyday lives, into our ministries, into our hearts. This is the lens that we want to use to navigate us, and that we look through as we think about the future.

Regan NeudorfComment