At the end of the day, as our culture rapidly changes all around us, we must retain an unchanging message. That is non-negotiable. But we can be open to new methods – at least to SOME new methods. But even here real care and prayer is needed as to the best way to proceed.

Some things change in life. Some things do not change. Knowing which is which is vital. As to the former, people change. Cultures change. Societies change. But as to the latter, God does not change. The Christian gospel does not change. Our fundamental need as human beings does not change.
So how does the Christian know how best to present an unchanging gospel to a changing world? At the risk of oversimplifying things, when it comes to the gospel and our presentation of it, there have been three quite broad options to run with. They are:
-Keep the message and the methods the same – fundamentalist Christians.
-Keep the message but change the methods – evangelical Christians.
-Change the message and the methods – progressive Christians.
Others have made use of this threefold scheme, and all three of these positions need to be teased out more fully to do them justice. But roughly speaking, that is sort of how things have panned out in the West over the past few centuries. And the three Christian camps also need to be discussed a bit further. So let me seek to unpack all of this.
The term “fundamentalist” gets a bad rap today, and it is usually used as a term of derision. And it does not help when Christians who can be described as fundamentalists are put in the same category as fundamentalist Islam. The term arose over a century ago when believers chose to affirm the fundamental truths of the gospel, and oppose the liberal theology and social gospel of the day. See this article for more: https://billmuehlenberg.com/1999/07/26/what-is-fundamentalism/
Evangelicals in part sprang out of the fundamentalist camp (but go back before that as well) and they too strongly champion unchanging biblical doctrines that can never be jettisoned nor diluted. Thus the Trinity and the deity of Christ are must-believe core doctrines that of course go back to the early church creeds. See more on them here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/03/19/what-is-evangelicalism/
Progressive Christians tend to be those of the religious left, who not only embrace various political and social agenda items usually championed by the secular left, but tend to have a very weak view of biblical basics as well. In fact, most are quite happy to insist that we must reject or radically redo most basic Christian beliefs. I explain this in more detail here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/01/23/progressive-christianity/
Gospel and Method
As to the three main ways to present the gospel, let me look at how the three groups might proceed:
Fundamentalists are quite right to not want to change the core gospel message. But they might be wrong when it comes to how we present the gospel. For example, they might resist such things as newer and more easy to understand Bible translations, perhaps insisting that one can only use the KJV.
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Written by H.B. Charles, Jr. |
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
No one should ever catch us doing something new when they attend our worship services. It should be the same thing every week, every month, every year. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

How to Worship God
In the first word of the Ten Commandments, God commanded His people to worship Him exclusively: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). The second word is linked to the first:
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Ex. 20:4–6)
There is some disagreement about how the Ten Commandments should be numbered. Roman Catholics and Lutherans read the first and second commandments as one commandment. To keep ten commandments, they call the preamble (Ex. 20:2) a commandment or divide the tenth commandment (Ex. 20:17) into two parts.
Exodus 20:3 and 4–6 record two different commands. They are two different sides of the same coin. The first commandment is about the proper object of worship. The second commandment is about the proper mode of worship. The first commandment addresses orthodoxy (right belief). The second commandment addresses orthopraxy (right practice). The first commandment tells us whom to worship. The second commandment tells us how to worship. God says, “Worship Me alone.” Then God says, “Worship Me this way.” How we worship matters to God.
The second commandment does not prohibit God’s people from being artistic. The Lord will instruct Moses to have artisans construct the ark of the covenant with artistic elements. The Spirit of God would inspire and empower men to creatively build the tabernacle. This is not a categorical prohibition against carved images. The Lord’s concern here is liturgical, not artistic. We must not make carved images for worship.
The second commandment warns us how misguided sincerity can be. When the children of Israel danced around the golden calf, the Lord did not respond, “Look how sincere they are!” The Lord became so angry that only the passionate intercession of Moses saved their lives. God demands proper worship.
Worship God on His Terms
It is remarkable that the first commandment was necessary. After delivering the children of Israel from Egypt, God still needed to instruct His people not to worship false idols. The second commandment is a natural progression from the first. God disabuses His people of the assumption that it does not matter how we worship, as long as we worship the right God. Redeemed people can still offer unacceptable worship if it is not on God’s terms.
God cannot be controlled. That is what happens with carved images. A symbol makes visible what is invisible and tangible what is intangible. In so doing, the reality behind the symbol is tamed, controlled, and neutered. Why do you think there is so much controversy over the American flag? It is a symbol that points to a reality. How one treats the symbol is a statement of what one thinks about the reality it represents.
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Adam showed his faith in God’s promise to save him by naming his wife Eve, which means the mother of all living (Gen. 3:20). Indeed, the seed of the woman, Christ Jesus, would fulfill all his Father sent him to do so that all who believe in him would have life in the presence of God for all eternity.

In Genesis 2:15-17 God warned Adam about the consequences that would come from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The relationship that existed between God and Adam had a condition placed upon it, which was Adam’s obedience. God’s command to Adam included both a reward for obedience (life) and a consequence for disobedience (death), and Adam represented all of humanity in this covenant. Adam failed to keep God’s command; instead, he and his wife ate the forbidden fruit, bringing death and condemnation upon themselves and all Adam’s posterity.
Why didn’t Adam and Eve die on the day they sinned in the garden of Eden as God said they would, and how is Eve’s name connected to Jesus?
The protoevangelium is the first announcement in the Bible of the gospel.
There is one key verse in the Old Testament that points us to the only way for people to be returned to a right relationship with God: In Genesis 3:15, a verse containing the protoevangelium.
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