The Gospel is Narrow and Broad
Much of the confusion regarding what it means to be Gospel Centered has come from a fuzziness surrounding the gospel itself. Many assume that being a Gospel Centered youth worker means every message is the same Easter story every week. Instead, Gospel Centered youth workers operate out of a biblical theology that understands Jesus as the fulfillment of salvation history (Luke 24:27, Galatians 3:8), and then calls students to repent of their sin because of the gracious love of God that is theirs by faith in Jesus Christ.
The Narrow and Broad Gospel
Students are not transformed by their parents’ or youth pastor’s wisdom, but by the power of God. When the family and the church are committed to Gospel Centered ministry, everything is soaked in the grace of God. God’s Law is not absent, or even set aside, but it is proclaimed in order to show teenagers their need for a savior. Instead of this approach to the Law, most children and youth ministry resources can be summarized as, “Be a good person.” This simply is not Christian teaching and dishonors the Word of God. Instead of teaching Christian moralism, biblical youth ministry is built on both the narrow and the broad gospel. The narrow gospel is the proclamation of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection in order to redeem and secure the people of God by grace through faith. This is the tip of the spear of salvation and is highlighted in the evangelistic invitation to be saved from sin and judgment into new life as a child of God. The broader gospel points to the unfolding of salvation history: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Glorification. The middle chapters of salvation history (Fall and Redemption) receive the most attention in today’s church because they emphasize the current realities of sin and brokenness and the transforming power of the gospel to save and redeem. Focusing too heavily on the broad gospel while underemphasizing the narrow will lead to good biblical theology at the expense of personal faith and relationship with Jesus Christ. Today’s tendency to focus almost entirely on the narrow gospel has led to a generation of Christians whose failure to understand the broader gospel has led to individualistic faith that is theologically under-developed. It is interesting to observe that the Early Church largely began their evangelism and catechesis with the broader gospel, while churches today view it as something for mature believers.
The New Testament word that is consistently translated “gospel” is the Greek word, εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), which means “good news, glad tidings.” When the New Testament mentions the preaching of the gospel, the verb εὐαγγελίζω (euangelizō) is used rather the more generic κηρύσσω (kērussō), meaning “preach.” Instead, εὐαγγελίζω emphasizes a specific calling and the particular act of declaring the gospel in order that sinners would repent and receive the grace of God through Jesus Christ. The emphasis of the Greek εὐαγγελίζω (euangelizō) is still carried through to today’s English word “evangelism.” Jesus understood his own mission to be one of accomplishing and announcing the good news of the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:18). Gospel proclamation is the central ministry for the Apostles throughout the New Testament (Acts 5:42, 14:15; Romans 15:20; Galatians 1:16). Whereas the “good news” was a generic phrase used in Rabbinic Judaism regarding God’s blessing on his people, Paul’s frequent “use of tó euangélion shows that the concept is now a fixed one both for himself and his readers.”(1) The message of the gospel is rooted in history (Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension) but Scripture applies the fruit of those events to those who were not actually present. The gospel transcends history that has been entrusted to the Church for proclamation to all peoples (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).
Youth workers must continue to preach the gospel for both evangelism and teaching, reflecting both the narrow and the broader gospel in order that teenagers would grow a faith that is both personal (narrow) and deep enough to shape a Christian worldview (broad). Ray Ortlund explains the essential message of the gospel this way, “God, through the perfect life, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, rescues all his people from the wrath of God into peace with God, with a promise of the full restoration of his created order forever – all to the praise of the glory of his grace.”(2) Ortlund captures the gospel in both its narrow and broad senses in a way that helpfully demonstrates the faithful gospel declaration needed in pastoral ministry.
Note: this post is an excerpt from my book, A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry (Randall House Academic, 2019), pages 115-118.
(1) G Friedrich, “εὐαγγέλιον” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 270.
(2) Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 16.
