He is not safe

"So often we try to make it our job to make the Gospel easier for us to preach and easier for other people to hear--in order to not get into trouble and in order to not be confrontational. But here's the truth. You just can't preach the Gospel and not get into trouble. You just can't do it, hard as you might try. You can dress it up any way you want. But if you're really preaching the Gospel you are going to get yourself into trouble, you are going to be in trouble as well. Because the cross is both beautiful and offensive and it must be both. It is both. There is no other Gospel for you to preach...It's not safe to boldly preach the Gospel. it is dangerous work we are in as believers, perilous work that we have before us to preach the gospel not only to each other but to the outside world, the unbelieving world. Not safe work. Safe is not a word that I would believe characterizes Christians or Jesus or the Gospel. It shouldn't. If it is then it might not be the Gospel we are preaching. Jesus is not safe. He is not manageable. He is a wild lion. You cannot tame Him. He is not safe. But He is good. He is king. You can trust Him. the Gospel that we carry is not safe. It is not manageable, not efficient. Loving people is not efficient. But the Gospel is good, it is true, but it is not safe."

We are called into community together. If you divorce the people of God, if you divorce local community from the Gospel, then it ceases to be the Gospel. There is no other context for your faith as a christian than to be in community with other people. I've heard a lot of people say to me over the years "Its just me and Jesus and that's all i need." Well that's not the Gospel in Scripture. If you are going to be those who claim to love Jesus, you will be compelled to love also the things that he loved. And he not only loved, but came and gave himself up for the church, and that makes it our concern as well. And if that's not hard enough--that we live in community together--we are also called with a mandate that we preach the Gospel to each other. We mistake the Gospel for the thing only that we preach to non believers. It certainly is that, but much more than that, the Gospel must have, necessarily has, a primary place in the life of believers. We've got to heard it every week, if not every day.

-Derek Webb