The gospel the Black church carries is the same gospel every faithful church carries. Jesus Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again, and by grace through faith we are forgiven, made new, and brought into God’s family. What differs is the voice that carries it and the questions it has to answer. The personal and social sides are not two gospels competing for one pulpit. One is the salvation itself. The other is what that salvation does in the world while we wait for Christ’s return.
This guide is catechesis, an old word for learning the faith in order, one piece at a time, until you can say it, trust it and worship with it. Its four sessions build on each other. The first sets down what the gospel is. The second deals with a Bible that was used against Black people. The third joins the personal and social sides. The fourth turns what you have learned toward God. If you are working alone, take one session a week and keep a notebook, because two of the practices ask you to write and then return to what you wrote. In a group, plan about an hour per session and read the Scripture aloud.
Session 1: Know what the gospel is
Start by separating two things people often blur: the content of the gospel and the way it is carried. The content is fixed. The way it is carried varies with the people carrying it and the people hearing it. Lisa Fields, founder of Jude 3 Project, drew this line when she explained why apologetics in the Black church needs its own approach: “it’s not that the content necessarily has to be different, but the illustrations and the presentation has to be different.”
Elder Ansen Goyens grounds both halves of that sentence. On the content, he insists that “the word of God wasn’t just written to Caucasians” but to all peoples. On the carrier, he adds, “I do not believe that God strips us from our personalities.” He points to Peter, whose temperament Jesus used rather than erased. The sermon in Acts 2 was still the gospel. It simply came through Peter.
Now pin down the content itself. Read 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 aloud: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” Paul calls this something he received and passed on. He did not invent it, and the Corinthians did not get to adjust it. Jude 1:3 says the same thing in other words when it calls believers to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
Observe before you discuss. Circle the verbs in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. Who acts in each one? Then notice the phrase that appears twice. Paul anchors the events in Scripture, not in his own experience.
A common mistake follows from here. Some people hear “a different voice” and assume it means a softer or customized message. Others hear “one gospel” and assume it means everyone should sound the same. Both mistakes fuse content and carrier. Galatians 3:28 says that in Christ “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul does not say that Jews stopped being Jews. He says those lines no longer rank anyone before God. The unity in that verse is real, and it is not sameness.
Practice: the gospel in four sentences. Write the gospel in four plain sentences, using no religious word you could not explain to a twelve-year-old. Then check each sentence against 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. Did you leave out the death, the burial or the resurrection? Did you add anything Paul does not say? Keep this page. You will revise it in Session 4.
For discussion: Where have you heard someone treat a change in style as a change in message, or a change in message as only a matter of style? How could you tell the difference in that case?
Session 2: Believe the whole Bible, including the pages that were misused
You cannot rest in a gospel drawn from a book you do not trust. For many Black believers, that trust has a specific obstacle. The Bible was used to justify slavery and abuse. This session takes that obstacle seriously before answering it.
Lisa Fields recalls a story from Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman’s grandmother let him read her the Psalms and the Gospels but not Paul, because her enslaver had used Paul’s letters against her. Fields draws out what happens when that memory settles into a people: “then part of the Bible becomes your enemy.” She names the loss plainly: “what God sent to help you, the enemy has tricked you in thinking it’s gonna hurt you.” Her concern is not only that people distrust certain pages. The pages they avoid may be the ones meant to heal them.
Elder Ansen Goyens answers with an illustration. The hammer was made to build houses, and someone later used it to crush a skull. He asks, “Do we despise the inventor of the hammer, or do we look at the use of the hammer in a way that it was not intended to be used?” Applied to Scripture, his claim is direct: “there is nowhere in scripture that will justify a group of people that are being beaten.”
The hammer helps, but notice where it stops working. A hammer has no meaning of its own. The Bible does. It makes claims, so you cannot settle the matter by pointing to the inventor’s intentions. You have to read the text and see whether the abuse follows from it or contradicts it. That is why Goyens anchors authority in Scripture itself: “with apologetics, we rest on the fact that the Bible is the authoritative word of God.” When Fields added that authority does not come from feeling, Goyens finished the thought: “Not what I’ve been through.”
Read 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” The word is all. Fields presses the same point when she warns against teaching only the words of Jesus. She wants believers trained to see that “scripture is authoritative all of scripture.”
Practice: read the whole unit. Turn to Ephesians 6:5-9, a passage enslavers quoted. Read verses 5-8 first, the way they were often quoted alone. Then read verse 9, which instructs masters to stop threatening and reminds them that they also answer to a Master in heaven who shows no favoritism. Write two sentences: what the passage says to the enslaved, and what it says to the enslaver. Does anything in the full passage authorize beating a person? What did people have to leave out to use it as a weapon? This exercise will not answer every question about slavery and Scripture, and it should not be rushed. It trains one habit: read the whole passage before accepting anyone’s use of a single verse.
If you lead a group, expect this session to carry weight. Someone may say the Bible was used against their family, or that they still avoid parts of it. Let that stand. Do not answer it in a sentence. The aim is not to win the room back to Paul by the end of the hour. It is to show that the abuse and the text can be examined separately.
For discussion: Are there parts of Scripture you skip, and do you know why? What would you need to see in a passage before you could trust it again?
Session 3: Hold the personal and social together
Two short definitions come first. The personal side of the gospel is what Christ has done to save a person: forgiveness, new birth and adoption by grace through faith. The social side is the obedience that salvation produces in public life: justice, mercy and care for the broken here and now. The confusion this session clears up is the idea that you have to choose between them.
Lisa Fields puts the order in one sentence: “We are not saved by our works, but we are saved to work.” She then names the error on each side. Of one side she says, “And I think that’s what sometimes the conservative side misses.” Of the other, “And then the liberal side misses the fact that we are saved whether we work or not.” One side treats work as optional. The other risks treating work as the thing that saves.
Ephesians 2:8-10 shows the order in the text itself: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Verses 8-9 rule out works as the cause of salvation. Verse 10 makes good works its purpose. The order is the whole point. Reverse it and you lose the gospel. Drop verse 10 and you lose what the gospel was meant to produce.
Elder Ansen Goyens refuses the split from both directions. There is “more to the gospel than just the redemptive side.” And then: “And then there’s more to the gospel than just the social side.” He points to the prophets, saying of books like Micah, Nehemiah and Isaiah that “those books were written for social reform.” Read Micah 6:8: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Justice and humility before God sit in the same sentence.
Goyens ties this to the prayer Jesus taught: “Not only are we on our way to glory, but before we get there, thy kingdom come.” Matthew 6:10 reads, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” The prayer looks ahead to God’s full reign, and it also asks for God’s will on earth now.
Practice: two columns, one line. Draw two columns. Label the left one What Christ has done and the right one What I am saved to do. Fill the left from your four sentences in Session 1. Fill the right with two or three specific things from your actual week, such as a neighbor, a coworker or an injustice you know about. Then draw one arrow from left to right. The arrow only points one way. Ask whether anything in your right column has quietly become a way of earning standing with God.
For discussion: Which error is more tempting in your church or circle, treating work as optional or treating work as the thing that saves? What would correcting it look like in one concrete practice?
Session 4: Worship the God who is in the fire
Catechesis ends in worship. What you know and trust should reshape how you approach God, especially in suffering. The goal is not a new argument. It is to see the God the gospel reveals.
Lisa Fields raises a problem that affects how many people hear the gospel. Preaching often assumes a stable home and a present father. For someone who never had one, she asks, “How do I know what that looks like?” Elder Ansen Goyens describes the result: “Correction sounds like hate.” Hebrews 12:6 says, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” To someone wounded by earthly fathers, that verse can sound like a threat. This is why the content of the gospel has to come first. God’s correction is the care of a Father who already gave his Son, not the anger of a stranger.
Goyens then turns to Daniel 3. The king looks into the furnace and says, “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). Many Christians read the fourth figure as a glimpse of Christ. That is a reasonable reading, but it is interpretation, not something the passage states. What the text does state is that the three men were thrown in and not pulled out first. Goyens builds on that: “He got in it with them.” His conclusion: “God is not a God outside of your problem.”
Be careful with this passage. It does not promise that every believer will walk out of every fire unharmed. It shows that God’s presence does not wait for the fire to end. Psalm 46:1 says the same thing in a single line: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” For this reason Goyens can say that “proper apologetics does not tear people down, it actually builds their hope.” The hope rests on who God is, not on a guaranteed outcome.
Practice: read, revise, respond. Read Daniel 3:16-27 aloud, slowly. Note what the three men say in verses 17-18 before they know how things will end. Then go back to your four sentences from Session 1. Revise them in light of the last three sessions. Do they now say why the gospel can be trusted, what it produces, and who God is in trouble? Finally, write one sentence addressed to God, not about God, that names him as present in a specific difficulty you or someone you love is facing. In a group, let people share that sentence only if they want to.
For discussion: What changes in how you pray when you stop asking only to be taken out of a hard situation and start trusting that God is in it?
Before you finish, put your Session 1 page next to your revised one. The gospel itself has not changed between those two pages. What should have changed is how clearly you can say it, why you trust the book it comes from, and what you now expect it to do in you and through you this week.