"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received." - 1 Corinthians 15:3
"The gospel is still the gospel. Sin is still sin. It all just looks a little different." I have repeated this line a dozen times a day for the past nine months.
I have recently made a move that has been a bit of a culture shock. For the past five years, I have been doing college ministry on a campus of 39,000 students that has been ranked as one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse campuses in the nation. Out of those 39,000 students, we only had 500 involved in evangelical ministries. Do the math - there are more professing christians in Muslim Turkey than we had on our campus.
And now, I am the Senior Pastor of a 202 year old church in a small town in middle Tennessee. A town whose population is smaller than the campus I left. A town that has four churches just in its downtown. A town that has a benefactor who has given ten acres of land just for new churches to build buildings on (there are already three there now, with space for three more). We have more churches than fast food restaurants...a lot more.
And yet, with just a little digging into the souls of the people here, I find the same problem of idolatry. With just a few questions, I find the same expressions of unbelief. The stories here are littered with just as much brokenness as the stories I would hear on the college campus. It all just looks a little different.
But, the gospel is still the gospel too. The assumption that I run into on a daily basis is that I need some other ministry tool besides what I have been using for the past ten years now that I am no longer on a college campus. The gospel is still the gospel. It just looks a little different.
"Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved." - 1 Corinthians 15:1-2
I have been reminding myself frequently that the apostle Paul didn't need a new gospel as he traveled from such culturally and religiously diverse places as Jerusalem and Corinth. Sure, the outworking and application of his ministry looked a little different in each of those places. But at the core of his ministry, he was careful (very, very careful) to bring them back to the content of the gospel (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 for one of the few places he summarizes the gospel).
So, while it all looks a little different. The gospel is still the gospel. And sin is still sin. And Jesus is reigning over all things.
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