The Gospel as Center

The Gospel as Center: Renewing Our Faith and Reforming Our Ministry Practices
Edited By: D.A. Carson and Timothy Keller

"The ministry we have outlined is relatively rare. There are many seeker-driven churches that help many people find Christ. There are many churches seeking to engage the culture through political activism. There is a fast-growing charismatic movement with emphasis on glorious, passionate, corporate worship. There are many congregations with strong concern for doctrinal rigor and purity and who work very hard to keep themselves separate from the world. There are many churches with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized. We do not, however, see enough individual churches that embody the full, integrative gospel balance we have outlined here... we see no broad movement yet of this gospel-centered ministry."

Edited by D.A. Carson and Timothy Keller and each chapter written by a different contributor, The Gospel-Centered Church is a fleshing out of the Foundation Statements created for/by The Gospel Coalition (a fellowship of churches and Christians from many different denominations).

They begin the book by giving some background to The Gospel Coalition and their purpose. The board of leaders recognized the shift in the American church in relation to culture- some churches reengineering their 'gospel' message to fit in better with the culture, others defiantly building higher walls apart from culture. TGC desires to build up the church and encourage her to engage and connect with the current culture without compromising the explicit truths of Scripture or changing the gospel message to be 'less offensive.'

Therefore, this book is, firstly, a resource for church leaders to help shape their ministries to be gospel-centered, and secondly, an explanation for laypeople about some of the primary doctrines of the gospel and how it relates to our culture.

Some of the topics include: truth and Scripture, creation, sin/fall, redemption, justification, Holy Spirit, God's kingdom, the sacraments, and final restoration. They mentioned that a lot of churches have adopted TGC's doctrinal statements as their own.

Having grown up in the evangelical church, there wasn't a lot of new material for me or information that I disagreed with. If you're well-versed in theology, this probably won't be earth-shattering and could even be a little tedious reading, but if you've never really learned the 'why' behind a lot of the church doctrines, this would be highly beneficial for you.

Each chapter is full of Scripture and will plainly guide you through each topic- the gospel and church doctrine are not just traditions we blindly follow for no reason. They are also transparent about aspects of each topic that even the writers may disagree on and explain the different views (i.e. baptism or the transmission of Adam's original sin to all other humans), always noting the major things they still hold in common.

A couple areas I wish would have been a little different were the parts regarding sin and human depravity. The origin of sin/evil is one of the hardest things to interpret or understand and I wish they would have spent more time discussing that complicated and controversial doctrine. Human depravity is also an oft-argued aspect of the gospel and I found that chapter a little too academic for me. I think for a lot of people it would become a chapter people skip because it takes a lot of focus to grasp what they're talking about. I found myself getting to the end of the page and realizing I was reading without really comprehending and had to reread a lot of passages.

Something I really appreciate about TGC is that they don't back down when facing the loud voices of postmodernism that question morality and authority. We can't be weak when it comes to truth, even if it's unpopular. We have to let God and Scripture be our authority, not the culture or our feelings.

As they noted: "Love divorced from truth is not love, and truth divorced from love is not truth."

I think this book would be a valuable book to own, if even to just use it as a resource. Since each chapter is separate, you could easily read whatever topic you're curious about in whatever order or in several different sittings. The appendix is the printed Gospel Coalition's Foundation Documents for reference as well.

There is a ton of content in this book so to provide quotes on each topic would become too much for this review, but here are some quotes to give you a taste of what you'll read:

"Here’s our position as Christians: we live in a Christ-rejecting world with all its sin and death, but we belong to a Christ-exalting family with all its life and joy. We experience both the pain of this fallen world and the hope of all who are in Christ at the same time."

"God is much more concerned to make our eternal state secure than to make our temporal existence easy."

"God does not overlook the anger we unleash, the abuse we inflict, the suffering we disregard, the injustice we ignore. A holy God cannot simply hide his eyes or cover his ears to such sin. Its victims scream for justice, and Gods compassion provides what his righteousness requires through Jesus’ sacrifice. Since the Son of God had no sin, his willingness to suffer on a cross and accept the penalty we deserve is far beyond any recompense that humanity could provide. Christ’s righteousness so overbalanced our unrighteousness that his sacrifice is sufficient to compensate for the sin of the entire world and of all ages (Rom 5:15-19; Heb 9:26-28; 1 Pt 3:18; Titus 2:11-14)"

"God is not like the government, responding to unforeseen circumstances and making adjustments for unintended consequences...But God is sovereign. He fulfills his own plan in his own time by his own power, and no one can stop him. God knows exactly what he is doing at every point in history in every nation of the world and through every event in your life. This should be a great comfort to you... You can have confidence in knowing that the events of your life are not spinning out of control or settled by random chance but that they are in the hands of God, who plans for you in love. Christians find joy in knowing that Gods plan will lead to the greatest possible display of his glory and the greatest possible joy for his people."

"If there were some other way to receive eternal life, God would be guilty of the most massive violation of justice in the history of the cosmos... If there were some other way for people to be saved from their sinful plight, if God had a Plan B that worked equally well as “the Jesus way,” then one would have to conclude that the death of Jesus Christ was not really necessary for the salvation of sinners."

"...humans have refused to honor God as king, which explains the rising earthly kingdoms filled with evil opposition to God."

"Christians refuse to believe that there are only two options in engaging our culture: either to assimilate or to separate, to capitulate or to evade, or to over-contextualize or to under-adapt. Jeremiah 29 encourages Gods people not to accommodate the foreign culture but to move in and get involved in the life of the city economically and culturally. The prophet is asking the people to be spiritually bicultural. They are being called neither to worship the city nor to hate the culture, but to love the city."

"Kingdom- driven alternative communities will have a healthy balance between 'theologically substantial preaching, dynamic evangelism and apologetics, and church growth' and planting of churches that will 'emphasize repentance, personal renewal, and holiness of life' and winsome 'engagement with the social structures of ordinary people, and cultural engagement with art, business, scholarship, and government.' "

"The local church and its love represent the only sure antidote to a post modern world mired in sin and despair. People today are trying to put one foot in front of the other and sustain a meaningful existence but are consistently sinking into the quicksand of uncertainty and confusion. Looking for friendships, they absorb the wounds of the soul. Craving companionship, they become mired in loneliness. Seeking assurance, they are riddled by self-doubt. Yearning for security, they are wracked by anxiety. People are weary, marooned in darkness with little real contentment, and yet they trudge onward seeking solace in anything that might distract them from their empty lives- a screen, a beer, a dalliance... It is to see what society lacks, a love without which souls wither and die, a love that all people (whether they know it or not) passionately crave. It is the love found exclusively in the local church."