A lesson from What-a-burger

My second year of Seminary I learned a valuable lesson that will always stick with me: I didn't know the gospel clearly. I had been driving to seminary and saw a homeless woman asking for food. I pulled into a local hamburger joint and walked over to her. As we walked into the restaurant I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to share the gospel with her.

Sitting at that What-a-burger restaurant with a captive (and hungry) audience I was struck by how difficult it was for me to condense the gospel into the basic elements a "pre-Christian" needs to know. I found myself starting with Adam and Eve and talking about original sin, then I moved to the account of Noah and the Ark. As I took bites of greasy burger in between sentences, I had the feeling that I was rambling. She was listening to what I was saying, the only problem was I was not making much sense. Thankfully God can, and does, use our rambling - but we should make the use out of every encounter we have!

How much does one need to know in order to trust in Christ? Do they need to know the story of the WHOLE Bible? Do they need to know one verse? What are the fundamental elements of the gospel? That rambling at what-a-burger sent me on a quest to be clearer and more accurate every time I share the gospel.

I recently read of a group of Christians who were trying to condense the gospel into a twitter feed (only 140 characters long!) As I read through them, some were pretty good, and others were lacking in their depth and accuracy. So I have taken the challenge to do something similar. I have tried to keep the characters to a minimum. I only hacked mine down to 190 - I could not compete with the twitter feed folks.

I wanted to include a Trinitarian view of God, the lostness of humankind, the wages of sin, and keep the theological jargon to a minimum. If you have ways to improve this or add your own, please post it in the comments!

190 character gospel presentation:
Because humans are incapable of avoiding the consequences of sin, God sent His incarnate, divine son Jesus to live, die, and be resurrected as a payment for sin and offers eternal life to those who, through the Spirit, trust Him.