Gospel Glass: Half Full?





Dr. David Nicholas planted Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, Florida and pastored it for 42 years. He now is the President of The Church Planting Network. His book Whatever Happened to the Gospel? was just released from CrossBooks and is on sale at the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly. He is signing books there at 2 p.m. today if you happen to be at the meeting.

I primarily knew David through his passion for church planting. He invited me to speak at Spanish River several years ago and we became friends. We caught up last night over dinner and I was reminded of just how significant their church planting involvment has been. As pastor of Spanish River Church, he was involved in the planting of 235 churches in the United States and around the world. He left SRC in 2009 and started The Church Planting Network and continues to plant churches.

David also has a passion for clear gospel proclamation. Over a year ago, he asked us here at LifeWay Research to conduct an independent survey of sermons from churches of all sizes and affiliations across the country, to see how often certain elements of the Gospel were being explained in a way that is meaningful and easy to understand. David provided a list of what elements were included in his understanding of clear gospel proclamation, what he calls “The Bad News / Good News.” It was one of our more interesting projects.

Our listening and ranking revealed that 94% of pastors did not include all the elements of the Bad News (our sin problem and the futility of good works) and the Good News (what God has done through Christ to overcome our sin problem) in their message. Some had some of the elements. Others had none. So David set out to ask the question that should come out of such startling results: Whatever Happened to the Gospel?

Since I know this is of interest to many of my readers, and I have written on gospel definitions here at the blog, I think it will be an interesting discussion.

Read the interview and jump into the comments below. David will be around today answering questions on the blog.

Ed Stetzer: Why did you write this book? Aren’t most Evangelical pastors preaching the Gospel?
DN: I am convinced that most Evangelical pastors believe they are doing a good job with the Gospel but a LifeWay Reasearch survey revealed that only 6% are preaching what I call a clear, complete, logical, sequential explanation of the Bad News and the Good News. It seems that every time I share this statistic with a person or a group, the response is usually>>>