The Essential Jesus is a unique resource for modern Christians hoping to bring the Gospel to a world increasingly unfamiliar with the person at its heart. The story about its origins makes just as interesting reading. Matthias Media’s Ian Carmichael takes us behind The Essential Jesus…
When Andrew Nixon (Connect09) and Tony Payne (Matthias Media) were chatting earlier this year, they found a connection: the evangelistic resource that Tony had been thinking about producing for some time was the sort of thing that Andrew might be looking for as a core evangelistic resource for Connect09.
Now, after lots more conversations and many months of development and testing, 850,000 copies of The Essential Jesus are printed and about to be delivered to Anglican churches all across the Diocese for use as part of the Connect09 campaign.
"Like many people, I've long thought that's it an excellent idea to use the Gospel to preach the gospel," Tony says. "That is, to introduce people to Jesus himself as he leaps out from the pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
"But the Gospels assume quite a lot of prior knowledge when you think about it. For the average pagan Australian, even basic concepts like "God', "sin', "kingdom', "Christ', and "salvation' are quite foreign. That's why a gospel summary like Two Ways to Live doesn't start with Jesus, but fills in some basic concepts first. With this background painted in, the completely non-churched person can understand much better what we mean when we say that Jesus died to take the punishment we deserve, and rose to be our Lord.
"So that's effectively what we've done with The Essential Jesus. We've combined the strengths of using a Gospel with the benefits of using a gospel outline that starts further back."
Most of the 80 pages of The Essential Jesus contain the text of Luke's Gospel (a translation developed by Sydney Anglicans, but reviewed and checked by an international panel of experts). Preceding the Gospel are four pages called "Previously in the Bible' that explain the essential biblical concepts and content that set the stage for Jesus and Luke's Gospel (this explanation is loosely based on the first three boxes of Two ways to live).
After the Luke translation there's a summary of the whole gospel message under the heading "Why Jesus is essential'. This summary recalls what happened "Previously in the Bible', and then shows how Jesus comes in Luke's Gospel to fulfil those hopes, and to die and rise for the salvation of the world. It concludes with a challenge to respond to Jesus' call to "repent and believe the gospel' in preparation for the coming kingdom of God.
"Looking back, in God's providence there were two major advantages to working with Andrew Nixon and the Connect09 team to bring this project about," says Tony. "Firstly, as we finetuned the content and design of the book, it was extremely helpful to have the input of people who are working at the coalface of evangelism and who are planning out the detail of the Connect09 strategies. But secondly, by printing such a large quantity, we were able to get the cost of the book as low as possible. This means that Matthias Media can offer this resource not only to Connect09 but more widely for Christian mission at a price that encourages people to give it away."
Ian Carmichael is a senior editor at Matthias Media and regularly contributes insights into new publications for Your.sydneyanglicans.net readers
