by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, Crossway, 2011. 288 pp. (using Scribd app.)

DeYoung and Gilbert have embarked on a journey that could be considered fraught with peril. They have attempted to not only define what the church’s mission is, but to explore at length how that mission plays out in the everyday life of the broader church, and in some sense, the individual believer’s as well. These topics are delicate enough in some circles, but the authors forge onward by specifically focusing on social justice. An interesting dynamic is that DeYoung is a RCA minister and teacher, while Gilbert is a Southern Baptist pastor. 

The book begins with this quote “if you’ve been involved in a church, you’ve probably wondered from time to time, ‘What are we trying to accomplish anyway?’”(15) . The authors have done their best to answer this under three major headings; understanding our mission (approx. 66 pages), understanding our categories (approx. 136 pages), and understanding what we do and why we do it (approx. 44 pages). You can see what information the authors consider the most pertinent; they spent well over half the book on the center section, which includes themes such as a “narrow” or “broad” view of the Gospel, the kingdom, social justice, and shalom. To further prove their point, they turn our attention to the book of Amos. “Amos 5 reaffirms what we’ve seen in the previous Old Testament passages. God hates injustice. But injustice must be defined on the Bible’s terms, not ours. Injustice implies a corrupted judicial system, an arbitrary legal code, and outright cruelty to the poor.” (176). They lean heavily on Biblical theology throughout their book, perhaps a little too much, considering this is not proposed as a Biblical theology text. They have closely compared the idea of the current mission of the church with the idea of kingdom in the Bible. This leads them to make connections with and ultimately define what is the Gospel in two very different ways.  One quite broad: showing the effects of the Gospel, and the other more narrowly focused on the actual good news of the Gospel. Although all true believers should be able to agree on what the Gospel is, as laid forth in 1 Corinthians 15, it is somewhat surprising that these authors coming from different backgrounds would co-author a book and include a lengthy section on the kingdom, which can be a point of contention between these two denominations. 

I really appreciated their point that the “mission” of the church can not be as broad as “loving your neighbor” or simply doing good. “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 and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father.” (268) I also agree that we as Christians are not building God’s kingdom. They point out that Biblically “verbs associated with the kingdom are almost always passive (enter, receive, inherit) (21). However, their hope that these distinctions do not discourage believers from doing good works in a visible way is a point well taken. They posit: “If we want to see our brothers and sisters do more for the poor and the afflicted, we’ll go farther and be on safer ground if we use grace as our motivating principle instead of guilt.” (197). I highly recommend this book to every believer in order to more fully understand the reason we, as the church, have been put here by God on the earth. 

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