I have never put an open ended question on my blog before, but i thought it would be a fun experiment. I am about to begin a sermon series on The Gospel at my church and I am beginning to realize how big that phrase is. So I would like to ask y’all to finish this sentence: The Gospel is…
And lets not give text book answers here, but personal ones. What is the gospel to you? Like if you were going to say, as Paul does, i gave you “my gospel”, what would that be?
Another way of asking it is this, what is the good news that Christianity has to offer?
Do unto others . . . that is pretty much the heart of the gospel for me. And also, hand in hand w/ that . . . remember the least of these. The good news is that doing your best to follow those two, simple things is like throwing open all the windows & doors in your heart & flooding it w/ light.
The Gospel is the good news that God is fully present in this world (the one we live in!), and in fact in humanity itself, in Jesus Christ. And that Jesus, in his life, acts, teachings, suffering, death, and resurrection, invites every human to turn around and follow him in a life of overflowing love, grace, kindness, service, radical welcome, and sacrifice. This kind of life is called eternal life.
In doing this, we take part in God’s project of the redemption not just of individual people, but of human communities and of the entire cosmos, co-creating with God a new heaven and new earth filled with beauty and justice (and attracting more co-workers along the way). This new world, always breaking in to ours in surprising ways, is called God’s kingdom.
This story tells of a God who is infinitely loving – always inviting and re-inviting each and every one of us to participate in this kingdom project – and infinitely graceful – always forgiving and continuing to love us when we turn aside to our own projects instead, even evil ones. Though we should know that in cases where we are the cause of injustice, the God who continues to love and forgive us nonetheless takes the side of justice. This is called God’s judgment, and it too is good news.
And that’s way too long and too textbook, but each word is personally felt, I assure you.
And if I were to get more personal with that, it would get much, much longer. 
this is great stuff folks, keep it coming!