(continued from Gospel and Method, Part 1)

In Gospel and Method Part 1, we exposed an unhealthy preoccupation with methods in church growth debates. To a degree, this debate ignores what is most critical in church planting: our understanding, articulation, and embodiment of the historic gospel of Jesus Christ. Varieties of methods, from organic house church to attractional megachurch, have been used by God to advance the gospel. But what kind of gospel are we advancing?

The 50/50 Gospel

In his newest book, Christless Christianity, Michael Horton argues that a semi-pelagian understanding of the gospel plagues the American church. Is it fair, however, to lay our rampant nominalism at the feet of Pelagius? After all, most so-called “semi-pelagian” churches are neither aware of nor lay claim to Pelagian doctrine (heresy). Perhaps it is overreaching to frame the Christless Christianity of America with a 6th-century theology? Regardless, Horton has placed his finger on the near lifeless pulse of the American gospel.

He points out that American Protestantism has come to view grace as “divine assistance for the process of moral transformation rather than as a one-sided divine rescue.” That gospel operates on what we’ll call a 50/50 principle. This 50/50 gospel offers salvation via a blend of fifty percent grace and fifty percent good behavior. The cross is no longer expiation of sin but an example of how to live sacrificially. People are good enough to choose Christ but they simply need to be reminded of how good a choice he is. Broken marriages, patterns of sexual sin, deep-seated anger, and rampant debt are primarily the product of our failure to behave like Jesus.

Enter the church. The church can remind us, exhort us, even train us to be like Jesus, to make good moral decisions, not bad ones. According to the 50/50 gospel, we need the grace of God’s example and a faithful commitment to be on our best behavior. This is the 50/50 gospel, and it is anathema.

50/50 Concoctions

Are our methods entirely untethered from the gospel? Are there certain, more biblically faithful understandings of the gospel that will produce certain, more theologically faithful churches? How does the 50/50 gospel affect church growth and methodology? Consider the impact of such a gospel. If all we need Jesus for is bygone salvation and an ever-present example, we reduce the church to a halfway house between our moral failures and our moral successes. We rehabilitate our decision-making under the faithful instruction of a faithless institution. Jesus need not die and certainly not rise from the dead!

But the 50/50 gospel is sometimes mixed differently. Some methods use a 50% mission, 50% grace concoction. We need the grace of Jesus’ example and the goal of Jesus’ mission. In this concoction, churches serve as an inspiring non-profit, moving us from missional failure to missional success. We soften our social consciences under the weight of a missional institution.

Alternatively, we may pick the 50% community, 50% grace combo. We need the grace of God to become “like the early church,” to have real community, to jettison our individualism in order to truly become “the church.” The gospel becomes a quick fix for our lack of community.

100 Percent Gospel

Each concoction of the 50/50 gospel is actually quite dangerous. They all produce churches that attract people to morality messages, missional activities, and communal experiences. The goal of the church is reduced to converting people to a better way of living, not to a better God to be believing.

What we need is a gospel that is 100 percent grace, the work of the Spirit to violate our dulled taste for what it good, true, and beautiful and to get us drunk on God. We need more than changed behaviors—we need changed hearts, new affections, from which a life of worship flows. We need the new covenant in Christ’s blood. What America needs is churches that are more concerned about pointing us to the multi-faceted splendor and staggering lordship of Jesus Christ than innovative ways we can be the church through community or mission. What we need is 100% gospel.

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Method: Attractional or Organic?

Dan Kimball of Vintage Faith Church and They Like Jesus But Not the Church fame recently resurfaced the attractional-versus-incarnational debate in an article called “Missional Misgivings.” In this article, he suggests that very few missional churches are actually growing or reaching the lost, and that what we need is more attractional megachurches. Neil Cole, of Organic Church fame, responded by arguing that smaller organic churches avoid the consumerism of larger churches, while also fostering growth by multiplication, not addition.

In a blog response to Kimball, Cole writes, “A more recent study of churches in America, conducted by Ed Stetzer and LifeWay Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more” (emphasis added). The debate between Cole and Kimball, between attractional and organic, is largely a debate over method. What method should we use when planting and leading churches? Do methods matter? Does the gospel allow for all kinds of methods, or does it prohibit some? Should we be more concerned with debating the gospel or our methods? This series of posts will try to answer some of these questions. What is the role of method in the gospel?

Context is King

If we have learned anything from the history of missions, surely it is that God uses a variety of methods to bring in the lost sheep of his kingdom. Jesus himself attracted large crowds through preaching and feeding multitudes. Jesus told organic, mustard seed parables about the growth of the kingdom of God. He spent time with a few disciples and with crowds of thousands. What about the church? Consider the church beyond America. Small house churches are immensely effective in China, and large attractional churches are incredibly effective in South Korea, both reaching hundreds of thousands of people. It would seem that, when it comes to methods, context is king. Communist China calls for house churches; Christianized South Korea calls for big churches. This is a simplification, but the point remains that context is king—unless your contextualization compromises gospel integrity, in which case it is no longer contextualization but syncretism. But how do we discern between church methods that are syncretistic and methods that are contextualized? We must have a clear understanding of the gospel.

Gospel Debate

Perhaps we need to be debating the strength of the gospel that is being preached, taught, shared, and shown in our churches. Are we incarnating and attracting people to a diluted gospel or a strong gospel? Are we incarnating kitsch gospel or kerygmatic gospel? In the end, what are we calling people to? Is our gospel both missional and communal or inward and individualistic? If it’s the latter, then something is wrong with our gospel. What would happen if we stopped debating methods and started debating gospel—winsomely and charitably? In our next post, we will attempt to refine the debate over methods by refocusing debate onto the gospel.