Does Missional Forget the Gospel?
As a movement the missional church has been about sending the faithful out to live the gospel life outside the confines of the programmed and attractional church models. Yet in the midst of this rejuvination of missional thinking Jonathan Dodson sounds a warning:
If we continue, we will build a new Church based on missional methods,
social justice, international justice, not based on [sic] teh Gospel of Jesus
Christ who defeated sin, death, and evil at the cross in order to make
all things new. Our sin, our death, our evil for his righteousness, his
life, his glory. We are in danger of abdicating [sic] teh Gospel in the name
of mission. Just read the CT interview with Rob Bell. Not much Jesus, not much gospel, but lots of justice.
I couldn’t disagree with the statement more, and I think it shows the failure to look ahead and over the horizon to see the fruits of living missionally and justly. First of all we are a people of justice because Christ has completed the ultimate act of justice: "defeating sin, death, and evil at the cross in order to make all things new" (emphasis mine). All things new is the action of discipleship that Jesus gives to us, that as we present the gospel of Christ resurrecting himself and acting through the world and people to make all things new we are making disciples who in turn go out to the world and work to make all things new. We must not convert minds, we must convert minds, hearts, souls, and limbs! A true disciple is one who, after hearing the good news and participating in baptism, goes forth to do justice, love mercy, and act humbly before God. We are disciples in a dramatic and actional way, not just through the way of preaching. That is the heart of missional, to be Christ to people, and being Christ necessitates justice at the epicenter of all. As Hopkins poeticizes:
the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
To be Christ is to be the man that does justice! Then we are his brother and sister, and in justice we meet Christ. The Eucharist is justice, that our daily bread becomes the powerful symbol of our eternal bread, Christ resurrected and resurrecting the world. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s hymn says:
Yesterday I was dead with Christ;
today I am sharing in his resurrection.
We are all sharing in the resurrection of Christ. We are all awak to the glory of eternal life. So we act justly to present the gospel in all of its glory, to touch the hearts, minds, and bodies of people in need of justice. We are the brothers and sisters of God putting the world to rights in a dim way, and look forward to the One who will put the world to rights for all times. And because of this, our doing and waiting, our action and our hopeful looking forward, we cannot separate justice from the mission of God, for our God is a just God who has put justice at the center of his gospel.
——————–
I really enjoy Jonathan’s blog Church Planting Novice. It
seems once a week I am e-mailing a link from the blog to people at our
church plant to some really good thoughts. But, and I know it seems
counter-intuitive, I really disagreed with Jonathan’s conclusion and am responding
to it. So don’t get the wrong idea. The blog is always one of the
first I read and I very much recommend it to all.
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Hi Thomas,
Thanks for interacting with the post. It’s funny, I fully agree with your post, the emphasis on making all things new because Jesus is the inauguration of the new creation, of which we become a part, a foretaste, through the Gospel. Perhaps context will help fill out what I meant.
I am thoroughly for justice, for mercy, for kindness and for mission. In fact, this is one of the things our church is “known” for. However, mission (social, cultural, or evangelistic) is not the center of the church. Church history has shown (Fundamentalist/Liberalist Controversy) that when we make mission central, we compromise the gospel. When we make doctrine central, we often compromise mission. Therefore, either something is wrong with how we approach the gospel or mission. I suggest that one-sided missional emphasis of the gospel distorts is and compromises gospel integrity. Rather, we need to keep all three sides, or dimensions, of the whole gospel in view, in practice: 1) Doctrinal/Historical 2) Personal/Communal 3)Social/Cultural. All three are what make up the Gospel.
1) Doctrinal = Justification,
2) Personal = Adoption, Regeneration, Atonement
3) Social = New Creation (your particular emphasis), Kingdom of God
And some of the doctrines reflect all three dimensions of the Gospel, i.e. Regeneration, Atonement, etc. We get in problematic waters when we emphasize just one dimension of the Gospel, like Social/Mission/New Creation.
Sorry for carrying on. I just think this is critical to gospel and mission integrity.
Jonathan thanks for making that clearer. I really agree that the three spheres you propose must be well balanced to both be faithful to our ancient call to be disciples and our call to be disciples in the world and culture we live in today.
It is a delicate balance, and one that often becomes unbalanced.
And keep carrying on!
Hey Jonathan,
Thanks for commenting.
I believe I understand where you are coming from in your warning. And truly, I do not want to be a church of only social action with no love nor understanding of Christ or his kingdom.
Frankly, if we are pursuing the gospel, I do not think we can divorce the idea of mission from it. However, that is precisely what many of our evangelical churches have done and many like myself, humbly submit that we are not truly preaching the same gospel that Christ bled, died and rose again for.
That said, you’ll have to pardon me for linear thinking is not natural for me. I simply do not understand your three dimensions of the gospel. I can not see how I can create 3 sides to it and keep them in view as you describe. Further to keep with your description, how can the idea of the Kingdom of God be regulated to the social? My understanding is that none of these dimensions have hierarchy nor greater importance over the other but all are essential for the Kingdom. The Kingdom is in all aspects doctrinal, social, personal, ecclesiological, missional, ethical, emotional, spiritual physical, and many suffixes that ned in -’al’. We’re probably defining things differently and truly, I respect that this works for you, but please respect that to others, like a Rob Bell, that this is an awkward understanding. I too have been reading the Scriptures all my life, I would never have found this as you describe it.
Where does that leave us? Hopefully in the same Church working in different roles in the Kingdom.
So I want to say it too – keep carrying on! (and I will too).
I think it’s interesting that Bell describes himself as a “child of the Enlightenment,” though he was born in 1970, the zenith (or nadir) of postmodernism.
Though I’m sympathetic to a lot of missional concerns, it seems that the church’s eagerness to engage “postmodernism” is too late to make significant impact. The Millennials are coming…
Hi,
Thanks for your concern for both gospel and mission. I agree with this: “if we are pursuing the gospel, I do not think we can divorce the idea of mission from it.” The gospel is missional, it is a redemptive announcement that Jesus is Lord that changes everything, from doctrine to society.
You are also correct in pointing out that many of the gospel doctrines affect teh personal, theological, and social. However, certain doctrines have a primary focus on the personal or the social, the communal or the cultural. Kingdom of God, for instance, focuses on comprehensive renewal: “Let your kingdom come, let your will be done ON EARTH (not in my life) as it is in heaven.” The kingdom calls us to repent and believe that Jesus is LORD, not Jesus is personal savior. In the Gospels, the KOG repeatedly emphases the cosmic, creation, all-encompassing nature of the gospel.
You can read/listen to a fuller explanation at the links below. This based on the work of Tim Keller:
http://creationproject.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/the-gospel-in-3-dimensions/