One of the things we face in our churches today is theological minimalism/reductionism. Nowhere is this the clearest than our pragmatic push in evangelistic practices. The gospel has been reduced to certain cliches such as “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” and packaged in presentations replete with smooth transition statements. Most alarming for me was when my former church did the “40 Days of Purpose” and my wife held a community group in our home. The first session Rick Warren “presented the gospel.” Unfortunately, my wife and I did not watch the video beforehand, so we were not prepared for what we were going to see. The rest of the evening she had to go back and reject Warren’s presentation, telling her friends that becoming a Christian is more than finding your purpose in life.
I say that to provide a personal framework for this quote by David Wells in the book Only One Way. When I read this, these personal stories began running through my mind. I suspect others could do the same as well. Check it out.
“What results from this kind of accommodation (the “Christ-of-culture” position) to the culture is that the Christian gospel comes to seem little different from the kind of general spirituality that is now pervasive throughout all Western cultures. For a long time, in fact, evangelicals have been in the business of minimizing and reducing the gospel to its bare essentials, putting it in the most appealing secular form, selling, and marketing it, and stripping it of its doctrinal framework. Any kind of doctrine present in the framing of the gospel, it is believed, will put people off, and so, to assure more success, all doctrine has now gone. The gospel is reduced to purely relational terms; sin is only what prevents us from reaching our full potential; God is anxiously yearning for a relationship with us, which he has been unable to bring about because he has not been able to catch our attention; for a one-time admission of our weakness, people can receive the eternal benefits of having God on their side. It is all so easy! Why would anyone even hesitate to clinch such an advantageous deal?”
David F. Wells, “One Among Many” in Only One Way (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), 39-40.