Tony Campolo is a gifted communicator. He had some great things to say in his two talks. However, I fear that his gospel is different from the Biblical gospel. I believe in doing justice and feeding the poor and I’m thankful to God for Christians who are doing something about it. It seems that for Campolo the gospel is ‘being Jesus to people’. Campolo rightly affirms that the gospel is about the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15) but neglected to mention that people need to ‘repent and believe the good news’. At one point he said that “teenagers don’t need to be saved from sin, but given a deep passion”.
At the 2006 Reform and Resurge Conference, Tim Keller did a marvellous job at both explaining the gospel and doing justice. It’s not one or the other. Preach the gospel of Jesus’ death for sins AND do justice.
NYMC Live Blog: #1 – Live Blogging; #2 – Getting here, #3 – Josh Griffin, #4 – My Place on MySpace, #5 – Thanksgiving, #6 – Josh Griffin Podcast, #7 – Tim Hawkins and trusting God, #8 – The danger of assumptions, #9 – Forge and the emerging church, #10 – The Skit Guys, #11 – Duffy Robbins.
Good call!
JC did it…
I agree – people also need to hear the words of the Gospel too. True – Francis of Assisi said ” … if necessary use words” – well that was 800 years ago and in my observation – times have changed and it IS necessary to use words in our culture otherwise people don’t get it.
thanks for stopping by Nigel.
i think that part of preaching the gospel is living it amongst people (1 Thess 2:8 share life as well as gospel) – for sure… but i think that words have always been necessary… not just in our current times.
Ephesians 1:13 – you hear the word of truth and believe in it to be saved
Romans 10:13 – everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Romans 10:14 – how, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? and how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? and how can they hear without someone preaching to them?