Andrew Ryland on Driscoll and Keller on Missional Churches 2

Andrew Ryland, ‘Gospel, Church and Culture: The Vision for Missional Churches being Modelled by Driscoll and Keller and Their Networks’ (2007).

See here for an introduction to this paper outlining the relationship between…

• Gospel
• Culture, and
• Church

Ryland goes first to Mark Driscoll:

‘Reformission begins with a simple return to Jesus, who by grace saves us and sends us into mission. Jesus has called us to (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbor), and (3) the church (loving our brother). But… various Christian traditions are faithful on only one or two of these counts. When we fail to love our Lord, neighbor, and brother simultaneously, we bury our mission in one of three holes’ (Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004], 20).

In terms of the relationship between the three elements, Driscoll comes up with the following equations:

Gospel + Culture – Church = Parachurch

Culture + Church – Gospel = Liberalism

Church + Gospel – Culture = Fundamentalism

• Parachurch – where Christians bypass the church and try to take the gospel directly to culture.

• Liberalism – where the desire to enculturate the gospel (using the language of therapy or success or felt needs) leads to compromise or abandonment of the gospel.

• Fundamentalism – where the church withdraws from culture, privatises faith, and reduces salvation to a personal transaction with God.

The ‘liberalism’ and ‘fundamentalism’ option can also be understood in terms of syncretism and sectarianism…

• Avoiding syncretism – the blending together of different philosophies, and the need to avoid being shaped by the culture.

• Avoiding sectarianism – seeing ourselves as an exclusive and superior group.

According to Ryland, both Keller and Driscoll adopt the label ‘missional’ to differentiate themselves from others who ‘do evangelism’ as one of their activities. A missional church is one where worship, discipleship, fellowship, and service is carried out in the light of the post-Christendom context.

In summary:

‘God’s church should embody his mission fully.

That means churches should aim to be more missional than parachurch agencies, more culturally engaged than liberal churches, and more gospel-shaped… than fundamentalist churches.

Such churches will be distinctively God’s people without being fundamentalist; they will be lovingly engaged in wider society without being liberal in theology. Such churches will be counter-cultural without being sectarian; they will be credible without being syncretistic.’