The Gospel Cannot Be a Product That The Church Sells

Justin Buzzard has highlighted the following quote taken from David Wells' The Courage to Be Protestant.

"...how likely is it, outside of the intervention of God through the Holy Spirit, that we will identify our needs as those arising from our rebellion against God? No, the product we will seek naturally will not be the gospel. It will be therapy of some kind, a technique for life, perhaps a way of connecting more deeply with our own spiritual selves on our own terms, terms that require no repentance and no redemption. It will not be the gospel. The gospel cannot be a product that the church sells because there are no consumers for it. When we find consumers, we will find that what they are interested in in buying, on their own terms, is not the gospel."

A Theology of Rhetoric

C. Richard Wells in a book coauthored by A. Boyd Luter (Inspired Preaching) and in a chapter entitled “The Inspired Preaching of Acts” makes the following observation on developing a theology of rhetoric.

"It is here [Acts 17] that we begin to discern the outline of another dimension to Luke’s theology of preaching in Acts, namely, a theology of communication, a ‘spiritual rhetoric,’ if you will, an understanding not only of what the disciples preached, but how they preached it; not only of the kerygma as a ‘message preached,’ but a ‘message preached’" (italics his, p. 84).