I am reading ”Proclaiming a Cross-centered Theology”, the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference, in a book!
A great book! As you can see in this short excerpt from page 105, Mark Dever on the ”Social Gospel”:
”May the local church be involved in good works? Yes, but it should be as a reflection of and an attraction to this gospel of Jesus Christ. If alleviating material poverty is taken as a responsibility of the congregation because doing so is part of the gospel, then many younger Christians may choose to serve there and not in evangelism. This could well be the choice of less mature Christians, more nominal Christians, those who would rather do things that the world around them recognizes and values instead of the evangelism that the world rejects and scorns. Your congregation may well continue to do both for a season, but I fear that those who follow you will not. Such a social gospel will slowly but surely lose its supernatural awkward corners and be smoothed to be acceptable to sinners all around. It’s the story of countless churches in our own land. Walter Rauschenbsch and his early twentieth-century followers are instructive for us here. Evangelism will never be appreciated by the world. It is our special task, pastors, to protect the priority of evangelism.”
I love that!
Here, if you are still wondering who Walter Rauschenbsch is…
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