God’s gospel is eternal and unchanging… but Two Ways to Live isn’t. 

As a concise summary of the Christian gospel, Two Ways to Live has been around in one form or another for over forty years, and its most recent update was nearly two decades ago. It’s undoubtedly been overdue for a design makeover for a while!

And the words weren’t ever carved onto stone tablets, so in our minds there’s always been scope to update the text of Two Ways to Live to make the message clearer and, under God, the communication more effective. Indeed, sometimes change is needed to keep a message clear, because language and how our society uses it shift over time.

So, after many months of hard work, we’re excited to announce that the latest version of Two Ways to Live has launched and is available now.

What’s changing?

The first thing you’ll notice is the new look and feel. This printed tract is ever so slightly bigger than the previous pocket edition, with a much more modern colour scheme. You’ll also notice the style of the illustrations has changed, although the essence of the way they represent the gospel is pretty much the same. Of course, there are still six boxes or illustrations in the presentation.

Next you might notice that we’ve moved the summary and linking statements so that they come after the main text, rather than being with the illustration and Bible verse on the left hand page.

Speaking of Bible verses, you’ll see that two of the Bible verses have changed. We’ve also switched to using the latest New International Version instead of the old 1984 NIV.

There have been some changes to both the main text and the summary statements. We would use the word ‘tweaks’; they definitely aren’t wholesale changes.

The aim of this revision was to sharpen and improve Two Ways to Live wherever possible, while resisting the urge to add more and more good ideas in—since the overall goal is to have a simple, memorable summary, not a complete systematic theology.

 The changes to the text certainly don’t represent any change in theology. But we do believe they make the message easier to understand for a non-Christian reader.

Tony Payne has written a summary of the changes in the text, explaining some of the adjustments he made.