It’s so easy to take up the promises of Scripture and read them through the lenses of our own hopes and dreams.  This was the very trouble with the Jewish generation that encountered Jesus, and it remains the same for us.  In his new book, Wright captures this so well: This is the point at […]

Over the past week or two, I’ve been thinking through Kevin DeYoung’s and Greg Gilbert’s book, What Is the Mission of the Church?  I’m not so much reviewing it as engaging it in conversation, working through some of the Scriptures they handle in canonical order.  Joel Willitts has also been engaging the book critically at […]

  Father, we praise you for the love you have shown to us in Jesus.  We praise you that you have set your love upon us from all eternity.  You plotted and planned to pursue and to rescue us.  When we were dead in transgressions and sins, you gave us life.  When we loved our […]

I’ve been engaging with the work of Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church?  They are concerned that some missional writers have been identifying humanity too closely with the rest of God’s creation (p. 70).  They emphasize, on the other hand, the distinction between humanity and the rest of creation […]

Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert argue for a narrowly focused vision of the church in their book, What Is the Mission of the Church?  They claim that the people of God are called to gather for worship and disciple-making.  The church is not an agency of doing good in the world.  Such activity is commendable […]

It seems to me that both “missional” Christians and the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” folks envision God on a mission.  They just configure that mission differently, and the result is two different conceptions of the church and the church’s mission. DeYoung and Gilbert offer a narrative reading of Scripture in their third chapter.  They portray […]

I mentioned last week that I’m engaging Kevin DeYoung’s and Greg Gilbert’s book, What Is the Mission of the Church?  I’m sort of working in canonical order, starting with their handling of the beginning of the biblical narrative. There is a second way in which DeYoung’s and Gilbert’s handling of Genesis 1-2 is problematic.  They […]

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I occasionally opened our Midtown services with a welcome that reminded us of our identity as God’s gathered people.  Here’s another: Welcome, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sent into an enslaved world, crucified, and raised to life by God and seated as King of […]

Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert build their case from a range of biblical texts in What Is the Mission of the Church?  In engaging their work, I’ll start with how they portray the beginning of all things—the creation account and God’s intentions for humanity. I find their treatment of the character of creation problematic in […]

In this post I will briefly sketch the overall purpose of What Is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert.  In subsequent posts I will engage the biblical, theological, and ideological arguments that support their larger intention. DeYoung and Gilbert write to bring clarity to the discussion regarding the purpose of […]