We’ve seen the videos: DRAMATIC FLORIDA SIDEWALK CONVERSION!! GOSPEL PREACHER HUMILIATES ATHEIST IN THREE MINUTES!! 

The stories and videos open on the sidewalk outside a concert venue, or an amusement park. The evangelist has a microphone and a cameraman. He steps into the path of his victim and begins asking a rapid-fire series of questions. These questions have a singular objective—to disorient and overwhelm the victim, to push him to an emotional crisis, and finally, to offer a solution so easy, so simple, that only a fool would resist. 

How much of our gospel sharing framework we have bought ready-to-eat at the Protestant drive-through? Do our evangelistic fantasies include sidewalk conversions, ten minute fast and furious engagements ending with a distraught victim praying a sinner’s prayer? Or perhaps even worse, has the rhetoric of this particular genre of evangelism colored our view of the gospel, and the way we speak of it to our families? Is our children’s understanding of the gospel a wonderful story of love, or is it more like a shotgun wedding with a hired preacher, and Daddy and his 12-gauge?

At its worst this shotgun gospel is a gospel of fear, no more and no less. Fear does play an important role in our lives. It is a powerful deterrent, and fear of fines and incarceration keeps our world safe and functioning. Jesus, in the gospels, does give religious people strong warnings about the destructive outcomes of sin. Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom outside the city Jerusalem, is the outworking of sin, and Jesus’ warnings are graphic. But when Jesus preached to the people, to the masses who thronged him, to the desperate, the sick, the poor, he did not often preach a destination of eternal torment. None of Peter or Paul’s evangelistic sermons in the book of the Acts leverage hell as most conservative christians today think of it. Because fear hath torment, not peace. Fear has no net positive qualities. Fear’s friends are from the dark side: resentment, self-loathing, bitterness, anger. 

The shotgun gospel, when driven by fear, becomes transactional. When the gospel becomes an exchange, a sinner’s prayer for a soul saved, Jesus is reduced to a ticket agent, someone who has something you need to get to where you want to go. Christianity becomes about where will you go? Will you spend eternity in heaven or hell? And the answer, the key, is whether or not you have your Jesus ticket on Judgement Day. But this is not the gospel of the Bible. When Jesus brings His good news the message is Himself, not a destination crisis of the soul. Jesus is not the way to the way, a means to an end, He is the Way itself. The eschatological implications of who or what you serve and love are bridges to be crossed upon arrival, not gateways to goodness. 

The shotgun gospel encourages a sundering of soul and person, where a person is viewed primarily as a soul enroute, a being defined by its moral trajectory. Too much engagement, the shotgun gospel insists, too much kindness and thoughtfulness are luxuries that cannot be afforded given the stakes and the mission. If someone sat in a living room while his house was aflame would you have a seat and begin gently inquiring about how his day was going for him? Or begin slowly building a relationship? Would you not rather grab him by his hair and drag him from the room? Who could care about his feelings, his little offended heart, when his very life was at stake? This is the logic driving the shotgun gospel. It is the logic of a Christianity whose eye has began to wander. Who has grown impatient with the slow, deep and often unseen work of love. 

The heart of the gospel, the crescendo, is a bloody, naked man crucified. A man who taught and spoke of kingdoms, powers and glories. He had promised salvation and eternal life and now he was dying, violated, shamed and despised. Save yourself, where is your god now, they said. It was a fair question.

This moment, when no one on earth comprehended or believed, is when God was most with us. This was God revealed. And no one felt heat. No one squirmed, no one tossed and turned and admitted that the white lie made him a liar which made him a sinner which made him going to hell which would go away if he said this prayer.

But no one could look away. They were silent. The scene moved them at their deepest. For real, said the captain, this was the son of a god. And the day the powers of Rome and God’s chosen Israel so easily killed the naked Jew was the day everything changed for everyone. Changed by a man killed by Roman thugs. Changed by love.

The Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the oppression of native people by Christian colonists, all these have come about when the way of Jesus has been assumed insufficient. When we thought the moment called for more and we reached for the works of darkness: power, fear, manipulation and coercion. 

We reveal what we understand of and how we experience the gospel of Jesus by how we share it with others. What we find most compelling about Christianity will be what we bring our families, our neighbors. 

Which gospel do you live? Is Jesus a Presence that draws, or is there a shotgun in your hand?