I Read It So You Don’t Have To: A Review of DeYoung & Gilbert’s What Is the Mission of the Church? | Southern Nation News Test Bed

01 September 2017

I Read It So You Don’t Have To: A Review of DeYoung & Gilbert’s What Is the Mission of the Church?

Let the reader keep in mind, this book was met with rave reviews, a fact as important as anything written in it. D. A. Carson went so far as to pronounce it ‘the best’ book on the subject by way of ‘sensible definitions, clear thinking, readable writing, and ability to handle the Bible.’ And Horton declares it ‘the kind of biblical sanity we need at this moment.’

To which I will add, this book is trash. Utter trash. And the reviewers praising it to the skies? Madmen.

In chapter 1 we are told that in order to define the mission of the church, we must first acknowledge it as a “deceptively complex and potentially divisive” (p. 16) question. So much so that many have followed David Bosch’s conclusion: ‘Ultimately, mission remains undefinable.” (p. 19) To which the authors reply with the rhetorical question, “What was his [Jesus’s] mission, anyway?” And when I call it rhetorical, I mean they did not answer it. It was a stand-alone statement, its own conclusion. In context of Bosch’s agnostic statement, they imply Christ’s mission may be unknowable.

But they tell us these subjects somehow immediately beg the question, “What should be the

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(The opinions in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Southern Nation News or SN.O.)