Indeed, I pray that he [and I] do this, each week - proclaim the gospel. But his comment, given the context of his preaching, sparked thoughts for me.
I grew up in 'Evangelical Anglican' territory. Not regularly attending, but having a combined youth group with them. I really appreciated their strong emphasis on Biblical literacy, their carful, logical, expository approach to Scripture. Indeed, to their credit Moore College influenced churches are very clear about the gospel, and offer excellent teaching about foundational theology. They know what the gospel is, they are great at setting foundations in the gospel and thinking logically/rationally.
As I grew, I came to understand though, that at worst, what they meant by the gospel was penal substitution and nothing else. That is, the gospel to them was and could only be understood as penal substitution. They preached penal substitution each week, no matter what the passage of scripture. Indeed, if someone preached and didn't clearly extrapolate penal substitution they had not preached the gospel, and indeed, sometimes even their salvation was questioned.
The Uniting Church meanwhile [my heritage] is a more broad church. It understood that the scriptures contain many atonement metaphors to try to explain the mystery of the cross; penal substitution, adoption, ransom, satisfaction, substitution, etc. What I discovered was that sometimes this meant ministers in the Uniting Church seemed to have no idea about the gospel! No wanting to 'nail down' the cross event, they seemed confused as to exactly what it meant [I have a terrible story about how this was lived out].
My reflection is that the hard line evangelic church clearly knows what their gospel is, is great at teaching foundational theology, but after that struggles and can be very closed to discussion and discovery. Meanwhile some elements of the Uniting church can be very vague about the gospel, is terrible at teaching foundational theology, but is very open to discussion and discovery.
To use a building metaphor - they are great at laying the concrete slab, and frame - but never go beyond that. We are great at discussing the architraves and individual design elements that make a house a home and individualise things, yet the foundations are weak.
In the Uniting Church we want to discuss all the nuances of faith and scriptures and the gospel - when we have no basic foundations to keep the discussion in a common ball park!
For me, obviously the middle ground is the narrow way. We need good solid foundations of the fundamental message of scripture, so that we can then understand it's nuances and let them add grace to our clear categories. Indeed, I think we have so many atonement metaphors as each one speaks to a different people group or situation. To only preach penal substitution misses a whole group of people. Penal substitution has the side effect of painting God into a corner of being a mean, angry God who must be appeased - this is the flaw of the metaphor, not of God. In an authoritarian day, penal substitution works. But in a post modern society, where authority figures and authority institutions are rejected, penal substitution is dismissed.
Our task as preachers is to discover the atonement metaphors that scratch an itch in our community. In our day of recycling, it's amazing to discover that the word for Salvation means recycle. God is the great recycler, who is redeeming, not plastic - but people. Jesus was literally redeeming people from he scrap heap [Ghenna/hell] of life, recycling them - giving them a new beginning [born again]. Now that's a metaphor that might scratch an itch. Then they can discover that penal substitution is also true.
So let's preach the gospel - God was in Christ redeeming the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them - but let's not become myopic on one atonement metaphor.
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