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Letter from America

Can you 'Twitter' the gospel?

Twitter is, as it self-defines, ‘a service for friends, family, and coÐworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?’ As a web page resource it appears to be becoming increasingly popular for fast paced interaction.

Recently (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=81195), pastor Rob Bell was asked to ‘Twitter’ the gospel. A Twitter post has to be 140 characters or less, so the challenge is not incommensurate to the challenge to summarise the gospel very briefly. It gets at the issue: what is the gospel at its heart? If you had to leave out everything but 140 characters what would you say? No doubt the challenge to Twitter the gospel also gets at the difficulty of offering the gospel (preaching the gospel) in an appealing way in such short compass. Is that possible? Can you actually summarise the essential elements of the biblical gospel in just a few short sentences? What would you write?

Write a precis

It would certainly be an interesting task for any youth group, leadership team, elders, or family, to attempt to summarise the gospel in 140 characters or less (or Twitter the gospel). If you are a Bible college teacher you might like to suggest it as an interesting exercise for an incoming class of potential ministers. What is their essential gospel at this point in their development? Very often, this ‘message’ becomes the DNA of a minister’s ministry, and so it is valuable to identify that gospel DNA explicitly, and then, of course, seek to reshape that message to be more faithful to the biblical gospel. If you are a pastor you might like to lead your staff or leadership team through a similar exercise. A week or so ago, our staff team here discussed together a comparable question on the basis of a simple chart on a white board. We drew three lines to demarcate three questions — What is the gospel? What is not the gospel? How do we promote the gospel? This certainly fueled interesting discussion, helpful clarification, and we trust some renewed promotion of the biblical gospel.

Of course, you might also like more simply to look at the New Testament’s summaries of the gospel. You could think of Galatians 2.19-21, for instance. Or you might like to read Paul’s summary in Colossians 1.15-23, which he concludes with, ‘This is the gospel that you heard’. Alternatively, a quick visit to the beginning of the letter to the Romans would repay dividend (Romans 1 and the first few verses).

Paul’s twitter?

But perhaps the most often cited New Testament passage as a brief summary of the gospel is 1 Corinthians 15. So let us take 1 Corinthians 15 as one possible benchmark for ‘twittering’ the gospel. You might be interested to know that in the NIV or ESV by five or so characters Paul has already got to Christ, his death for our sins, that this was according to the Scriptures, and before the mere 140 is done he has gone past the resurrection and onto the witness of Peter. Of course Paul was not asked to Twitter the gospel in 140 characters or less in 1 Corinthians 15, but still it is an impressive amount of clear gospel content in a very brief summary. Actually, the Greek of 1 Corinthians 15 even gets just about to the more than 500 to whom Christ appeared by about the 140-character limit.

My guess is that however we personally summarise the gospel in our own words, we need to make sure — as Paul did — that that summary has Jesus front and centre, the cross and its meaning as a death for our sins, followed by the resurrection. ‘Twittering’ the gospel accurately may be a challenge for us non-apostolic types, but Paul gives us the confidence that we can well summarise the gospel and stay on the message of Jesus and him crucified. Oh, that’s another summary and that is — what? — 15 characters in total in English: ‘We preach Christ crucified’ (1 Corinthians 1.23). That’s the message. Let us not forget it.

Josh Moody,
Wheaton, Illinois