Dysfunctional Christianity ripe for reform.

Perhaps, it’s our modern-day versions of Christianity and each of us—who no longer feel the urgency to make evangelism their [our] top priority—who need re-challenged and stretched to re-think and change our approach to world missions and personal evangelism. Perhaps, it is we who need to become fully consistent and compatible with Jesus’ gospel as He presented it. And his gospel was both the presence of the redeeming reality of the kingdom of God—i.e., as God transforming this world and everything in it with our involvement in helping to make this happen—and the future coming salvation of individual lives, postmortem.

This whole and full gospel contrasts dramatically with the “miniaturized version” whose focus is only upon obtaining “fire insurance,” securing a “get-out-of-hell-free card,” and opening up an afterlife option or providing an election for a chosen few. Honestly and seriously, why don’t we call this gospel reductionism and consequential evangelistic lukewarmness for what it is: “a dysfunctional and dumbed-down version of Christianity that’s ripe for reform?”

Sources:

1 A Once-Mighty Faith (future book – est. 2014-2015) by John Noe

2 The Upside~Down Kingdom by Donald B. Kraybill

3 The Reality of the Kingdom by Paul Rowntree Clifford

4 The Reformation Manifesto by Cindy Jacobs