On Saturday May 26, 2012 Calgary Peacemakers organized an outreach to YC Edmonton, a weekend-long youth event billed on their website as "a multi-denominational youth conference set on reaching youth and young adults through powerful weekends that feature inspiring speakers, amazing worship, great concerts, practical workshops and lots of fun activities." While I do not plan on getting too deep into the issues I have with this event and its organizers, I will say this from my personal experience, having attended a YC event as a chaperone to a youth group, and now during this outreach event, The YC events epitomize what is wrong with modern evangelicalism today. The gospel message is watered-down and powerless at best, devoid of real gospel truth (and therefore no gospel at all) at worst. The message that is presented to the ten thousand strong throng of mostly teens who paid $135 each for the weekend, was one of works-righteousness, devoid of salvation by grace alone.
And so a small group of us gathered on the Saturday afternoon and, with tickets in pocket, wristbands firmly attached to arms, and pockets filled with gospel tracts, made our way onto the Northlands/Rexall Place grounds to share the gospel with the mostly self-professing Christian crowd.
My plan was to use my iphone voice memo app to record conversations, asking one question: What is the gospel.
We walked in to the Edmonton Exposition Centre building and after a few minutes of scoping out the territory, I decided to jump in. I stopped a young man and asked him if I could interview him on the radio. He agreed and so I asked him a few preliminary questions and then asked him 'What is the gospel?'
Here is our conversation.
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