Gospel-Centered Ministry
16
Gospel-Centered Ministry
16Overview
In this Gospel Coalition booklet, D. A. Carson and Timothy Keller recount the origins of the Gospel Coalition and the purpose for which it was formed: to propagate a robust understanding of the gospel’s content and to encourage gospel-centered ministry.
Carson and Keller, founders of the coalition and editors of the booklet series, form a theological foundation for the organization’s mission and detail a vision for ministry in a changing world. Ministry today must entail both Bible-centered preaching as well as outreach to the needy. Grounding their vision in the cross, Carson and Keller show how biblical theology flows toward Jesus and the gospel. They also demonstrate how Christian ministry flows from Jesus and the gospel. This summary of gospel-centered ministry is a great resource for pastors and others interested in the Gospel Coalition.
Gospel-Centered Ministry offers a thoughtful explanation for the Gospel Coalition’s confessional statement. The Gospel Coalition is an evangelical renewal movement dedicated to a scripture-based reformation of ministry practices.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433527623 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 03/02/2011 |
| Series: | The Gospel Coalition Booklets |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 16 |
| File size: | 844 KB |
About the Author
D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he has taught since 1978. He is a cofounder of the Gospel Coalition and has written or edited nearly 120 books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.
Timothy J. Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He is the best-selling author of The Prodigal God and The Reason for God.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Gospel Coalition is a fellowship of churches and Christians from many different denominations that are united not only by belief in the biblical gospel but also by the conviction that gospel-centered ministry today must be strengthened, encouraged, and advanced. What follows gives a bit of the history of how and why we have come together.
Several years ago a number of us began to meet together annually. That group became The Gospel Coalition's Council. For the first three years we sought to do two things.
The Confessional Foundation
First, we sought to identify and strengthen the center of confessional evangelicalism. We believe that some important aspects of the historic understanding of the biblical gospel are in danger of being muddied or lost in our churches today. These include the necessity of the new birth, justification by faith alone, and atonement through propitiation and the substitutionary death of Christ. We sought to maintain and strengthen our hold on these doctrines, not merely by citing the great theological formulations of the past but also through continued, fresh interaction with the Scripture itself, and so we worked together to produce The Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement.
Biblical-Theological Categories
Many members told me afterward that working on the Confessional Statement was one of the most edifying and instructional experiences they had ever had. About four dozen experienced pastors worked it over line by line. One of our goals was to draw our language as much from the Bible as possible rather than to resort too quickly to the vocabulary of systematic theology. Systematics is crucial, and terms such as "the Trinity," which are not found in the Bible itself, are irreplaceable for understanding and expressing large swaths of the Bible's teaching. Nevertheless, to maintain unity among ourselves and to persuade our readers, we sought to express our faith as much as possible in biblical-theological categories rather than drawing on the terminology of any particular tradition's systematic theology.
Beginning with God
We also thought it was important to begin our confession with God rather than with Scripture. This is significant. The Enlightenment was overconfident about human rationality. Some strands of it assumed it was possible to build systems of thought on unassailable foundations that could be absolutely certain to unaided human reason. Despite their frequent vilification of the Enlightenment, many conservative evangelicals have nevertheless been shaped by it. This can be seen in how many evangelical statements of faith start with the Scripture, not with God. They proceed from Scripture to doctrine through rigorous exegesis in order to build (what they consider) an absolutely sure, guaranteed-true-to-Scripture theology.
The problem is that this is essentially a foundationalist approach to knowledge. It ignores the degree to which our cultural location affects our interpretation of the Bible, and it assumes a very rigid subject-object distinction. It ignores historical theology, philosophy, and cultural reflection. Starting with the Scripture leads readers to the overconfidence that their exegesis of biblical texts has produced a system of perfect doctrinal truth. This can create pride and rigidity because it may not sufficiently acknowledge the fallenness of human reason.
We believe it is best to start with God, to declare (with John Calvin, Institutes 1.1) that without knowledge of God we cannot know ourselves, our world, or anything else. If there is no God, we would have no reason to trust our reason.
Evangelical
Also, as part of this process, we gave some time to the question, "Is the term 'evangelical' useful anymore?" A good case can be made for the position that it is not. Within the church, the word conveys less and less theological content. The word almost means "all who are willing to use the term 'born again' to describe their experiences." Outside the church, the word has perhaps the most negative connotations it has ever had.
Nevertheless, the term describes our churches and association. Why? We come from different denominations and traditions — Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Charismatic, to name the larger groupings. We do not think the distinctives of theology and ecclesiology that divide us are insignificant — not at all. They shape our ministries and differentiate us in many important ways. (One could say "complementary" ways, but that would be another essay.) However, we are united by the conviction that what unites us — the doctrinal core components of the gospel — is far more important than what divides us. On the one hand, that conviction differentiates us from those who believe that there is no gospel to preach apart from the distinctions of their tradition. They do not think that their denominational distinctives are "secondary." On the other hand, that conviction differentiates us from those who would rather define evangelicalism only in sociological or experiential terms and who would therefore not make such a robust doctrinal confessional statement the basis for fellowship and cooperation.
So we continue to use the important term "evangelical" to describe ourselves, often adding the word "confessional" to it to denote the more theologically enriched vision of evangelicalism that we hold.
The Vision for Ministry
We have not united, however, merely to defend traditional gospel formulations. Our second purpose was to describe, support, and embody gospel-centered ministry today.
Changes in Our World
Many younger leaders in our churches are reeling from the changes they see in our world. Until a generation ago in the United States, most adults had similar moral intuitions, whether they were born-again believers, church goers, nominal Christians, or unbelievers. All that has changed. Secularism is much more aggressive and anti-Christian; the society in general is coarsening; and the moral intuitions of younger people radically vary from their more traditional parents.
Many have called this new condition the "postmodern turn," though others call our situation "late" modernity, or even "liquid" modernity. Modernity overturned the authority of tradition, revelation, or any authority outside of the internal reason and experience of the self. Yet for a long time, relatively stable institutions continued to dominate contemporary society. People still rooted their identities to a great degree in family, local communities, and their work or vocation. That seems to be passing.
The "acid" of the modern principle — the autonomous, individual self — seems to have eaten away all stable identities. Marriage and family, workplace and career, neighborhood and civic community, politics and causes — none of these institutions now remain stable long enough for individuals to depend on them. People now live fragmented lives, no longer thinking of themselves in terms of a couple of basic roles (e.g., Christian, father, and lawyer). Instead, their identity constantly shape-shifts as they move through a series of life episodes that are not tightly connected. They are always ready to change direction and abandon commitments and loyalties without qualms and to pursue — on a cost-benefit basis — the best opportunity available to them.
Responding to Changes in Our World
In the past, many of our neighbors could understand traditional evangelical preaching and ministry, but they met it with disagreement or indifference. During the last fifteen years, people have increasingly met it with completely dumbfounded incomprehension or outrage. The American evangelical world has been breaking apart with wildly different responses to this new cultural situation. To oversimplify, some have simply built the fortress walls higher, merely continuing to do what they have always done, only more defiantly than before. Others have called for a complete doctrinal reengineering of evangelicalism. We think both of these approaches are wrong-headed and, worse, damaging to the cause of the gospel.
Preaching
Here is one example. Over the last few years there has been a major push to abandon expository preaching for what is loosely called "narrative" preaching. The diagnosis goes something like this: These are postmodern times, marked by the collapse of confidence in the Enlightenment project and a rational certainty about "truth." So now hearers are more intuitive than logical; they are reached more through images and stories than through propositions and principles. They are also allergic to authoritarian declarations. We must adapt to the less rational, nonauthoritarian, narrative-hungry sensibilities of our time.
In our understanding, it is a great mistake to jettison expository preaching in this way. But in some quarters, the response goes something like this: "Because postmodern people don't like our kind of preaching, we are going to give them more of it than ever." They are unwilling to admit that much conventional use of the expository method has tended to be pretty abstract, quite wooden, and not related to life. It is also true that many traditional expository preachers like the "neatness" of preaching through the Epistles instead of the vivid visions and narratives of the Old Testament. But most importantly, expository preaching fails if it does not tie every text, even the most discursive, into the great story of the gospel and mission of Jesus Christ.
Justice and Ministry to the Poor
Another example is the issue of justice and ministry to the poor. Many young Christian leaders who are passionate about social justice complain that the classic reading of the book of Romans by Augustine, Luther, and Calvin is mistaken. They say that Jesus did not bear God's wrath on the cross, but instead exemplified service and love rather than power and exploitation and therefore "defeated the powers" of the world. The gospel of justification, in this view, is not so much about reconciling God and sinners as about including the marginal in the people of God. In other words, they believe that if Christians are going to leave their comfort zones and minister to and advocate for the poor and marginalized of the world, we must deconstruct traditional evangelical doctrine.
All this rightly alarms many conservative Christian leaders, but some wrongly conclude that those who are strongly concerned to minister to the poor must abandon traditional Christian doctrine. Neither group is right. You do not have to change classic, traditional Christian doctrine to emphasize that ministering to the poor is important. Jonathan Edwards, who is hardly anyone's idea of a "liberal," concluded, "Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?" Edwards saw a concern for the poor that was rooted not only in a doctrine of creation and the imago Dei but also in the doctrine of the substitutionary death of Christ and justification by faith alone.
Since Jesus had to die to appease the wrath of God, we know that God is a God of justice, and therefore we should be highly sensitive to the rights of the poor in our communities. They should not be mistreated because of their lack of economic power. And because we were spiritually bankrupt and received the riches of Christ undeserved, we should never look down on the poor and feel superior to the economically bankrupt. We should be willing to give our funds even to the "undeserving poor" since we are the spiritually undeserving poor who receive the free mercy of God. Edwards argues powerfully and tirelessly for ministry to the poor from classic evangelical doctrines.
Gospel-Centered Ministry Today
The Gospel Coalition is united by the belief that we must not ignore our context and setting, and we must seriously reflect upon our culture so that our gospel-ministry engages and connects with our culture. This is why we developed the Theological Vision for Ministry, which concludes that the gospel should
produce churches filled with winsome but theologically substantial preaching, dynamic evangelism and apologetics, and church growth. They would emphasize repentance, personal renewal and holiness of life. At the same time, and in the same congregations, there would be great stress on cultural engagement in art, business, scholarship, and government, and on justice for the poor. There would be calls for radical Christian community in which all members share wealth and resources and make room for the marginalized. These priorities would all be combined and would mutually strengthen one another in each local church.
So we in The Gospel Coalition believe that the gospel must always be defended and that one irreplaceable way to do that is to show the world and the church the power of a gospel-centered ministry. The best way to define and defend the gospel is to love, believe, embody, and propagate it. In our Confessional Statement, the Vision for Ministry, and "The Gospel for All of Life," we map out some of the basic features of what a gospel-centered ministry should look like today in Western culture.
During the first three years of our walk together, we sought to unite a diverse group of people around this gospel center. Our meetings were provocative and exciting because they were not dominated by one theological tradition or by a couple of dominant personalities. And as we gave time to these issues, we grew to trust each other more and more and came to greater unity of mind and heart.
Prophetic from the Center
More recently, The Gospel Coalition has moved into a new phase of ministry, and the most visible parts are our national conference, website, and TGC Network. But these are just means to being "prophetic from the center."
The evangelical "tent" is bigger and more incoherent than ever. As we have noted, one of the main causes of this is the fast-changing Western culture we find ourselves in. One could argue that it is a much more difficult environment in which to minister than Greco-Roman paganism, largely because it is post-Christian, not pre-Christian. Because of this challenge, the Christian church is splintering and fragmenting. There are at least three types of responses, what James Hunter has called "Purity From," "Defensive Against," and "Relevant To."
"Purity From" responses are found among the Christians and churches that think we can have no real impact on culture, that all efforts to influence culture merely pollute and compromise us. By "Defensive Against" Hunter refers to those believers who think we can change culture through politics or through getting control of elite institutions and wielding their power. By "Relevant To" he designates many mainline, "emergent," and mega-churches that think we can change culture mainly by becoming more compassionate, less combative, and more contextual, thereby winning enough individuals back into the church to make a difference in the culture. Ironically, all of these approaches are still too influenced by our "Christendom" past. Even the "Purity From" party, with its strong denunciation of Christendom, is like a man who is so violently committed to being unlike his father that his father is still basically controlling his behavior.
What does it mean to be "prophetic" from the center? It means to center our churches on the gospel, thereby producing a series of balances that the other approaches do not have. We should be neither separatist nor triumphalistic in relationship to our culture. Believers (not local churches qua churches) should seek both to inhabit the older cultural institutions and to set up new, innovative institutions and networks that work for the common good on the basis of Christian understandings of things.
In our gospel communication, we should neither ignore baseline cultural narratives nor just change the packaging and call that "contextualizing." We should stand for the irreplaceability of the local church, which has the task of evangelizing and discipling. But we should also encourage Christians to work in the world as salt and light. All these balances, we believe, flow out of a profound grasp of the meaning of the gospel for all of life.
The priority we give to the gospel of Jesus Christ may not immediately seem warranted to those who entertain a different view of what "gospel" means. At least two constraints are commonly imposed on the word. First, some think of the gospel as one important but relatively small part of the Bible's content. Second, others think of the gospel as what tips us into the kingdom and gets us "saved," while the life-transforming elements in the Bible's content are bound up with something rather different — wisdom, law, counsel, narrative paradigms, and small-group therapy, but not gospel.
The response comes in two parts.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Gospel-Centered Ministry"
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Table of Contents
The Confessional Foundation, 5,
The Vision for Ministry, 7,
Prophetic from the Center, 11,
Notes, 16,