When the gosple is gossiped it spreads naturally.

I recently read a letter written by Victor Choudhrie, one of the leaders of the house church movement in India. Since this is a tremendously powerful movement of the gospel, which is planting generation after generation of churches and is gaining millions of new disciples of Jesus Christ, I paid close attention to what was being said. Here is his sixth point of twelve he made in his letter:

A house church does not need any special building, special day, special person to run it. Wherever two or three gather to gather to eat, meet and gossip the gospel, make disciples and multiply, is an authentic church because the Lord is present in their midst. (Matt. 18:18-20) House churches are biblical, historical, effective, productive, customizable, gender neutral and free.

All of that is quite true. And, it would be worth our while to investigate each thought in point six. But I want to focus on one phrase that caught my eye, “gossip the gospel.” I’ve been trained to preach the gospel. But preaching and gossiping are two very different things. I’ve never really thought about gossiping the gospel.

Preaching the Gospel

Preaching the gospel is about proclaiming. Here is the first definition of proclaim from the Merriam Webster OnLine Dictionary: Proclaim: to declare publicly, typically insistently, proudly, or defiantly and in either speech or writing. That is pretty much how I was taught to express the gospel. I was taught that my message was true so I needed to be bold. My message was true, so I was to declare it. If people didn’t want to listen, I was to persist. I was to do my best to make sure they got the whole message. Never mind that they were leaning away from me looking at their watch. Never mind that their facial expression was telling me that they were bored, or angry or resentful. I needed to download the whole message.

Preaching the gospel was also rather doctrinal. The particular method I was weaned on was in booklet form. It had four points and a few Bible verses for each point. I needed to somehow ambush someone into letting me whip out my booklet (which was proudly worn in my shirt pocket) so I could get through the four points and the prayer at the end. Don’t forget to use a pencil or pen as a pointer. And it worked…every once in a while. Most of the time though, sharing like this built up a lot of resentment towards me and much worse still, towards Jesus and his Church. In other words, the person I was preaching at could sense my proud insistence to defiantly proclaim my message, even when they weren’t interested. O.K. lets sum up…I was being rude.

Sharing Juicy Tidbits

Victor is wisely suggesting something different. Why not share the wonders of the gospel like juicy bits of gossip; true, but still juicy. Let’s be honest, we all like gossip. It’s tantalizing. It’s interesting. And best of all, it comes in story form. It directly relates to people we know. Why, we can even go and check up to find out if it’s true. And like all interesting gossip, it naturally spreads and takes on a life of its own.

We don’t have to give the whole story at once. It might even be more interesting to leave our listener with a cliff hanger. We can just tell what happened to us, and how it affected our lives. We can tell it as a tantalizing story we heard from someone else. We can even ask our listeners, what do you think? Can it possibly be true? This not only makes the gossip…er, I mean the gospel, more interesting; it ties it to our own lives and the lives of people our listeners know personally. We can invite them to check it out for themselves. This makes the gospel a community affair. And, in doing so, it makes the gospel much more tantalizing and viral.

  • Were you trained to preach or gossip the gospel?
  • Do you think gossiping the gospel cheapens it?
  • Would you rather hear good news as a set of doctrines or a story tied to the life of someone you know?
  • Does the idea of gossiping the gospel give you ideas of how to tell your friends about Jesus?
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