Roaming through Romans #2

So what is the Good News or the Gospel? I have conducted my own little personal uncredited questionnaire over the last week asking people that question. I have had many responses. Here's a small selection:
'A type of sermon where people are asked to invite Jesus into their lives'
'God's love for the world'
'That we can all have a relationship with Jesus because of the cross'
If I was to list the rest they would be all different to these one, with some being similar just communicated differently.
I even heard a 'Gospel' message in the week before easter asking people to accept Jesus and go to heaven or live eternally separated from him in the fires of hell.
So what then is the gospel? There seems to be a varied response to this question.
For the apostle Paul the gospel is that Jesus is King and that he is exercising his power in a very different way than the powers of this world do. NT Wright notes that 'The good news is not, first and foremost, about something that can happen to us. What happens to us through the 'gospel' is indeed dramatic and exciting: God's good news will catch us up and transform our lives and our hopes like nothing else. But, the good news that Paul announces is primarily good news about something that has happened, events through which the world is now a different place. It's about what God has done in Jesus, the Messiah, Israel's true King, the worlds true Lord'. (Wright, Paul for everyone, Romans, Pg 4)
I wonder whether what is often missed today is this idea that Jesus is King?? I wonder whether in some places the way the gospel is shared encourages 'easy believism'. I think this is evident in the way we 'ask Jesus to come into our hearts'. This is a truism in that Jesus does come and live within us. But it does promote the idea that we are still King because Jesus is joining us rather than us joining him and entering into a relationship with him as King and Lord. NT Wright uses a great phrase called 'believing obedience'. I think that this better encompasses our life response to the good news.