Oct
25
2011
Tim Keller on the Mission of the Church
Two interesting footnotes from Tim Keller’s Generous Justice:
Is the mission of the church only to preach the Word—evangelizing an making disciples—or it is also (or mainly) to do justice? . . .
I am of the opinion that [Abraham] Kuyper is right: it is best to speak of the “mission of the church,” strictly conceived, as being the proclamation of the Word.
More broadly conceived, it is the work of Christians in the world to minister in word and deed and to gather together to do justice.
And:
Strange ["Evangelical Public Theology"---now see "Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology"], Carson [Christ and Culture Revisited], and Hunter [To Change the World] all recommend a chastened approach that engages culture but without the triumphalism of transformationism.
All of them also insist that the priority of the institutional church must be to preach the Word, rather than to “change culture.”
Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Dutton, 2010), 216 n. 128; 223 n. 153.