From my reading today in Os Guinness’ The Call:

No more urgent task faces the church today than the recovery of the authority of faith over the modern world. Those who imagine this can be done solely through strong institutions, more administrative leadership, sharper formulations of orthodoxy, and ever more aggressive political movements will be disappointed. In a world as dynamic, flexible, and individualistic as ours, there can be no return to the authority of faith without a return to the understanding of calling as every follower of Jesus Christ “lets God be God” in practice. (The Call, 69)

Here, Scot McKnight describes some positive and negative aspects of the “Romans Road” method of presenting the gospel, including this sage comment:

First, it is only one “language game” for the gospel. The Romans Road is not “the” gospel but “a way” of expressing the gospel. It tells the truth about the gospel, but not the whole truth.

I agree that it’s not the whole story, but I have systematic theology texts on my shelf that are longer than the Bible itself, yet still aren’t the whole story. Have some Christians presented the Romans Road as the whole of the gospel? Definitely. I think that if you asked them, they would agree that there’s much more to the gospel than a handful of verses from Romans, but when you repeat an abbreviation over and over again, it becomes louder than the complete message.

To put this crassly, think about an entrepreneur’s “elevator pitch.” It’s not designed to give the whole, agonizing back story if the company, its product, production methods, target market, etc., etc. Instead, the 15 or 30 second elevator pitch is supposed to give a brief-yet-true glimpse of the business, to draw the interest of the investor or customer. Using this model, the Romans Road would be perfectly appropriate in a conversation with a stranger or in introducing a friend to the basics of the gospel for the first time, but completely inappropriate for teaching someone what it means to follow Christ daily (the “long obedience in the same direction” that Eugene Peterson writes about).

Keep in mind, of course, that as soon as you substitute any particular method of evangelism for the true gospel, you’ve settled for something sub-Christian. One of the dangers of the elevator pitch is that you’ll begin to believe it. When you describe something via shorthand, that shorthand starts to change the way you think about the original something. For a simple example, think about our nicknames for our loved ones. Another example is corporate branding. Wal-Mart has sold itself so well as the home of “lowest prices guaranteed,” that they now have trouble selling more upscale products.

This is why we have to careful about the shorthand we use to describe the gospel. Any shorthand presentation must be carefully sculpted to be completely true, even in its brevity. We must also continually return to Scripture (our primary source of the gospel). We must be reminded that God’s good news is much larger and much more grander than we can express in a few words, a sermon, or even a lifetime of books.

In this post, Scot McKnight publishes a letter from a pastor struggling with some Christian leaders’ reactions to the “emerging church,” and an extremely lively conversation has ensued.

I am not going to comment on the post itself, but many of the comments talk about “the” emerging church or “the” evangelical church. This is a common, yet dangerous, practice. The world of Christian thought and practice is so diverse that it’s practically impossible to summarize even what subgroups like “emerging” or “evangelical” Christians believe and practice. I do it myself, I know, though I shouldn’t.

Let me use my own church as an example. Most Americans, I think, would classify us as “evangelical,” if they were familiar with that term. Our church tradition, however, historically had very little interaction with the broader Protestant tradition: we have published our own magazines, read our own Bible commentaries, founded our own colleges, etc. That changed about 20 years ago. Today, our church incorporates some unique beliefs and practices that developed in isolation from the wider church with beliefs/practices borrowed from, say, Bill Hybels or Beth Moore, to just give two examples. At the same time, there are many elements of Hybels’ and Moore’s theologies that our church either outright rejects or simply ignores. Other giants of “the” evangelical world – like J. I. Packer or John Stott – are practically unknown. For many of our members in their forties and fifties, Francis Schaeffer was an enormous influence, but younger members have no idea who he was. Rob Bell has gained currency among our members in their 20′s and 30′s, but no one in our church has even heard of Brian McLaren. An increasing number people are reading John Piper, while others think that Reformed theology is practically heresy.

Even within just one church, it’s difficult to generalize. And now a generalization about generalizations: painting with a broad brush can be easy. You can create a straw man that’s easy to knock down with your arguments. Since you get to paint with your own brush, you don’t have to interact with specific positions or find a real basis for your criticism. You discover that you’re always rights, and anyone else is wrong, if you want them to be. It’s intellectual softness that does nothing to advance the Church.