Kevin, Trevin, and the Mission of the Church
I have ten blogs on my iGoogle, and on November 15th, four of them were about Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s recent book, What is the Mission of the Church? Plenty has been said about it, and we’ve already posted briefly on it here. But I have a thought that, as far as I know, has not been picked up too much in the conversation.
For the uninitiated: Kevin and Greg are arguing that the mission of the church is the Great Commission, plain and simple. Fundamentally, the church’s mission is to make disciples, not to make the world a better place. Unsurprisingly, this has met with a lot of opposition, some of it gentle and irenic, some of it feistier. Surely, many have replied, our actions matter? Surely the things we do win a hearing for the gospel, and are commanded directly by Jesus? You can’t be saying that loving your neighbour and feeding the poor are somehow secondary, can you? And then they reply; and then their critics reply; and in this fashion, Kevin and Trevin and Greg and Ed and Joel and (if my iGoogle is anything to go by) 40% of theological blogs have gone back and forth on it, debating – often very productively – the meaning of this vital word ‘mission’.
But here’s my thought. Much of what these people are disagreeing about, when you read their arguments, isn’t actually the meaning of the word ‘mission’. It’s the meaning of the word ‘church’.
What I mean is this. Many are reading Kevin and Greg as saying that the mission of an individual Christian is primarily to do with saying (proclaiming Christ crucified), and only secondarily to do with doing (loving one’s neighbour). This, understandably, is causing consternation, and not just from the social justice activists, because it seems to represent an undercooking of what the Bible says individual Christians have been commanded to go and do (‘love God, love your neighbour’, and stuff like that).
But as I read them, this is not what they are saying. They are saying that the mission of the institutional church is primarily to do with saying (preaching the gospel, making disciples and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded) and only secondarily to do with doing (transforming communities, regenerating city centres, lowering crime, and so on). And this may or may not be true, but it’s a very different claim to the previous one – and I’m not sure that the difference has always been fully registered by those who have written about it.
To show the differences, consider the following four questions.
1. Have individual believers been commissioned to preach the gospel with their words?
2. Have individual believers been commissioned to demonstrate the reality of the gospel with their lives?
3. Has the institutional church been commissioned to preach the gospel using words?
4. Has the institutional church been commissioned to demonstrate the reality of the gospel by acting corporately to bless the community, whether in reducing poverty, increasing employment, lowering crime, or equivalent?
The point is, it is completely conceivable that someone could say an emphatic ‘yes’ to #2, and yet still give a cautious ‘no’ to #4. And in an American context in which (for Kevin and Greg) ‘mission’ is becoming an increasingly fluffy term – such that any act of kindness done by anyone can be seen as ‘missional’, crime reduction can be seen as integral to the church’s mission as proclaiming Jesus, and the unique contribution of the church as a gospel-preaching community can be lost – you can see why they might want to do so, whether or not you agree with them. But that doesn’t mean they think that loving our neighbour isn’t important, or essential to our calling as individuals.
What a relief.
Comments
By Matthew Hosier on 02/12/2011 at 10:22
The underlying disagreement is whether we should be R2K or Transformational. Perhaps we should have a debate about that some time - after all, it seems to affect Everything ;)