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That revision of the Two ways to live outline that I’ve mentioned once or twice? 

Well it’s nearly done. The final commas are being debated. Some new designs are being workshopped. I’ve even seen mock-ups of some very fetching t-shirts and caps (remember when we used to call that ‘witness wear’?).

The feedback we’ve received about the proposed changes has been really useful and encouraging, and some good questions have been asked. 

One recent excellent question concerned the value of learning a single gospel outline like Two ways to live when the gospel can be expressed in a range of different forms. If there is ‘one gospel but many forms of it’ (as is often said these days), why learn just one outline? Won’t this restrict our ability to adapt the gospel into the many different forms that we may need in different contexts and cultures? 

My immediate response to this question is to say: “Well that is, in fact, precisely what Two ways to live is designed for”.

The whole point of Two ways to live is to equip Christians for a multitude of different conversations about the one biblical gospel. You learn the essential elements of the gospel thoroughly in a skeletal, bullet-point framework, along with some imagery to help remember it. And once you’ve done that, you’re equipped to talk about that message in a multitude of different ways in different contexts with different people: in casual conversations over coffee, around the dinner table with your kids, in a more formal presentation (a children’s talk, a youth talk, a sermon), in a seven-week evangelistic course, in a letter to a friend, to a completely unchurched millennial, to a lapsed Catholic, to a Buddhist, and so on. 

In all these different contexts and modes of communication, the presentation of the elements of the gospel framework will come out differently. As you sit on a bench with a friend at a mountain lookout and marvel at the beauty in front of you, the conversation might start at Box 1 (creation). Or if you’re talking about what’s wrong with our lives and our world, the discussion might begin and linger in Box 2 for a while (our rebellion against God and the consequences). Every Two ways to live gospel conversation or explanation will be different, depending on who you are as the speaker (i.e. how you speak), and depending on where the person (or people) you’re talking to are at—their existing knowledge of the Bible, the particular questions they are raising, and so on.

But the message you communicate (if you’re faithful to it) will be the same, because the one biblical gospel is a message for everyone. 

This came home to me afresh just this last weekend in a sermon I preached about Peter’s gospel proclamation to Cornelius in Acts 10. There’s a lot of dramatic hoo-haa in Acts 10 to actually get Peter into the room with the gentile Cornelius and his gentile friends, so that he can preach to them. Up to this point, it seems not to have completely dawned on Peter yet that the gospel is indeed a message for everyone—even the despised and unclean gentiles. 

But when he finally does get it, and opens his mouth and speaks to Cornelius and co, he reveals why the message he’s been commanded to preach is a message for every single person in the world, regardless of their culture, aspirations, or existing beliefs. 

His message is the proclamation and announcement of certain historical events—the good works and healing ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, his death on a tree, and his resurrection from the dead—and the meaning and implications of those events for every person in the world. Peter sums up those implications like this: 

And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgive