Gospel for the Outsider: The Gospel in Luke & Acts

A study of Luke’s New Testament writings from the point of view of reaching the Outsider.

“Immensely helpful and refreshing” – review in ReSource magazine, winter 2014.

The Gospel for the Outsider not only serves as a useful guide for church leaders and preachers as they look again at Luke’s writings from the point of view of reaching Outsiders, but it will also be a useful study guide or resource for Bible Study Groups who want to take a fresh look at familiar material.

It is an invaluable resource to a Church thinking about Mission today, and how to ground that Mission in scripture and give it fresh momentum.

The Gospel of Luke uniquely proclaims that the message of good news was for the outsider in Jewish society, and indeed for any outsider in any society where the sleek, the successful and the slick are often preferred to the loser, the lonely and the lowly.

In this book, Patrick Whitworth explores how this compassion for the outsider is clear from several levels, and should direct our mission to those who, in whatever shape or form, are outsiders today in our communities.

At the end is a study guide, providing an excellent opportunity for groups to study the Gospel from the outsider’s perspective, and help us to discern the outsiders in our own communities and go to them with the love of Christ and the hope of the gospel—a gospel for outsiders.

Mark may challenge you, Matthew reassure you and John inspire you, but it is among the real people of Luke’s gospel that you will find yourself. And that, I suggest, is the task of our times—to find ourselves, to discover who we are and how it is that we can play our part in shaping a new world. This is a readable, compelling invitation to walk into the story and find yourself, whoever you may be, within its pages. Indeed the outsider, as Patrick so clearly and beautifully demonstrates, becomes the insider through his or her encounter with Jesus.
The Revd Dr Alison Morgan, Author, ReSource

The book is pastoral in tone and very accessible; small congregational groups could use it to expand their knowledge of Luke and begin learning how different gospels depict Jesus in particular ways.
Matthew L. Skinner, Modern Believing

In post-Christian societies churches need to work much harder to nurture an appreciation of the transformative power of the Bible. These two books, one on Matthew and one on Luke and Acts, by a retired Anglican priest and educator, offer individual Christian learners and local congregations functioning as learning churches fresh insights into how they may be enriched by engagement with Matthew and with Luke. … The strengths of these two books reside in their accessible style, in the discussion questions set out in the appendices, and in the conversation that is generated between the word of scripture and the life-world of the Christian reader.Leslie J. Francis, Rural Theology

Never was there a more important time for the church in the UK to reach out beyond itself to the wider community on its edge: an edge made up, in our pluralist society, of a plethora of different groups and communities.

This book is a study of Luke’s New Testament writings from the point of view of reaching the Outsider: in Luke’s day they included non-Jews, Samaritans, women, the poor, the ostracised, and pagans. The book looks at Jesus’ mandate for ministry to the outsider, both in the record of the Gospel of St Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles.

About the Author

Patrick Whitworth read Modern History at Christ Church Oxford, and a Theology MA in Reformation Studies under T. H. L. Parker at Durham. He has spent over 30 years in Anglican Ministry, currently Rector of All Saints Weston Bath, Langridge and North Stoke. He is married to Olivia with four grown up children.