In One Minute?!?!?

So I'm reading Mark Dever's "The Gospel and Personal Evangelism." In this book, Mark mentions that when someone joins his church, he asks them to share the gospel with him in one minute. The idea is that if you know the Gospel well, you should be able to summarize it in a minute.

So - a couple of days later, in my guy's discipleship group, I set a one minute countdown timer and each of the young men in my group attempted to share the gospel in a minute. We met with varying degrees of success. The most "complete" was Tyler, who got all the details in because he talked really fast and got close to two minutes crammed into one (something I've been known to do on occasion).

This whole "one minute" thing has started the wheels turning in my brain. Can you share the gospel in one minute? Should you even try? It's a two-sided coin, right? On the one hand, the best case scenario would be to sit down over coffee and be able to share the gospel with someone in great detail. There can be questions, clarifications, and you can really discuss the details of the gospel. On the other hand, the better you know and understand the gospel, the more you've thought through it, the more you really know it, the better you can summarize it. For example. I cannot summarize how my car works. I have a basic understanding of the spark plugs and pistons and valves and all, but to explain it well and briefly? It's not going to happen.

But the gospel - now that's another story. I want to know the gospel so thoroughly that I can explain it well whether I'm given a minute, an hour, or more. And if we're truly making efforts to share the gospel consistently, we'll have experiences all across that spectrum.

So here's the challenge. Get out your phone or watch and set a one minute timer. Make sure there's a noise of some sort at the end. Hit start. Share the gospel (out loud, not in your head). See how far you get before the timer goes off. Don't watch the timer as you do it. You'll be surprised at how fast that minute goes.

Go ahead - try it now (then read the rest of this post).

How did you do? If you didn't do as well as you'd like, you could probably think through some of the details a little. In my ministry, we have our "method" of sharing the gospel. We have a specific outline for sharing the gospel that we've put together and have been using for a few years. I love that it's pretty close to what Mark Dever said in his book. I've taken what Mark Dever wrote and tweaked it a little bit. Like our usual gospel presentation, this is a "script that's not a script." Remember that it's not about merely reciting something that you've memorized. It's about sharing the details of something that has radically changed you. That should be something worth sharing! And something you'll want to take more than a minute to explain if you have the opportunity.

The Gospel In One Minute
(thanks to Mark Dever for inspiring this)

G The one and only God, creator of everything,
who is holy, made us in His image to Know Him and glorify Him.

O But we sinned, we rebelled. We did our own
thing and cut ourselves off from Him.

S There’s nothing we could ever do to earn our
way back to Him or to fix the problem.

P BUT – In His great love, God became a man in Jesus,
lived a perfect life, and died on the cross,
taking on himself the punishment for the sins of
all those who would ever turn to and believe in Him.
He rose again from the dead, showing that God
accepted Christ’s sacrifice and that God’s
wrath against us has been satisfied.

E He now calls us to repent of our sins and to
trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness.

L If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we
are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God.

THAT, my friend, is good news!

Soli Deo Gloria!
Rob
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