Since no one raised any disagreements with last week’s post, I’ll suggest one myself.

I think I beat up on a bit of a straw man. Many of the web sites that discuss the Roman Road do, in fact, acknowledge that a new believer is called to live a new life after conversion, and many of them cite other passages of Scripture that fill in some of the gaps I was bemoaning.

However, I maintain that some problems remain with the Roman Road method in general. So here I’ll try to tease out a few main points and raise a question for everyone to respond to.

(1) I am convinced that for a person becoming a Christian, the new life is not just something that happens after salvation, but rather is salvation (or at least a part of it). Perhaps this is my Church of Christ upbringing talking, but I am persuaded that repentance is an action word –– not just a decision –– and that it must take place before salvation.

(2) I think two key reasons Scripture emphasizes baptism are that (1) it’s a public act so that we have people to hold us accountable, and (2) it reminds us that we can’t just make a little change here and there, but instead we need to be completely transformed by putting to death our old self and being raised to a new life. So it’s not just the act of baptism missing from the Roman Road, but also what it signifies.

(3) I am convinced that the way we use Scripture to prove points will teach our listeners how to read Scripture. Reading one verse at a time is, frankly, the worst way to read Scripture; it means that if we understand the verse correctly, it’s due to little more than dumb luck. (I’d prefer to say it’s the work of the Spirit that determines things, but have you seen how people interpret some verses?) So when we quote a verse at a time for the Roman Road, we suggest to people that that’s the way truth is found in Scripture.

On the other hand, obviously some parts of Scripture are more important than others, and it’s rarely helpful just to tell people to read the whole Bible and figure it out for themselves. The balance we need, then, is to find passages of Scripture (ideally larger than a verse or two) that work, in context, at explaining key points so that people can understand them and simultaneously learn how to read Scripture in an appropriate way.

(4) I think Christians need to consider carefully just how simple God intends for the Gospel to be. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul outlines what things that are of “first importance,” yet we cannot take that passage as sufficient, because it says nothing about how the story of Jesus relates to our lives or something called “salvation.” So we don’t want to be overly simplistic. And yet, clearly not everything is essential to know from the start.

So for this post, I’d like to throw open the discussion, and ask what is essential to teach someone (immediately) who may become a Christian, and what can be put off till later? In other words, if we want to develop a presentation of the Gospel to communicate to a non-believer, what should we make sure not to leave out?

So as not to stifle discussion, I won’t suggest any (further) examples.