The king jesus gospel

I just finished Scot McKnight's book 'The King Jesus Gospel.' It is 177 pages of typical S.M. material - very good, makes you think, leaves you feeling hopeful (at least for me). Though, to be perfectly honest, I would not rank this as one of my favorite of Scot's books... I thought 'Jesus Creed', 'One.Life', and 'Praying With the Church', and some others were much more "readable"... this was still very good.

TKJG started off fantastic. I thought it was going to rank up there with the best of Scot's works (and he is one of my favorite authors), but then in the middle it kind of started to drag a little. I don't know if I maybe didn't need all the proof that he was trying to offer, or if it was just a little too technical for a simple mind like mine, but I was beginning to wonder if I was going to like this book (I was also going through a lot of stress at the time and that probably didn't help). However, the last few chapters brought it back to life. In fact, Scot's 5-page definition of "gospel" on pages 148-153 was nothing short of outstanding, and well worth the price of the book. So, while this might not have the overall appeal that the fore-mentioned books have to a wider audience, I would highly recommend it for pastors or other like-minded church leaders.

To give you a taste I will include here a snippet from the inside flap:

Contemporary Christians have built a "salvation culture" but not a "gospel culture." Too many Christians have reduced the gospel to the message of personal salvation.

The King Jesus Gospel makes a place for us to recover the original gospel as "good news," which is still new and still fresh.

This book succinctly and without pretense demonstrates that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the story of Israel in the saving story of Jesus. McKnight shows us that the gospel was preached by Jesus, and that the sermons in the book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament.

The King Jesus Gospel ends with practical suggestions about evangelism and about building a gospel culture.

Again, I don't know that I would recommend this to the recreational reader, but for me... it was very worthwhile.

ADDED LATER: Ed Stetzer has a good interview with Scot about the book HERE.