HeartCry on Gospel Reductionism: The Greatest Danger in Missions
image obtained from http://vimeo.com/heartcrymedia
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is so important that the Apostle Paul wrote, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached ot you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1.8-9, ESV). In biblical terms – to boil it down – that’s about as serious a thing as the Apostle could have said!
Only one Gospel has been given for us to either believe (and be saved) or disbelieve (and remain under God’s wrath), because there is only One Name under heaven by which we must be saved: Jesus Christ (Acts 4.12)! Unfortunately, it becomes so easy to assume the Gospel, because we’ve heard it so many times. It becomes “routine,” and therefore it becomes ignored, overlooked, and minimized in favor of “deeper things.”
But there are no deeper things, because – according to God – we never get past the Gospel! Listen to what God says through the pen of the Apostle once again: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to teh word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15.1-4, ESV). That is the Gospel, and it has been said that the key to not overlooking or minimizing it is to “preach it to yourself every day.” (One of my favorite ways to do that, by the way, is revisiting the video I have posted on the sidebar, which you can also view here: Life in 6 Words: G.O.S.P.E.L.)
The work of missions is the work of the Gospel. In fact, without the Gospel, there is no missions. But the scary thing is that today the Gospel is at risk in missions! Pastor Paul Washer, long-time missionary and founder of Heartcry Missionary Society, shared in the most recent edition of Heartcry Magazine a quote from Walter Chantry’s book, Today’s Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic? May it encourage you to stay the course of the true Gospel:
“Those who believe in God’s Word have been grasping at the same superficial solutions that liberalism has adopted. Relevance, respectability (whether intellectual or social), and especially unity have become the aims of God’s people with the hope that these will revitalize a weakened church. ‘If only all Bible-believing people join together, the world will sit up and listen,’ thinks the church. Let’s merge our mission boards to pool our funds and our personnel. Let’s join giant evangelistic projects. If every evangelical joins in a common organization, we can have greater depth of evangelism. Thus organizational unity becomes the aim of gospel churches. Having accepted the theory that unity is all-important for world evangelism, both the church and the individual must lower their estimate of the value of truth. In a large congress on evangelism we could not insist on a truth of God’s Word that would offend any brother evangelical. Thus we must find the lowest common denominator to which all born-again Christians hold. The rest of the Bible will be labeled ‘unessential’ for missions. After all, unity (among Christians) is more essential than doctrinal preciseness. It is just for this reason that mission societies have been unwilling carefully to examine the root problem in preaching. Mission boards are hesitant to answer the question, ‘What is the gospel?’ Thoroughly to answer that would condemn what many of their own missionaries preach. It would destroy the mission society, which is a federation of churches who have differing answers to that question. To adopt the position of one church would be to lose the support of five others. The whole system built on unity and generality would crumble. The local church may not get too specific about truth either. It may affect its harmony with the denomination or association. To define the gospel carefully will bring conflict with the organizations working with teenagers. It will prompt irritating problems with mission boards and embarrassing disagreement with missionaries supported for years. It may condemn the whole Sunday School programme. Giving too much attention to the content of the Gospel will mean friction with other evangelicals. And unity is the key to success.”
written for Sacred Metamorphosis on January 1, 2012
