Our goal is to proclaim the genuine good news—that’s what “Gospel” means—of Christ’s forgiveness for you. We do not offer you better tips, techniques or checklists. Instead, You Are Forgiven is sermons by faithful pastors who will clearly show how you cannot be forgiven by your own efforts, no matter how well you do on your homework, your checklist of tasks. But they will also show how you are actually and already forgiven because Jesus has done all that is needed, for you!

Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?

If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.

When I first began to hear that the Bible’s good news was a whole lot less about me and a whole lot more about Christ, I just didn’t get it.

Listen to hear the struggles apologists face as they perform the task of evangelism in their daily lives.

Imagine if Zacchaeus posted on Jerusalem's Facebook a selfie with Jesus. The top dog among the tax-gougers with Christ at his dinner table. Oh, the outrage! The puritanical zealots would have been tweeting and blogging about it for months.

Over the last 11 months I’ve spent the bulk of my time working to plant a church in New York City.

We all began by hearing the truth, and then speaking the truth and believing the truth. That truth came to us on the lips of another.

Believe in God, belong to a church, and behave yourself isn’t the Gospel.

During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.

Nonetheless, if we wish to treat apologetics as a practical endeavor for concrete engagement with people who ask about Christianity, it seems best to start with the questions young people are actually asking.

I have found that Gandalf’s words above ring true, not only in Middle-earth, but in our world as well.