Back in September, I wrote Presuppotional Bias and An Unfortunate Book Review, a piece in which I shared some of my concerns on Greg Gilbert’s unfortunate, snarky book review of Jim Belcher’s Deep Church. In that piece, I not only lamented Gilbert’s shallow treatment of Belcher’s book but the worrisome underlying themes I saw. I wrote:
I don’t want to read too much in to things, but it’s almost as if 9 Marks, through Gilbert, is drawing lines in the sand within the larger Reformed, Evangelical world. I’m simply not comfortable with the tone of the piece or what it insinuates. If anything, Gilbert’s review simply reinforces the need for a book like Belcher’s.
I had some personal correspondence with people wondering if I wasn’t in fact reading too much in to a simple book review that I disagreed with, a possibility I certainly considered. But let me explain my remarks. It seems as though that in the larger, “Reformed, Evangelical” world, we’re beginning to witness some fragmentation. Every other year we have the Together For the Gospel conference, offset on the other years by The Gospel Coalition.
It seems that, on one side, we have many moving towards what is becoming known as a “missional” approach, focusing on God’s mission to restore all things to Himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. It might be said that Tim Keller is at the forefront of this movement. On the other side, we have the more traditional, church-focused camp spearheaded by 9 Marks Ministries and Mark Dever focusing on the supremacy of penal substitionary atonement in any talk of salvation (I’m not so sure these things are mutually exclusive, personally, but that’s not really the point). Again, this is just my sense and I could be wrong, but from my perspective, such as it is, I not only sense a growing separation, but that separation being pushed by the more traditional side.
Almost as if he wanted us all to know we’re not crazy, there is indeed an agenda here, my friend Jonathan Leeman wrote a recent piece for 9 Marks: “Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small?” That’s a fair question in and of itself, except that the piece happens to occur in the recent eJournal focused on liberalism. In other words, Leeman is portraying the “missional” approach as liberalism reborn. Or at least the first steps towards a new liberalism. Really?
Throughout his piece, Leeman equates “missional” with a focus primarily on “social justice.” I don’t know any Reformed, missional believers who make this equation, and I know many Reformed Evangelicals who would indeed call themselves “missional.” Nowhere does he admit that he is speaking of a specific subset of the use of the word “missional” in the larger Reformed, Evangelical world. I just wish that Leeman had pointed out, just once that he is, in fact, using the word in severely different ways than most people. I’m sure that conservative believers like Ed Stetzer, Mark Driscoll, and Tim Keller take issue with Leeman’s equation of missional = focus primarily on social justice = new liberalism but nowhere does Leeman acknowledge that such conservative believers use the word “missional” in very, very different ways.
Leeman offers four specific concerns, stating:
Here are four reasons why I believe the recent emphasis on social justice indicates not the recovery of a lost or underappreciated biblical theme, as some claim, but a first step toward a new liberalism, at least in many of the formulations I have encountered.
He then expounds on the following four reasons:
- A Small View of God
- An Inconsequential View Of Hell
- A De-Emphasis On Conversion
- A Reductionistic Biblical Storyline
Notice, the equation with “missional” being primarily an “emphasis on social justice.” But then, looking at his four reasons, I can’t help but wonder how his definition of “missional” could be drastically different than the authors I’ve been reading, Christopher J.H. Wright (whom Leeman rebukes in passing without naming for not stressing hell enough), Ed Stetzer, Tim Keller, etc. All seem to be using the word “missional” in drastically different ways than Leeman.
One of Leeman’s concerns is that this “missional” approach comes at the expense of evangelism. To separate the idea of mission from evangelism as Leeman asserts is simply to define “missional” in a different way. Is he really saying that Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer and others are on the road towards liberalism and guilty of downplaying evangelism? Really? Or, if you know that you’re defining the term in a very particular (albeit peculiar) way, then please at least say that there are godly men, in the same camp who, in fact, use the word very differently and are not, in fact, on the road to liberalism? Unless, of course, you think they are? The bottom line here for me is this: when defining a word very particularly/peculiarly, is it right to paint others using that term as “liberal,” even if they use that word differently than you’ve defined? For example, Ed Stetzer recently posted a list of the “top ten” verses that demonstrate that the church is indeed “on mission,” and not all of these verses can narrowly be construed as evangelism. It seems to me that Leeman understands the idea of “missional” differently than does Stetzer.
I worry that we are seeing the beginnings of a divide and that we’re seeing some lines being drawn in the sand that don’t really need to be scrawled.
What do you think?
I’m with you, Brent. For the last year or so, it seems as if 9Marks has moved from a reclamation of a general understanding of the church to now moving toward such an exclusive camp that they seem be more reactionary than anything. When they start going after missions-minded Reformed brothers, that’s cause for concern. Tough being credible when you’re only going after strawmen. Dever needs to do an interview with Stetzer so they can define their terms correctly.
Brent,
Well said. I’m always surprised (and disheartened) when people I respect and appreciate get up on soap-boxes that have been created by sloppy research.
If I’m going to publicly come out against something, I’m going to make sure that the people I’m rebuking agree that I’m correctly defining their points, otherwise, what’s the point?
You’ve astutely observed a disturbing but definitely growing sociological phenomenon in the modern American Reformed “resurgence.” I’ve been concerned about 9marks ever since I noticed that neither worship nor works of charity, both easily demonstrable as “marks of the church” in the New Testament, are considered essential marks by 9marks.
Brent and Matthew,
That is exactly what needs to happen: a conversation between Dever and Stetzer. Both men are extremely articulate men and yet both men have a way of explaining what they both mean when they say “reformed” “missional” etc., as you have pointed out. Matthew, I personally don’t feel that 9Marks has moved away from a “reclamation of a general understanding of the church” to something else. It is in that area that they see others reacting to what they hold as truth and practice. I believe there in lies the difficult.
Leeman appears to have conflated “missional” with the Emergent Village™ version of the emerging church discussion. His four points would be fair criticism of EV, but have little to do with the wider discussion and praxis of the missional church around the globe.
Great stuff, Brent. Like many, I long for missional & reformed to go hand-in-hand. I have great appreciation for 9 Marks and will never question their devotion to evangelism. (Dever wrote a great book on it!) For some missional=evangelistic, for others missional encompasses much more (like cultural redemption), sometimes to the exclusion of “pure evangelism” and therefore the strict-evangelists make sure to prioritize gospel conversion.
Brent, I believe you are correct. I wish you were not. It seems that since the younger guys (Leeman and Gilbert) are becoming more vocal 9 Marks is drifting toward exclusivism (in a bad way). It is interesting in how we both shared seminary classes with these guys but came out differently.
Wow.
It never ceases to amaze how we can manage to find new ways, new topics to divide the church.
So sad.
Has anyone out there written an article about what they feel are the causes of why we continue to wound brothers, slander brothers, characterize brothers?
I love truth, and feel we should pursue it, so don’t anyone misrepresent me, here, but at some point we have to acknowledge that pursuing truth and loving each other are equal pursuits and neither is to be emphasized to the neglect of the other. Both are to be our identifying marks.
sorry, should have read “falsely characterize brothers”
Amateur Hour.
Let me just briefly explain what I quipped before I left for work this morning.
9 Marks folks getting upset at Missional folks for supposedly departing from the Gospel is a bit ridiculous.
Whatever good 9 Marks is doing, you can’t expect fidelity to the truth of the matter from a group which ahistorically defines the church as normally composing of the following XYZ additional marks in contradistinction to the Reformers (both English and continental) who first only saw two marks. Later some second generation Reformers added a third mark. Failing to really recognize this in pursuit of a slicked-up conference ready sloganeered ‘the way we see it never mind the rest of the historic church’ Gospel is only a recipe for trouble. It is no wonder then that the 9 Marks crowd is having difficulty with terms like ‘Missional’ and the movement surrounding it.
Additionally, it bears pointing out that the ‘Missional’ crowd can’t have their cake and eat it too. No less than a series of five posts on Stetzer’s site attempt to define for us what ‘missional’ means but never really do. The fact that the meaning of the word is so ambiguous only invites the sort of criticism from a group like 9 Marks. You have to have more in your definition of ‘missional’ than, “Dude. Like, uh, look what we’re doing is missional. Don’t you get it?” Not that all sectors of this movement have always failed to define things appropriately, but when you base current praxis on a generic word that was made up a hundred years ago in passing you only invite criticism that is likely not accurate in the main.
I believe one commenter above rightly identified the Emergents as the proper inheritors of classic mainline liberalism and so undoubtedly the critique provided by the 9 Marks guy is inaccurate. However, it should be noted that there is significant crossover with the use of the term ‘missional’ and even the Emergents use the term on more than a regular basis to describe what they are doing.
So, while I view the criticism as unfair in one way - in another, you guys get what you asked for when you decide to adopt such blurry terminology to describe the main force and emphasis of your work.
I saw a similar view expressed in Why We Love the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. They painted all missional Christians to be emergent types who didn’t believe in penal substitutionary atonement and who denied the existence of a literal hell. I found that to be a little bit offensive since I consider myself a missional Christian, I am not emergent, and I hold to traditional orthodox Christianity with a reformed leaning.
I do see a line being drawn, but I pray that it doesn’t continue.
It seems in order to downplay the word “missional”(most likely because it is a “buzz word” that can be overused at times and therefore anything like that is automatically deemed as liberal or emergent), you gave to seperate it from the metanarrative and make it seem like it is just a concept that we made up and has no substantiation in orthodoxy. Which as you have said, is just a ploy to draw lines and make sure thier camp is secure and people know they’re legitimate because they don’t get caught up In “fads” like being missional. Good thoughts my friend.
Kevin - I’m by no means an expert, but when I see a comment like “you guys get what you asked for when you decide to adopt such blurry terminology to describe the main force and emphasis of your work”, I can’t help but cry foul. If, as Matt Chandler commented in his latest sermon, evangelism is “inescapably contextualized” as a result of the fact that we live life on mission in the specific places and giftings that the Spirit has endowed us with, it is nigh on impossible to create a hard-target definition for a term like “mission”. The very fact that God chooses to work through the mosaic that is the church universal decries our ability to accurately describe the boundaries of that work more specifically than Stetzer, Keller, et al, have done.
It is, in fact, a definition of non-specific specificity (to use an albeit completely nonsensical term) to claim a belief that the work of the redeemed is in engaging culture as led by the Spirit in every facet of life, wherever and whenever that may be. Should we attempt to create a more specific definition at the risk of denying the work of the Spirit amongst the church universal? If that’s getting “what you asked for,” then in reality we’re taking the cake and giving it to God and saying, “It’s your cake, have your way…”
Just a thought.
Brian
I think its important to define terms.
I doubt you will find anyone at 9marks who accuses Keller of these things.
However, look over these things that were concerns of Leeman’s, most, if not all seem to paint the emergent village crowd. It would appear to me, based on the context of the ejournal as a whole, that the missional crowd being referred to is the new incarnation of the McLarens and Bells, not the Kellers and Stetzers.
Should Leeman have used a different word? Maybe.
Could I be totally wrong about this? Maybe.
Do I think that Leeman’s concerns are valid? Yes.
I think Kevin is correct in his last paragraph, The Young Restless Reformed Crowd (of which I am a part of, loving both T4G and TGC, 9Marks and A29) picked a word that we don’t have the market cornered on. Instead of being upset that “our term” is being associated with liberalism, maybe we should be upset that there are liberals who associate themselves with the term.
Brian,
I’m not sure I have a response to your reply except that the use of buzzwords in our culture to describe these things is inherently a modern malaise and what I have pointed out goes with the program.
Abraham Kuyper didn’t have much trouble defining the working out of the Gospel and Christ’s reign to every corner of this earth and he was able to do so without stamping everything with the label “Missional”. So, too, the Church universal over her life has been quite able to function as you describe quite without the confusing nomenclature or the need to label it as something distinct.
How is it that you can define “missional” in a paragraph but Ed Stetzer couldn’t define it in five blog posts (contra your contention that he actually did)? Either way, if we grant with you that Stetzer was defining the term and he did so successfully and you too are able to do the same with much less in the way of words what are we faced with except that which I’ve already noted–the term itself is subject to all sorts of definitions because it is in the main unclear as to its meaning. So, then, it is no wonder when usage of the term and the fragmented movement which values it the most highly gets criticized by ‘my way or the highway’ types in semi-Reformed/Baptist circles. In one sense at least you can’t blame them even though I agree the critique on the whole is largely inaccurate.
I don’t know whom Leeman is referring to but he ain’t referring to my missionial church.
My concern is primarily, what is the purpose of the church? IX Marks focuses on the mission of the church to preach the Gospel as announcement, and when this is done the other things work out as a passive response by God’s people, it is a problem when other things are encouraged so much so that it can lead further generations to liberalism. I’m not saying that the ‘missional church’ (an ambigous term itself) is liberal, but I can perhaps see a trend towards that when we focus much on the mission of the church as social than spiritual, makers of good news instead of announcers of it, and bringers of deeds instead of proclaiming our creeds (and confessions).
Just my thoughts, I may be wrong…I appreciate missional churches. Of course, whats so wrong w/Reformed that we need a “Missional Reformed movement” in the first place? If it ain’t broken, why fix it?
I find it interesting that we want to blog about other peoples ministry.
I also find it sad that we now call our selves “reformed, missional” and we are determined to make sure people dont think we are one or the other. Why is that? why is it that we have to make a point to prove to people we are right. Why is it that we want to be or not be a part of all these new groups that keep coming out.
I will not claim any of these groups that are being mentioned. I am beleiver of Jesus. I dont want to be associated with anything else.
What we like to do is come out with these big words, new names, and start a movement.
Stick to the Jesus movement. There is division in the church because many people think they know more than they do.
Read the bible, let the holy spirit reveal to you. Too many opinions and not enough spiritual revealing.
Sounds like the church of colosse in here. (read chapter 1)
And for those who are offended by some else- “Great peace have they which love your law: and nothing shall offend them.” psalm 119:165
I pray for revival in our hearts. I have to be listening to the Lord, I do not it all and I struggle. It is why MUST seek the Lord through prayer, the word, and fellowship. Do we seek the Lord for wisdom? or do we listen to other people, blogs, books, opinons, even our pastors.
GO TO THE WORD!
Gilbert’s review rests on critiquing Brian Maclaren and those who supposedly reject (as Belcher stated) ‘Piper’s view of atonement’.
There is no way to bridge the gap when the true Gospel is in question.
But very early in the book, Belcher explains that Ed Stetzer cut the Emerging Camp into 3 ’sub-camps’ - going from left of center to simply left. Some of these ‘Emerging’ guys have very orthodox beliefs.
You’d have to be trying to sell a book (’What Is the Gospel’ by Greg Gilberts, Crossway 2010) to have such a haughty, forced and straw-man argument against ‘Deep Church’ and the hardly left of center sector of the ‘Emerging Church’ (of which the theologically conservative Mark Driscoll makes his home). It is speculation, but cause for concern.
Is this not just another case of ‘missional’ meaning something different to many different people and groups?
I’ve seen my denomination take it and use it to mean ‘evangelism’. I’ve seen my church take it and just exchange every ‘missions’ with ‘missional’ in our church, i.e. ‘missional team’ or ‘missional moment’ rather than ‘missions team’ or ‘missions moment’. I’ve seen some liberal friends use it as social gospel. And I’ve seen many in the New Reformed camp use it to get us out of our studies and into the world.
The word’s been so abused we may just have to leave it and communicate what we believe it means somehow else.
This is a bit off-topic and long-winded. But from the humble POV of a layperson who:
(a) grew up in the laughably chaotic NYC public/postsecondary school system where even a semblance of order and truth are just teeny bit hard to glean from the pluralistic, (truly) liberal teachers attempting to speak through the perpetual shouting matches / fist fights of unruly kids of all ethnic and religious backgrounds,
(b) was raised by a Gospel-believing but legalistically inclined pastor-father in his non-English speaking (talk about afraid of “missional” and “relevant”?) immigrant church, I’d say this:
My understanding of and appreciation for the Gospel were drastically changed by just a few months of sitting under the ministry of Tim Keller. He preaches sin, wrath, and the cross of Christ in a way that, in terms of level of orthodoxy relative to the hearer’s context, is presumably head and shoulders above the relative orthodoxy of any other preacher’s hearers (except perhaps Driscoll), and yet shows how the Gospel can save lives and does indeed change lives.
I might be wrong if I thought that some folks don’t really know how liberal liberal really gets and how life- and society-changing the Gospel really is, but I might be onto something if I did.
And while all this discussion is going on, Satan is having a good laugh.
Regarding the comment that “I’ve been concerned about 9marks ever since I noticed that neither worship nor works of charity both easily demonstrable as “marks of the church” in the New Testament, are considered essential marks by 9marks” and the idea that 9 marks “ahistorically defines the church as normally composing of the following XYZ additional marks in contradistinction to the Reformers”:
I don’t believe these are what the 9 marks are. I thought the 9 marks were what made their movement distinctive from mainstream evangelicalism. I’m sure you wouldn’t have anyone at 9 marks saying that things like prayer, worship, and acts of charity are of the utmost importance. Forgive me if I’m misinterpreted the intention of your comments.
I think this is an incredibly important question. As a Reformed evangelical I have tried to keep these various “movements” at arms length out of the fear that these will turn into other reasons to focus on “us” against “them.” If you are interested, I’ve mused about this over at theology forum a bit: http://theologyforum.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/evangelical-idolatry/
Kevin - 100% on board that the term is open to a myriad of interpretations and that the level of nuance could create a situation in which 9Marks has a legitimate critique of certain uses and, as Brent points out, needs to establish a firmer context for that critique to avoid tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps I should have stated it more clearly, but my point of contention is simply that we need to ensure we are not creating too stringent a requirement around the definition of a term that I would argue can only be defined vaguely.
You’re correct to point out that Kuyper had little trouble drawing a significant picture of what the outworking of the Gospel looks like to the ends of the earth, but he also wasn’t trying to build an all-inclusive “these activities qualify and these don’t” library.
As far as Stetzer’s specific definition, I read his blog and have read most of his printed works, and will simply claim that I may be in error about whether he ever just comes out and defines his view of what ‘missional’ means. In fact, it’s entirely possible I have simply transposed my interpretation/missional context on top of Ed’s thoughts and have found my definition therein.
That said, my general conclusions from Stetzer are two-fold —
1) because of the nature of his work, he is apt to ask the church universal to define a term and share those definitions in lieu of a strictly personal definition in an attempt to bring into focus the peculiar challenges to becoming ‘missionally’ minded in our current context.
2) There is a significant level of recognition that while we may look at a situation/activity/event and be able to make some determination about whether or not it’s ‘missionally’ minded, a firmer definition may exclude legitimate, Spirit-led engagement and thus it’s appropriate to leave some things to the imagination.
At the end of the day, we have significant agreement that it’s a simple matter to redefine a term and share sweeping criticisms that only apply to a small subset. As communicators/pastors/teachers/missionally-mind regenerate believers, we should be passionate about pursuing specificity where we can, while ensuring that we are not touting an “our way is the only way” mentality–something the church seems to have ongoing struggle with (as does all of humanity).
A great response I’ve heard to the question of prayer and God’s sovereignty (you know–if He’s sovereign, why pray?) is: If God is not sovereign, why pray? That is: why pray if there really isn’t anything He can do about it?
I think it makes for a nice parallel in this case. If God is not sovereign, then the activity of His Spirit indwelling His children will have no efficacy insofar as pushing back against darkness is concerned; however, if the Spirit truly is efficacious in His particular ministerial task of transforming hearts and minds in order to push back against the darkness, then our task is informed by and empowered by our newly found gifts, fruit, and convictions.
It seems that a very ‘big’ God indeed is the only one truly capable of such a task. Certainly many have undertaken the task of undermining Scriptural and/or Gospel accuracy in order to elevate social justice. Their impetus is well-founded but their means are woeful. It’s an overly-strong reaction against this that can end up hurting what is good in that emphasis. We should be children who work very hard at their tasks knowing full-well that it isn’t our power or intuition or ‘goodness’ that produces the results, but we are working with whatever God is already doing. Our task is to work hard as well as preach the True Gospel. We avoid ‘new liberalism’ by not opting for service over Gospel in instances where we need to choose. I’ve witnessed churches who do great things for people but never bring up the Gospel; certainly this is not a sensitivity to God-the only Seeker but some kind of attempt. It is one thing to work on evangelism by doing things to get into contact with people to share the Gospel, but another to systematize this and give the Gospel a backseat.
One other thing is for sure: we can slow down any splitting processes by being careful with our reactions and responses. A lot of the ‘liberal’ folks have been badly burned and aren’t sure what to do so they’re doing ’some’thing and those of us with the deeper convictions under discussion should watch how our character and love match our doctrinal solidity so we don’t become another name on a weaker brother or sister’s list of adopted brethren who’ve not “[been known as Jesus' disciples] by [our] love for one another”.
Great discussion, guys. I always dread reading comment sections on blogs but am thankful for being proven wrong on this one. Let’s keep good discussion like this up and encourage each other.
Love in Christ,
jw
I just completed J. Leeman’s article, “Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small?” The article seems very timely. I in no way came away thinking Leeman was equating missional with liberalism. He simply was shooting a warning flare for people to take notice that there are present trends among people in the “missional camp” who are equating the gospel with the implications of the gospel and others who are elevating implications of the gospel above the gospel itself.
Furthermore, I think this talk of division growing among the Reformed Crowd is overblown. All of these well recognized ministries (9Marks, T4G, TGC, ACTS 29, etc) are working wonderfully for the cause of the gospel. To some degree we all accept and reject things said by any great christian leader (Piper, Dever, Keller, Stetzer) because our common denominator are not human leaders, but the word of God. Yet,at the same time, I can say that all of these Christian leaders have wonderfully blessed my life.
Kevin-I appreciate your critique. I’m curious though about something you said.
“9 Marks folks getting upset at Missional folks for supposedly departing from the Gospel is a bit ridiculous.
Whatever good 9 Marks is doing, you can’t expect fidelity to the truth of the matter from a group which ahistorically defines the church as normally composing of the following XYZ additional marks in contradistinction to the Reformers (both English and continental) who first only saw two marks. Later some second generation Reformers added a third mark.”
My understanding from what I’ve read at 9 Marks is not that they are defining the church in a way contrary to the historical marks (word, sacraments…discipline). They are not using the word “mark” in this way. Unless I am mistaken, they certainly would hold to the 3 historical marks Christianity to define what a church is. Their 9 “marks” are simply descriptive of elements (though Dever admits there are certainly more) that have waned in the church and must be included if a church is to be healthy, thrive in the gospel, etc. They don’t have to be present to HAVE a church. But they are “marks” of those churches which are healthy.
I could certainly be wrong. But I thought since the blog post and comments (which are very interesting) were all about not scrawling lines where they need not be scrawled (great word..scrawled)..this would be a point to clarify.
[...] addition perspective on “A Growing Divide? 9 Marks and Missional.” AKPC_IDS += “871,”; Tags: 9Marks, Jonathan Leeman, Missional, Missional [...]
Well maybe I am missing a little here but if I may throw my 2 cents in and hopefully they are worth both pennies.
It appears that those who are upset at the 9Marks folks are upset because the 9Marks guys understand “missional” different than they do. As several have pointed out it is a term that is used by various groups with a variety of definitions. Even the lead “missional” guy at the SBC, Ed Stetzer, can’t seem to define it very well and that after a couple of books on the subject!
Personally, I have always associated the term with those who are of the “emergent” persuasion, specifically those who have redefined the gospel into a new social gospel. Yes that means my understanding of “missional” is pretty much in line with Gilbert and Leeman.
May I offer those who are offended, who define “missional” as more evangelistic than social to adopt a different term? Maybe we should all step back from the abyss and use biblical terms. It seems to me that the we would immediately return to our common ground, find that we are pretty much all on the same sheet of music if we would do that. As a side note, is it possible that we got ourselves into this little tempest because we wanted to use words and terms other than those of the Bible because we wanted to be “relevant” or “accepted” of simply not seen as backwards “bible thumpers”?
Finally, what terms should we use? How about “Great Commission” as we see it being used in the SBC?
How about just “Evangelistic/Evangelism/Evangelist”? It would be hard to roll “social gospel”/social justice ideas into that, then we could see those as secondary.
Just my 2cents, hopefully I don’t owe anyone a refund.
[...] the word “missional”, there was some interesting discussion last week on the subject, kicked off by Brent Thomas, that I apparently missed during my exodus out of Europe and into Africa. Ed Stetzer has the [...]
you saw this right?
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=Onal+and+Edmane+Castor&init=quick#/note.php?note_id=268776756332&id=112942480908&ref=mf
Sure, “social justice” may not be the primary calling for the church, but there’s a massive shortage of it in the conservative churches and the more conservative the bigger the hole.
If someone wrote a book about Christians needing to grow in areas like parenting, nobody would complain and say it’s threatening the gospel. If I speak up about the need to take justice seriously, it suddenly becomes a threat to the gospel.
I went to Together for the Gospel in 2006; we were saturated with talks about the gospel and given over a dozen books to take home - and in all of it, absolutely nothing about justice and mercy. That was actually a jarring catalyst for us to think a lot of things through - spent a year making a DVD to help Christians consider the gospel implications regarding justice and mercy.
[...] “A Growing Divide? 9 Marks and Missional” [...]
[...] friend and local A29 pastor, Brent Thomas, is getting some much deserved attention on his posts regarding the growing rift between some reformed folks and the missional camp. First he was [...]