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Understanding the “Good News”

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Andrew Kukla is curating reflections on being evangelical in the church. Have we connected our congregations to resurrection life? Have we taught them how to talk about it?  How to live it? How to connect others to that life-giving, life-abundant power? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Katherine Kussmaul

The Jesus I encounter in Scripture is relational, personal and engages in one-on-one (or small group) interactions in which “Good News” is embodied, experienced and then shared with others. Evangelism, as I experience it in Scripture, begins as an internal experience and becomes an external experience as individuals narrate their own experience of “Good News.”  We must experience “Good News” in a meaningful, intimate way. We must first understand “Good News” through personal experience. And then we can begin the relational process of evangelism: sharing the “Good News” with others.

tsr_4405_webWho are we? We are private, hidden people. We are individualistic, cautionary and afraid. We juggle the balls of “Who knows what?” “Who is trustworthy?” “What can I say?” and “What would THEY do if they knew I…..?”  And in doing this, we fabricate an artificial assurance, a false pretense that proclaims invincible strength, fierce individualism, water-tight certainty and wide-open authenticity while also denying a fundamental truth: we are fragile, we need each other, we exist in ambiguity (life is ambiguous; not everything is decent and very little is in-order) and we live in fear that who we are is not okay, not acceptable, not enough. A fundamental truth that, when acknowledged and addressed, can lead to more genuine living and authentic evangelism (sharing “Good News”) that really does make a difference.

We toss around the phrase “Good News.” We charge each other to “spread the Good News” but I believe we do not know what this “Good News” actually is. We, as an institution, do everything in our power not to define “Good News” – to keep “Good News” impersonal and distant. We buy into a system that thrives on vague generalities when Jesus models particular encounters. We reinforce and extend a system that leans on ambiguity when Jesus teaches authentic living marked by genuine relationships.

So either we have not experienced “Good News” or we have, but are super-saturated in ecclesial privacy messages: “Don’t talk about it”, “Don’t boast about it”, or more likely “Don’t push the church to endorse ‘Good News’ because the church is not ready to embrace what ‘Good News’ requires.” We keep “Good News” EXTERNAL – vaguely defined and vitally important but detached from our actual lives. Using the words “Good News” keeps us comfortable but ultimately the words become empty “church words” that further distance the church from the people with whom we long to connect.

So what IS “Good News”? “Good News” is connected to God’s love, commitment and promise: God’s love which accepts and cherishes us exactly as we are, God’s commitment to keep “breaking into our tombs” (think about what God does in John 20:19 – coming into a locked room to stand among the disciples), and God’s promise to stick with us: no matter where, no matter when, no matter what. THIS is Good News. And THIS Good News must be something we “get” deep in our heart, at a gut level – it must be INTERNAL.

So what should/could we, as denominational leaders, as women and men seeking to share Good News actually do? We have to STOP being denominational and institutional leaders. We have to START reclaiming our core identity as children of God: women, men, youth, children created in the image of God. We have to be authentic, genuine and honest. We have to be vulnerable enough – with ourselves and a handful of carefully selected others – to acknowledge the masked and hidden areas of our own lives: addiction (to substances, behaviors, control/power, even work), abuse (physical, sexual, mental, emotional, financial), eating disorders, anxiety, depression (relational, situational, post-partum, as part of bi-polar), invisible medical conditions, infertility, pregnancy loss, PTSD, estrangement, relational malaise, sexual orientation, gender identity, difficult relationships, infidelity, betrayal, job insecurity, professional doubt, this list goes on and on…

Having acknowledged these areas, we need to open ourselves to a complete, genuine, integrated experience of Good News – a deep-down experience in which we come face-to-face with the reality that God loves US exactly as we are (un-masked, no-longer-hidden and fully-revealed), God “breaks in” to be with US in our sealed-off tombs and God sticks with US: no matter where, no matter when, no matter what.

We need to have that INTERNAL experience. We need to take risks, be authentic, look into our shadows and face into our fear, shame and embarrassment. This is how we come to understand Good News. With that internal, gut-level understanding, we can then identify appropriate ways to talk about that experience, acknowledge these aspects of our core selves and share the Good News that “God loves me – even the ‘me’ I hide.”

And then we have to start creating spaces in which we, as communities, begin to cultivate and share these embodied Good News experiences, in which we talk less about abundant life and more about authentic life, in which we proclaim Good News that really matters, that changes lives, that focuses less on our institution and more on God’s incarnation which ultimately reveals one thing: God’s unconditional love for all creation, for all people – for you and me – exactly as (and who) we are.

Thanks be to God.


katherine kussmaulKatherine is the pastor of Saint Giles Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Prior to this call, she has served congregations in Urbana, Illinois, Cary, North Carolina and Leeds, England. She enjoys preaching, teaching, pastoral care and opportunities to nurture spiritual development through conversation and reflection. She lives on the grounds of a plant nursery where she kills her own plants, cheers for her Pittsburgh Steelers and spends huge chunks of every day with her pup, Dibley.

Asking Better Questions

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Andrew Kukla is curating reflections on being evangelical in the church. Have we connected our congregations to resurrection life? Have we taught them how to talk about it?  How to live it? How to connect others to that life-giving, life-abundant power? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by John Vest

Whenever I give a talk or lead a workshop on evangelism I begin with the same exercise. I give people a minute or less to write down a 2-3 sentence answer to this question: What is the gospel? This usually catches them off guard, but I don’t stop there. I go on to ask them to find a partner and read to each other what they wrote. After they squirm around in their seats and chat uncomfortably for a bit—and there are usually a handful of people who refuse to do this exercise altogether—I make a blunt statement: if this is hard for you, especially if you are a church leader, we have a problem.

john vest evangSophisticated, well-educated Presbyterians tend to think that the gospel is too complex to reduce to a mere two or three sentences. We’ll spend thirty minutes on caveats and qualifications before we dare say something simple and straightforward about what God is doing in the world through Jesus Christ. We’ll tweak our language and nitpick details. We’ll offer substitute motions to substitute motions before calling the question, before answering the question: what is the good news?

And when Presbyterians finally get around to answering this question, it often comes in the form of theological statements, sets of core beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, or confessions. This is the language we speak. But it might not be the language the world needs most right now.

Implicitly or explicitly, the faith question Presbyterians most ask each other is this: What do you believe? It’s the basic question behind our Sunday School learning outcomes, our lists of things we want children to know before confirmation. It’s the question we ask confirmands as they present statements of faith and publically profess that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior. It’s the question in worship that prompts our recitation of the Apostles Creed or some other affirmation of faith. It’s what we ask candidates for ordination. It’s the reason that half of our constitution is a book of confessions.

But a better question is this: How do you know God is real?

In response, many people will say that we can’t really know God is real. There’s no way to prove it. We just have to believe. It’s why we call it faith.

I don’t think this is a satisfactory answer. Faith isn’t about believing an unbelievable story. It isn’t about believing something that can’t be proven. If that’s all it is, why choose one unbelievable story over any other unbelievable story? After all, every religion—and most non-religions—tell unbelievable stories.

Mature faith and transformative spirituality is rooted in experience. Evangelism is the art articulating that experience in compelling ways that just might resonate with other people.

To encourage this kind of faith-talk, we need to ask each other better questions than we are used to. Instead of “What do you believe?” or even “What is the gospel?” we need questions like these:

  • How have you experienced God’s presence in your life?
  • Where do you see God in the world?
  • What difference does following Jesus make in your life?

In the Unbinding the Gospel series, Martha Grace Reece notes that people who do evangelism well—regardless of theological orientation—have more complete, integrated, and faster answers to questions like these. Yet for many of us, these are difficult questions to answer. This is probably not the way were raised or trained to talk about faith.

Before we can ever say what evangelism is and how we ought to do it, before we develop strategic plans and programs, before we have any chance of successfully reaching out to new people, we need to learn—or relearn—how to talk about faith in meaningful ways with each other. We need to be evangelized by each other. We need to understand what’s at stake in the world and in our lives and how the gospel addresses these needs. We need to be able to articulate why Jesus matters.

This isn’t just head work. This isn’t simply a matter of getting our theology or our polity right. The gospel isn’t a doctrine to believe or an ethic to follow. It has to be more than that. It has to be a spiritual transformation grounded in experiences of the living God. Within our churches, this will require a significant culture change. Perhaps we might even be bold enough to call it an awakening—or a revival.


vest picJohn W. Vest is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. You can learn about his various ministry activities at johnvest.com and connect with him on Facebook and Twitter. An enthusiastic pitmaster, John dreams of one day achieving the mystical union of church and BBQ.