Evangelism in a New Key

In the last ten years I’ve been asked hundreds of times “How does one evangelize someone into the kingdom vision of Jesus?” The fundamental problem here is that many today grew up on a classic form of evangelism, and often began their own first steps of faith through that evangelism. That form of evangelism is composed of the following elements: God’s love and holiness, human sinfulness and inevitable condemnation, Jesus’ atoning death which satisfies God’s holiness, absorbs God’s wrath, forgives our sin and reconciles us to God, and then also our need to respond by simply trusting in that cross-salvation of Jesus Christ.

I don’t dispute the value of each of these ideas in composing a doctrine of salvation.

But the fact is, Jesus didn’t evangelize in that order so far as we know. (And I’m not saying Jesus didn’t talk about salvation.)

So, the question becomes, what did Jesus’ form of evangelism look like? This is why I wrote One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.