lifeasmission

Scot McKnight – The Whole Gospel

July 16, 2007

I just finished listening to this message/podcast by Scot McKnight (check out his blog here) entitled, “The Whole Gospel.” 

It is definitely worth a listen and I’ll be adding it to my audio page.  Incidentally, if you tend to only read my stuff through a feed reader, I have tried to catalog a number of good audio messages that you might want to check out – there’s stuff from Rob Bell, NT Wright, Mike Frost, John Piper, Brian McLaren and even (gasp!), Mark Driscoll.  The vast differences in the theologies of these presenters are perhaps surprising, and all I can do is say a hearty thanks to my professors from Malone and Fuller who have helped me become the sort of Christian who is able to pull the best from all sorts of different sources and drop the rest – thanks.

There’s one thing in particular that I’d like to humbly disagree with Scot on here.  Toward the beginning of his message he talks about the 20 million or so (says Barna in this book – my review here) believers in the United States who have chosen to live out thir Christian lives as part of house churches.  He seems to say that this is indicative of their individualistic tendencies as they have abandoned the more formal institutional form of church.  Quite the opposite, I’d venture to say that it’s specifically on account of the individualistic gospel proffered by these more formal institutional forms of church that has resulted in millions of believes seeking out smaller, more authentic and committed communities of followers of Jesus.  At least this has been the case for me and many others I know well.  Past that, Scot has a lot of great things to offer.  Enjoy and please offer your thoughts.

Posted in: Fuller Seminary, church, community, emergent, evangelical, individualism, malone, preaching/teaching, theology