Follow Me: Sharing the Gospel from the Gospels

Early in my career as a missionary I found that most evangelistic presentations were based on Paul's Epistles, especially his Epistle to the Romans. This struck me as odd since Paul's Epistles were written for Christians rather than unbelievers. Consequently, I wondered why gospel presentations were not based on the Gospels. Though the Gospels were in part written for Christians, they were primarily written as evangelistic documents. Indeed, the word gospel is used to translate the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον or evangelism. As a result, many years ago I developed and taught a class at the School of Transcultural Mission of Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary entitled The Gospel of Mark and Evangelism. In the subsequent years I have expanded the material I developed for that class and included all four Gospels and the results are compiled in this book. There is a major advantage to using the Gospels as the basis for gospel presentations. On the one hand, gospel presentations based on Paul's Epistles all address the basic problem of mankind--sin. However, they tend to be "one size fits all" approaches. Not that there is more than one gospel, but there are many different kinds of people that need the gospel. On the other hand, gospel presentations based on the Gospels can be used to present the gospel to many different kinds of people. As I have developed these gospel presentations based on the Gospels, I have found the Gospels present the gospel to the righteous and religious and challenge them not to presume that they are acceptable to God and follow Jesus; the wealthy and materialistic and challenge them not to rely on their riches and follow Jesus; sinners and outsiders and encourage them to see that God accepts them and follow Jesus, the poor and needy and challenge them to rely on Jesus for their needs and follow him; and those with a worldly perspective and challenge them to have a spiritual perspective and follow Jesus.

William H. (Bill) Lawson is a proud graduate of California Baptist University (BA), Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv), and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (PhD). He taught briefly at SBTS and then served with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention and taught the Bible in Baptist seminaries throughout Asia for over 30 years. He has written numerous books including Ears to Hear: A Guide for the Interpretation of the Bible, Obedient unto Death: A Guide for the Interpretation of Paul's Epistle to the Philippians and The Lion Roars: A Guide for the Interpretation of the Book of Amos. He is now retired and living at The End of the Lane where he is writing books and painting/drawing pictures.