The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything

by William H. Willimon

What does the Gospel of Jesus Christ have to offer to the person who does not feel an overwhelming sense of need? The author considers this question in light of the usual attempts on the part of evangelists and preachers to convince their hearers of their desperate situation without the Gospel. He argues that Jesus Christ appeals to every person where that person is.

If the Gospel is also for the person who has no overwhelming sense of need, what is the Good News to that person? The author suggests that such a person can rejoice in God, who is the giver of all good things, and be challenged to use these gifts in the name of Jesus Christ.

This book will provide much food for thought for persons seeking a fuller understanding of the Christian faith and better ways to proclaim that faith to people who have everything—everything but the Good News.

94 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1978

About the author

The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at the Divinity School, Duke University. He served eight years as Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of The United Methodist Church, where he led the 157,000 Methodists and 792 pastors in North Alabama. For twenty years prior to the episcopacy, he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag, but full of good things as well as some stuff that seems not quite up to the mark of the rest.
His argument that for more than a couple of centuries preachers have focused on people's sinfulness, and the need for repentance before focusing on the One who saves, and His grace. Willimon argues that it's grace that comes first, and this leads us to repentance, and gratitude, and then to a Christian life. And because we have things the wrong way round so often, people who have a natural strength in life, and whose lives aren't in the gutter, and miserable and poor, don't see what they have to repent of, and so switch off. But when grace comes first, and the idea that God reaches out in love to all men and women, whatever their current place in life, and that He then uses that life, and in particular, that strength for His glory, we have something to offer such people. (This of course is a poor paraphrase of how Willimon puts it!)
He makes the point that though there areexamples of rough and ready, sinful and deceitful (Jacob), poor and impoverished people learning of God's grace both in the Old and New Testaments, there are a host of people who are not poor, not weak, not struggling. Jesus, in particular, calls people out of perfectly good jobs, as it were, and makes them His disciples. And they have these jobs because they're already competent and capable people. Paul is a prime example of someone who was extremely capable - he was literally flung down and told that he had things back to front. And ever after Paul would talk of God's grace to him; it was only after that incident on the road to Damascus that he realised his wrongfulness.
The book is worth reading for the earlier chapters in particular. One or two of the others seem a bit like fillers...

[Brian Reagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book to be an interesting prspective by a prominent and excellent homileticist who provides a provoking insight to preaching to the postmodernist society in which we find ourselves.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant title and premise. Too bad the text didn't live up to these.