Winning a Generation Without the Law: How to Preach Good News to the 21st-century Mind

Publisher Marketing: In the last century we proclaimed the gospel to a boomer generation that grew up with the Judeo-Christian premises of absolute truth and fixed moral standards. Our message addressed the problem of guilt before a holy Lawgiver. But how should we craft our gospel message for the diversity-oriented generation born since the early 1980's that doesn't bring that same pre-packaged starting point? Countless books on evangelism and apologetics insist we must convert their minds to a theistic worldview before the gospel can convert their souls; that millennials must first believe in God's law, sin, and judgment before they can believe in Jesus for eternal life. This book offers an alternative approach that explains why the New Testament gospel does not demand such a two-step conversion for those "without law" (1 Corinthians 9:21). It lays out the biblical basis for going directly to the one problem the gospel solves for this lawless generation (hint: it's not guilt!). The author traces the origins of our present 'legal' gospel to its roots in the Protestant Reformation and explores how the Reformers reversed the Bible's sequence of gospel before law in a manner that far overshot the simplicity of the Apostles' gospel. He clearly lays out how we have allowed many elements of post-belief discipleship to creep into our gospel that only serve to create resistance in the 21st-century mind.