The Modern Gospels

this is a transcription of a sermon given by a friend, original here.

I guess I’m here preaching today because someone was foolish enough to ask me to and I was foolish enough to say yes. It was kind of last minute and I really had no idea what to speak about. I asked myself: “Should I preach or should I teach?” If I preach I could be all hellfire and damnation and I thought that could be kind of fun. But that’s really not my style. And if I teach I could convince everyone that the Bible says all sorts of cool things it doesn’t really say. Lacking a seminary education I didn’t want to teach. So I thought it best to just tell you about my opinions and my personal experiences; those things I’m more comfortable speaking about, and better able to speak about.

I have to warn you. When I’ve shared in the past I’ve managed to offend half the room. If I happen to offend you let me apologize now.

So, before I begin I thought I’d tell you about myself since I’m relatively new to the church. I wasn’t raised in a religious home. My father is an ex-Catholic. And my mother has her own religious experiences that could fill a book. We didn’t go to church much when I was child. Maybe for Christmas or Easter we might go but otherwise not much. I became a Christian about 9 years ago, I was 19. I had mixed experiences with church until I found an emergent church plant in Baltimore County. My wife and I attended there for a number of years until we moved. Now we are here.

It is said that good artists are influenced by others while great artists steal. If that’s the case then please consider me a great artist because I stole this sermon from John Taylor-Gatto. I’m not ashamed because it was great 15 years ago and it’s still great today. Today I wanted to talk about the four gospels in modern times. As I said before I’m not qualified to either preach or teach. I’m going to give my opinion, my opinion from a Biblical perspective. It will tell you a lot about who I am and also how I perceive the gospel. I don’t think you have to agree with me or respect these things, I believe people best learn when they are given options and can decide for themselves.

The American Church has been in this weird sort of semi-consciousness for some time. Most Christians aren’t too concerned about denominations these days and it’s led to a time in history when church leadership is relatively unimportant. If you dislike leadership it’s easy to change denominations. But as a whole we believe in the gospel but sometimes how we behave and what we believe are different. Judging from our behavior I think we have written a new four gospels, gospels for a modern time, a wealthy time, and in terms of western life, a lonely time.

The first of these new modern gospels is the gospel of Fear. I don’t know exactly how Christians became fearful of the world. Jesus himself tells us to not fear. He tells us that the birds of the air are taken care of so we should expect, as God’s heirs, to be taken care of as well. This isn’t to say that there is not a healthy sense of fear, especially in the sense of fearing God.

I think of this like a horror movie. Invariably they begin like this. Jenny is home alone late at night waiting for her boyfriend Billy. All horror flicks have a character named Billy, have you ever noticed that? Jenny is waiting for Billy when she gets a phone call. Creepy, heavy breathing on the other end. Maybe a vague threat. The power goes out. She hears rustling in the next room. She calls out “Billy? Billy, is that you?” She’ll enter the living room. And there stands the villain. Jenny runs out of the house screaming only to be killed in the bushes.

Billy shows up for his hot date with Jenny. Billy will always enter the house without knocking. He calls out to Jenny.”Jenny? Jenny?” He searches the house thoroughly. He misses the creepy face in the window. The blood on the refrigerator. The power is out so he grabs a candle and heads into the basement. Billy isn’t so bright.

Eventually the heroes of the movie are not terrified of the villain like Jenny was. Nor are they fools like Billy. The heroes of these movies are brave; who understand the risks involved, and are willing to overcome the twisted adversity in their lives.

The church we have today in America isn’t a fool like Billy, rushing headlong into danger. We are a lot more like Jenny. We run away and are terrified of things that are different. We’ve moved to the suburbs, into Christian neighborhoods, into the areas that needed us least. And as the church begins to shrink, just like Jenny we wonder why we are dying.

The gospel of fear has deep roots.

The second Gospel we preach is the gospel of wealth. I’m not talking the prosperity gospel here, that is something different. America is the only country in the world where we drive a car to the poor house. In our efforts to keep up with the Joneses I think we’ve forgotten some basics in the Christian faith.

In the book of Acts the early Christians we not trying to gain possessions, they were giving them away! This is often a foreign idea to us.

What’s odd is that during some points in history the issue of ownership of goods was the exact opposite that we have today. Saint Francis of Assisi had an issue of everyone wanting to be poor. The Franciscans were a growing group of monks. Saint Francis, when homeless, had a not so difficult time of taking care of himself. But his group grew beyond their means. Joining them were an order of women, the poor Clares. And while both groups aimed to be poor they also needed to eat. So Saint Francis had an idea. He’d create a third group to join the Franciscans and the poor Clares, lay people. The lay people would work and give money to the order so the order could go on.

Indeed, if we all became monks the whole world would starve.

I’d like to think that the American church is a church of laypeople. A group of people who give generously at times, but are otherwise lost in terms of service to God. The wealth that most Americas experience has perhaps led us to believe that our neighbors don’t need Godly service the way the early Christians or Saint Francis provided it; I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. If America is a place where the poor can drive to the poor house, it is also a place where we can cry alone yet live in an apartment building. America can be a lonely place. We need less lay people and more Franciscans.

I want to ask you, and let you think about it: Do you think you are lay person? Is God calling to you a “Franciscan” lifestyle? Maybe it’s time for a change.

The Third Gospel we believe is the Gospel of Polarization.

We’ve done a great job of building and constructing a Christian sub-culture inside America. We have our heroes and villains. Dobson, Clinton, Robertson, gays, republicans, democrats. Pick your team.

The Church is a church of teams. Of good and bad. Of ostracization which we excel at. The Bible says: The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.

This polarization makes the church an unattractive place to visit. If you talk to unbelievers this is a major gripe with the church. The polarization creates judgment and judgment gives people the impression that we don’t want them here. I was at an event a couple months ago and a man stood up to speak, a man I believe was homosexual or queer or whatever the correct PC term is this week. He said he had been invited to church and he came and it profoundly changed him. He had found God. He had been “saved”.

I had to ask myself “Would I rather this man cease being a homosexual or would I rather him find the faith?” Our priorities need to be about people finding the faith. If anything we do pushes people away from Jesus then we need to take a second look at that. Thomas Huxley once said: It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

The fourth and last gospel we preach is the gospel of apathy.

Shane Claiborne was a young seminary student when he found himself in a battle between homeless women and the Catholic Church. The women had taken refuge in an empty church and the Philadelphia diocese was trying to remove them. Everyone but Shane his ragtag band of seminary students turned a blind eye. That is, until the press got a hold of it.

We don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. Or poor. Or even wealthy, because the wealthy need the gospel too. We’ve forgotten that people, everyone, need the gospel. Because no matter how wealthy you are or how much you have, God’s inheritance promised us is worth considerably more than anything we have here.

My boss tells me often that I lack a sense of urgency at work. I wonder if we lack a sense of urgency here, at church, in our walk with God. How many people have you invited to church this week? This month? This year? How many were unbelievers?

If we truly believe in God and His word shouldn’t we be excited to share this stuff? Instead we are apathetic to the needs of people and apathetic to Christ’s command to bring more sheep into the sheepfold.

The problem with apathy is to outsiders it appears malicious.



I don’t know if the fear causes us to apathetic or if the wealth causes polarization. These things seem to be intertwined. I have to tell you, I’m not here to judge anyone or to pull them aside and scold them. If I were then I would have to start with myself. Truly, I haven’t invited many people to church. Nor have I sold my possessions. I, like many of you, have read and believed in these modern gospels. I have lived them all and kept their commandments whenever possible. I had bought into fear first. I was excellent at polarization for some time. I still covet a playstation 3 more than giving to charity. The gospel of apathy I read and don’t even realize it.

When I worked as a manager at a Cinnabon I really enjoyed having a customer complain. I know it sounds weird. I’m not talking about the kind of complaint where a customer yells and screams at me. But an honest concern. This told me something was wrong. And if something was wrong then I could fix it.

I’m not trying to be critical. Not of the church or Christianity. I wouldn’t want to merely spout off some complaints and leave you hanging. Instead, I think it’s important to point out these things so we can find a solution.

Friday I found myself in West Baltimore at Westside Assembly of God. Pastor Marshall told me that 7 people had been shot in the neighborhood in February. Two of them behind the church. One was killed instantly, the other ran around the building wounded, leaned against the church van which became covered in blood, went across the street and was summarily executed.

Pastor Marshall and his team find a way to be here. And despite the violence and poverty, the lack of tithing, they find a way to feed the community three meals a week. I felt considerably less afraid Friday then I felt two years ago when I participated in a church event there.

If we are to overcome our fear then we need to find something that terrifies us and do it, complete the task, and complete it in the name of the Kingdom. You’re probably too scared to as much as think about this. But go ahead, bite the bullet, and do something amazing or daring.

Some people might think, like me, that we need to change, that we need to become relevant to a changing culture. You won’t hear me disagree. But a lot of churches have tried to become relevant in ways such as changing their music, their dress code, or their style of sermon. They’ve become younger, hipper, and more energized. None of these things are unbiblical so I see nothing wrong with any of them. But I also don’t think the music, the clothes, or PowerPoint meet any needs or suffices for the long term. None of those address the core reasons why church attendance is down.


The message of Jesus is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. It doesn’t need to be updated, it needs to be resurrected. We need to get back to the basics of our faith because the basics are timeless classics. Service. Charity. Giving. Salvation. An eternal inheritance. The ability to eat pork bacon. These things attract people today as much as they did then. Often we say “What we can offer people so they will come to church” Jesus didn’t offer that to the disciples, he offered “What are you going to do for the kingdom of God?” Jesus offered hard work, persecution, and poverty. But he also told us that it was all for the greater good. If we offer these same things I believe people will come back to the church. People want to help make the world better but they don’t want to be fixed. Our message of “Come to God to get healed” doesn’t attract people who don’t think they aren’t broken. We need to stop offering something an arrogant culture has no need for. Besides, how do they expect to get healed when the church is run and attended by so many other broken people?

I don’t know about you but I’m really tired of reading these current gospels which don’t address my core needs nor the core needs of the culture in which we live. I’m convinced that the modern Christian must be fearless, giving, moderate, and compassionate. Not merely in our beliefs, but in our behaviorisms.

We live in a society where we pay someone to mow our lawn, clean our gutters, and cook many of our meals. We’ve likewise come to believe that some politician or some pastor or some missionary will be doing our job of evangelism. Indeed, I’ve believed it for a quite some time; not in my head mind you, but in my actions. If I haven’t invited anyone to church don’t my actions reflect as much? We need to stop thinking that we can sub-contract out these types of efforts. If there is one terrifying thing about the modern gospels it’s that we fear offending someone we could reach out to, we are apathetic toward their plight, our wealth and charity makes us believe we are doing our part, and our natures don’t want to fraternize with difference.

Indeed, the cumulative effect of the modern gospels is that we have become nearly useless to the core message of the gospel itself: “Go out and tell the nations”. If the devil can’t get our souls he’ll keep us so busy as to be ineffective. We need to be more focused on what we, as individuals do, then what others are doing. The modern gospels are more concerned about the actions of others than ourselves.

I might give the homeless man a buck and he might buy beer. But ultimately I was charitable; I’ll be accountable to God for that. And ultimately if he buys beer he will be accountable for that. I believe and hope that God wants selfless people who are more concerned with their own actions then the actions of others. I can’t control the war, I can’t cure cancer or end suffering in the world but I can make sure someone who is cold gets a blanket, or the grumpy lady in Superfresh gets a smile. If we all started taking care of the silver coins God gives us we would make the world better and God would trust us with more. He tells us that and I believe it.


I don’t know if any of this resonates with you. But I think I learned more about myself writing this sermon than I have learned in a long time. The more I wrote the more it seemed that I was convicting myself. The more I thought the more I realized just how much I had read and reread these modern gospels. The more I did the more I realized I behaved in the manner that the modern gospels dictated.

We don’t need to wait for a special event like a visitor’s day to invite a visitor. Or a holiday to feed the homeless. Christians are supposed to be living this stuff out. What would happen if every week each one of us invited someone who is unchurched to church? My experience tells me many of them might never come back but some of them would stick around and share in God’s inheritance.

I used to think that the parable of the prodigal son was bunch hooey. Why would the father, who had already given his son his part of the inheritance take him back and give him more? This seems wholly unfair to the loyal son, as if the father was now giving part of the loyal son’s inheritance to the disobedient brother. But we must remember the father represents God and God’s personal shoebox of cash is without limit.

We have to remember that we have an inheritance with God. If you play the lottery and you haven’t won yet let me remind you that you have won an even bigger jackpot. This is something that I realized recently. It was easy to believe I was something as vague as “saved” but it was harder to realize that rewards awaited me now and they merely needed to be claimed. When this life is over we are all going to be in the black. If that’s the case why not go “all in” on every hand? With God opening his personal treasure vault we won’t ever be in debt if we play this game on His behalf.

Thank you for tolerating a hypocrite like me and enjoy your day.