A Review of What is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

If
you in your twenties or thirties you know what a big deal the issue of mission and
social justice is in the church. I
have long wanted to write about a Biblical understanding of mission and social
justice, but I think DeYoung and Gilbert’s book is a great starting place for
the discussion. Several years ago
I attended a breakout session at the Gospel Coalition with DeYoung and Gilbert
and they worked through a handful of their exegetical sections in the book
proposing the proclamation of the Gospel as the primary mission of the
church. During the session I was
saddened to see many people leaving seemingly either bored by the biblical work
these guys were doing (which is fairly cumbersome at times) or not buying their
proposal because of social and emotional convictions. I want to encourage you if you are on either side of the
fence of this debate, DeYoung and Gilbert’s book does a great job at defining what
the mission of the church should be about. If you are all about the proclamation of the Gospel, you
will see a place for loving your neighbor. If you are all about social justice, you will see that the proclamation
of the Gospel with words needs to be front and center in the mission of the
church. Over the next few
paragraphs I would like to hit several highlights of the book without wading
through all the great exegesis DeYoung and Gilbert. Finally I would like to offer one critique on chapter three.
DeYoung
and Gilbert define the mission of the church as follows: “The mission of the
church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the Gospel of
Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into
churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey His commands now and in
eternity to the glory of God the Father” (62). They come to this conclusion through carefully argued
texts. They go on to expand the
idea of Gospel into a “wide angle” Gospel and a “zoom lens” Gospel (94). These aspects of the Gospel are rooted
in the overall story of the Bible that finds its climax in the advent of Christ
and His work on the cross. This
language is very similar to what Matt Chandler uses in his book, The Explicit Gospel. Chandler talks about a “Gospel in the
sky” and a “Gospel on the ground;” all part of the same Gospel focusing on
different aspects. DeYoung and
Gilbert go on to rename these categories of “wide angle” and “zoom lens” the
“Gospel of the Kingdom” and the “Gospel of the Cross” showing how “the Gospel
of the cross is the fountainhead of the gospel of the kingdom” (108). The “The Gospel of the Kingdom”
understands God work of subjecting all things to Himself as we wait for the day
he will remake the world where the Gospel of the cross focuses on Christ’s
atoning work that is the entrance requirement for those that will be a part of
God’s kingdom. Without including
ourselves in the salvation Christ accomplished on the cross we will never enter
the kingdom of God.
Understanding
‘kingdom’ in this debate is crucial important. DeYoung and Gilbert do a great job showing through careful
exegesis that it is not our job to build the kingdom of God; it is God’s job to
build His kingdom. They define the
kingdom of God as “the redemptive reign of God over His people” (119). Furthermore they have this to say about
the kingdom, “…understanding that ’kingdom’ is a dynamic relational word rather
than a geographic one keeps us from thinking that ‘extending the kingdom of
God’ is the right way to describe planting trees or delivering hot meals to the
homeless. Sometimes people talk as
if by renovating a city park or turning a housing slum into affordable, livable
apartments, we are extending God’s reign over that park or that neighborhood. We’re bringing order from chaos…Rather
it is defined relationally and dynamically; it exists where knees and hearts
bow to the King and submit to Him.
And therefore you cannot ‘expand the kingdom’ by bringing peace and
order and justice to a certain area of the world. Good deeds are good, but they don’t broaden the borders of
the kingdom. The only way the
kingdom of God –the redemptive rule of God – is extended is when He brings
another sinner to renounce sin and self-righteousness and bow his knee to King
Jesus” (121).
In
chapters six and seven DeYoung walk through the most interesting part of the
social justice debate. In chapter
six they lay exegetical groundwork for making sense of social justice, and then
provide application in chapter seven.
If you read nothing else in this book, you need to read these
chapters. DeYoung and Gilbert come
to a Biblical definition of what social justice is in the Bible after working
through a myriad of texts. They
understand the Bible to teach “no fraud, no favoritism, help for the weak, and
freely giving as we have abundantly received” to be the social justice it
speaks about (171). In contrast it
is not “alleviation of poverty” (175), “not making outcomes the way we think
they should be” (146), not embracing abundance nor asceticism as virtuous in
their own right (179), and not feeling guilty about not addressing every
problem in the world. One of the
most refreshing principals offered in chapter seven is the idea moral
proximity, “the closer the need, the greater the moral obligation to help”
(183). DeYoung and Gilbert root
this principal in Galatians 6:10 where Paul wants to do good to everyone as he
has opportunity.
Finally,
DeYoung and Gilbert find Shalom (peace) for this world in the new heavens and
new earth that will be remade through Christ. It is this redeemed world that we should place our hope in. It is this world that we should usher
people into through the Gospel of Christ.
DeYoung and Gilbert have a fascinating discussion of the continuity and
discontinuity that might exist between our world and the new heavens and new
earth finding that it is God who will bring about this new world, not us. They come full circle in their
discussion landing back on Gospel proclamation as found in the Great Commission
to be the mission of the church. DeYoung
and Gilbert remind us that “we are not called to bring a broken planet back to
its created glory. But we are to
call broken people back to their Creator” (248).
I
only have one critique to offer on DeYoung and Gilbert’s book. In chapter three they walk through the
story of the Bible. Now I think
every Christian should be able to do this at some level. We have to know the overall story and
be able to articulate it. However,
DeYoung and Gilbert seem to propose a center to the story that I don’t think is
quite right. They say the question
driving the entire Biblical narrative is “How [can] sinful people [] live in
the presence of a righteous God?” (69).
While this is a theme that the Bible does deal with, I don’t think it is
the center. Rather it seems to be
closer to a story of God redeeming a people for Himself. There has been a lot of scholarly
debate on what the center of the Biblical narrative is, something akin to
physics’ quest for unifying theory, but no one has seemed to completely win the
day on a center for the Bible.
Several of my professors at Southern Seminary have written books on
possible centers, Peter Gentry says it is Kingdom through Covenant and Jim
Hamilton says it is God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment. I tend to lean toward the later, yet
they all are in encompassed in God’s revelation of His redemptive work in the
person of Christ. I don’t know if
it was DeYoung and Gilbert’s intention to propose a center, but I think they
have missed the mark.
What is the Mission of the
Church? ends
in a fascinating way. The last
chapter is a fictitious, though all to familiar conversation between a fired
up, motivated, fairly radical church planter and a seasoned pastor. There conversation includes all the
topics above cased in popular language.
With this conversation, I saw my own sin; how I have often thought about
the mission of the church in unbiblical and unhealthy ways. Maybe you will find yourself in that
conversation too. There is so much
good exegesis and thoughtful discussion in this book that I have barely even
brushed the surface of the discussion. I highly encourage you to read this
book. It is a conversation that
needs to be had in our churches and this is a great, exegetically sound, place
to start.
DeYoung,
Kevin and Greg Gilbert, What is the
Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great
Commission. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011. 283 pp.
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