Curriculum

Before we can identify where churches have drifted, we must first return to what God has clearly revealed. This session establishes a biblical definition of the Gospel from Scripture, holding the key distinction that the Gospel produces good works, but good works are not the Gospel.

Having defined the Gospel as the good news that God saves sinners by grace through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, this session shows from Scripture why that message must never be altered, added to, or exchanged.

This session begins studying one of the most influential movements that reshaped the mission and message of many churches: the Social Gospel movement, examining its origins and how it shifted the church's focus.

The Social Gospel did not appear out of nowhere. It grew in soil already prepared by a deeper shift, the rise of liberal theology, which relocated authority from the Word of God to human experience.

Building on the foundation of the first four sessions, this study sets biblical Christianity side by side with the Social Gospel, showing how liberal theology reshaped Christianity around ethics and experience rather than the finished work of Christ.

In the mid-twentieth century, the question of the church's central mission came to a head inside the Black church, embodied in two Baptist leaders, Joseph H. Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. This session examines that divide faithfully and biblically.

Out of that generation came James H. Cone, the father of Black Liberation Theology. This session evaluates liberation and Black liberation theology against the standard of Scripture, testing every teaching by the Word.

The final session ends the series with hope. After testing and contrasting across seven sessions, we return home, to the Gospel that saves, the message that must not change, and the finished work of Christ.