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him as Savior, and invite him into our hearts, we will receive eternal life and go to heaven when we die. That’s what we were taught, and for the most part, it is the story we tell. But if we consider it carefully, we will realize that version of the gospel is only about the individual and God. It’s about you and Jesus and what you believe about who he is. It is all about each individual winning heaven and immortality through faith in Christ. At its heart, this version of the gospel is about us getting something we want or need, i.e., forgiveness and eternal life. It is ultimately selfish and individualistic. It requires very little from us apart from mental assent to certain truth claims about Jesus. It is all about the individual and God, and carries with it few social implications, if any. And in a nation of selfish people who have individualism forced upon them from the day they are born, our faith has become too individualistic as well. The gospel we tell is too individualistic, and has become indistinguishable from the narrative of the culture at large. It should be no wonder it doesn’t call people to change.

      What if the reason the gospel has become ineffective is that it has been co-opted by individualism? What if our gospel is more about individualized religion than authentic good news? What if the gospel has become so dominated by individualism, that in a country full of individualists, the gospel doesn’t stand out as anything different, doesn’t ask us to live differently? Maybe this is why we give our lives to try and share the good news with people and are continually frustrated and disappointed with the results. We’re not telling the whole story! The truth is hard to hear, but I believe this is true: the version of the gospel most American evangelical Christians tell bears little resemblance to the gospel Jesus preached, nor does it echo the kind of life-altering pursuit of the kingdom which we see at work in the lives of the great saints of the New Testament.

      I wish I could say I’ve never been frustrated enough to take a shot at this sticky lug nut. I cannot. I’ve fired in frustration countless times and I typically end up injuring myself in the process. I’ve handed out my condemnations, and I usually regret it. I’ve slandered, complained and threatened to leave. But I haven’t left because I think deep down I realize this is who I am; these are my people. For better or for worse, I am in and of the tradition of American Evangelicalism. So I don’t write this critique as an outsider, but as one who has great love for the evangelical church. However, I am resolved to confront my tradition, even to poke it with a stick because, well, it is my tradition. I’m not going anywhere and the truth is we need to rethink a few things. This book is the best way I know to show my love. Wounds of a friend and all . . .

      A Break in the Clouds

      Here’s the problem as clearly as I can state it. For the past few centuries, individualistic conceptions of the gospel have championed some truly good things: the emphasis that every human person can have a personal relationship with God through faith in Christ; the essential nature of personal faith; the priesthood of the believer; the missionary spirit; the consistent appeal to the authority of scripture; the resistance of the absolute power of a corrupt church; and many others. But, the resulting forms and modes of what it means to follow Christ have been overly-geared toward individual salvation and self-enhancement. As a result, the individualistic nature of the gospel has become distorted and overplayed. Individualism has usurped the essential communal and corporate nature of the Christian faith, and the social claims which Jesus makes on the life of his followers have been drowned out and ignored. When this happened the gospel lost its power.

      When astronauts take a trip to space, they have to carry their own oxygen. They can’t just open up the windows of their spacecraft and get a breath of fresh space air. Space is a vacuum. The air would instantly be sucked out of their lungs, which I’m guessing is not a very good way to go. The lack of oxygen in space means rocket fuel will not burn either. Rocket fuel in and of itself is worthless in space. Without oxygen it cannot burn, it cannot oxidize, and thus cannot propel the spacecraft. If you want your rocket fuel to burn in space, you have to carry your own oxygen with you. Only then can you fire your rockets and get where you are meant to go.

      The gospel is like this. It has a personal dimension—just between you and God—and this is a critical piece. It also has a corporate dimension—between you and all of humanity, even the created order—and this is a critical piece as well. You have to have the personal and corporate dimensions working in tandem for the fire to burn and get you where you are meant to go. As oxygen is to rocket fuel in space, so the corporate dimension is to the personal dimension in the Christian gospel. In American Evangelicalism, we have the personal covered, but we are lacking in the corporate understanding of the good news. The nexus of the personal and corporate is where all the power is.

      The tradition which protected and emphasized the corporate nature of the gospel has often been called the Social Gospel movement. It has been attacked and maligned by evangelicals for a century, sometimes rightfully so, for shunning any mention of personal faith and a relationship with God. But we need to put that behind us. It is time to realize the gospel is personal for sure, but it is also corporate. Today, individualistic ideas of what it means to follow Jesus hang like a cloud over the message of Christ we find in the Scriptures. Jesus, following in the footsteps of the prophets who came before him, was very serious about the corporate nature of the gospel. Yet, perhaps in our day and our time there is a moment—a break in the clouds—a chance for us to hear the true gospel which binds us together as the people of God and sends us out in the mission of God. Shouldn’t the gospel be good news for the cultures and institutions of all societies, as well as the individual persons? To rediscover the corporate aspect of the gospel will require a clear theological exploration of the gospel in ways that favor the solidarity of all humankind over the primacy of the individual. Maybe if we began to preach the gospel this way, we would discover this is how God has planned it from the very beginning.

      As I said, I am writing as an evangelical Christian. If that is not your cup of tea, it is entirely possible this makes absolutely no sense to you so far. Yet I hope the issues I address here will challenge all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. The church is on the verge of irrelevancy in our culture, but our problem is not a lack of cultural relevancy as many assume. A few candles, some incense, and a good rock band won’t help us here. The problem runs much deeper than that. The problem is the gospel message has been overshadowed and corrupted by the rival god of individualism.

      We might pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” but do we really expect it to happen? Do we really mean it? It’s time for us to face up to the fact that the limiting reagent in this chemical reaction is not God, it is us. We are the problem. The church is all rocket fuel and no oxygen, and so the way we bear witness to the gospel has become problematic. We are ignoring its communal nature and in so doing we are robbing it of its power.

      1. Associated Press, “Revenge of the Lug Nut.”

      2. Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 35.

      2 Rugged Individualism, Amsterdam,

       and Walter Rauschenbusch

      Individualism is part of the American narrative. We are the land of the rugged individualist. In America anyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and make their life whatever they want it to be. We celebrate the heroic and elevate those who conquer. This is the shape of the American story. America was started by brave individuals who ventured across the sea to colonize the new world. It was expanded by strong individuals who pushed west across the frontier to settle the lands from New England to California. Our brave leaders came to preeminence in the twentieth century as they toppled Hitler, then soared toward the heavens and put a man on the moon. America is the land of individual rights, individual freedoms, and the great American hero. We celebrate our own virtue when we celebrate George Washington, who could not tell a lie. We celebrate our own bravery when we celebrate Patrick Henry’s bold proclamation, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Among our most sacred documents is the forceful declaration of our own independence. This is the American story. It is the land where the tales of rugged individualism pass from generation to generation, to fund a virtuous nation.

      Evangelicals have been formed in this narrative of individualism, so it should be no surprise that the gospel we tell in America should have an individualistic bent. But, the story of individualism is not

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