The Gospel As Center

The Gospel Coalition Booklets

by D.A. Carson (Editor), Timothy J. Keller (Editor)

The church is reeling because of the relativistic mindset of our world. Up until a generation ago, most adults had similar moral intuitions whether they were believers or not, and the core of protestant orthodoxy was still intact. Yet, in the wake of postmodernity and secularism, all that has changed.

Convinced that gospel-centered ministry is utterly imperative for such a time as this, contributors D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, Kevin DeYoung, Philip Ryken, Bryan Chapell, Thabiti Anyabwile, Richard Phillips, Sam Storms, and others defend the gospel and traditional doctrines.

To strengthen the center of confessional evangelicalism, this volume collects the 14 booklets in the Gospel Coalition Booklet series. In addition, this volume includes a preface, the Gospel Coalition’s foundational documents, and indexes. The editors and contributors represent a wide range of denominations and are united not only by belief in the biblical gospel, but also by the conviction that ministry today must be increasingly Gospel centered.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Christianity, Nonfiction, Church, Christian Non Fiction, Leadership

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 7, 2012

About the author

Donald A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He has been at Trinity since 1978. Carson came to Trinity from the faculty of Northwest Baptist Theological Seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he also served for two years as academic dean. He has served as assistant pastor and pastor and has done itinerant ministry in Canada and the United Kingdom. Carson received the Bachelor of Science in chemistry from McGill University, the Master of Divinity from Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto, and the Doctor of Philosophy in New Testament from the University of Cambridge. Carson is an active guest lecturer in academic and church settings around the world. He has written or edited about sixty books. He is a founding member and currently president of The Gospel Coalition. Carson and his wife, Joy, reside in Libertyville, Illinois. They have two adult children.

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was sometimes a bit hard to understand, but always interesting and enriching to think about.

[David J. Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays written by Gospel Coalition leaders. There is lots of great content here, but a few spots that were less than profound and of little help. The good content makes it well worth the read. Below is the list of chapters I found most helpful:

1. Gospel-Centered Ministry (Carson, Keller)
2. Can We Know the Truth? (Richard Phillips)
3. The Gospel and Scripture (Mike Bullmore)
6. The Plan (Collin Smith)
7. What is the Gospel? (Bryan Chapell)
8. Christ's Redemption (Sandy Wilson)
9. Justification (Phil Ryken)

[Brittany Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The ministry we have outlined is relatively rare. There are many seeker-driven churches that help many people find Christ. There are many churches seeking to engage the culture through political activism. There is a fast-growing charismatic movement with emphasis on glorious, passionate, corporate worship. There are many congregations with strong concern for doctrinal rigor and purity and who work very hard to keep themselves separate from the world. There are many churches with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized. We do not, however, see enough individual churches that embody the full, integrative gospel balance we have outlined here... we see no broad movement yet of this gospel-centered ministry."

Edited by D.A. Carson and Timothy Keller and each chapter written by a different contributor, The Gospel-Centered Church is a fleshing out of the Foundation Statements created for/by The Gospel Coalition (a fellowship of churches and Christians from many different denominations). They begin the book by giving some background to The Gospel Coalition and their purpose. The board of leaders recognized the shift in the American church in relation to culture- some churches reengineering their 'gospel' message to fit in better with the culture, others defiantly building higher walls apart from culture. TGC desires to build up the church and encourage her to engage and connect with the current culture without compromising the explicit truths of Scripture or changing the gospel message to be 'less offensive.'

Therefore, this book is firstly, a resource for church leaders to help shape their ministries to be gospel-centered, and secondly, an explanation for laypeople about some of the primary doctrines of the gospel and how it relates to our culture. Some of the topics include: truth and Scripture, creation, sin/fall, redemption, justification, Holy Spirit, God's kingdom, the sacraments, and final restoration. They mentioned that a lot of churches have adopted TGC's doctrinal statements as their own.

Having grown up in the evangelical church, there wasn't a lot of new material for me or information that I disagreed with. If you're well-versed in theology, this probably won't be earth-shattering and could even be a little tedious reading, but if you've never really learned the 'why' behind a lot of the church doctrines, this would be highly beneficial for you. Each chapter is full of Scripture and will plainly guide you through each topic- the gospel and church doctrine are not just traditions we blindly follow for no reason. They are also transparent about aspects of each topic that even the writers may disagree on and explain the different views (i.e. baptism or the transmission of Adam's original sin to all other humans), always noting the major things they still hold in common.

A couple areas I wish would have been a little different were the parts regarding sin and human depravity. The origin of sin/evil is one of the hardest things to interpret or understand and I wish they would have spent more time discussing that complicated and controversial doctrine. Human depravity is also an oft-argued aspect of the gospel and I found that chapter a little too academic for me. I think for a lot of people it would become a chapter people skip because it takes a lot of focus to grasp what they're talking about. I found myself getting to the end of the page and realizing I was reading without really comprehending and had to reread a lot of passages.

Something I really appreciate about TGC is that they don't backdown when facing the loud voices of postmodernism that question morality and authority. We can't be weak when it comes to truth, even if it's unpopular. We have to let God and Scripture be our authority, not the culture or our feelings.

As they noted: "Love divorced from truth is not love, and truth divorced from love is not truth."

I think this book would be a valuable book to own, if even to just use it as a resource. Since each chapter is separate, you could easily read whatever topic you're curious about in whatever order or in several different sittings. The appendix are the printed Gospel Coalition's Foundation Documents for reference as well.

There is a ton of content in this book so to provide quotes on each topic would become too much for this review, but here are some quotes to give you a taste of what you'll read:

"Here’s our position as Christians: we live in a Christ-rejecting world with all its sin and death, but we belong to a Christ-exalting family with all its life and joy. We experience both the pain of this fallen world and the hope of all who are in Christ at the same time."

"God is much more concerned to make our eternal state secure than to make our temporal existence easy."

"God does not overlook the anger we unleash, the abuse we inflict, the suffering we disregard, the injustice we ignore. A holy God cannot simply hide his eyes or cover his ears to such sin. Its victims scream for justice, and Gods compassion provides what his righteousness requires through Jesus’ sacrifice. Since the Son of God had no sin, his willingness to suffer on a cross and accept the penalty we deserve is far beyond any recompense that humanity could provide. Christ’s righteousness so overbalanced our unrighteousness that his sacrifice is sufficient to compensate for the sin of the entire world and of all ages (Rom 5:15-19; Heb 9:26-28; 1 Pt 3:18; Titus 2:11-14)"

"God is not like the government, responding to unforeseen circumstances and making adjustments for unintended consequences...But God is sovereign. He fulfills his own plan in his own time by his own power, and no one can stop him. God knows exactly what he is doing at every point in history in every nation of the world and through every event in your life. This should be a great comfort to you... You can have confidence in knowing that the events of your life are not spinning out of control or settles by random chance but that they are in the hands of God, who plans for you in love. Christians find joy in knowing that Gods plan will lead to the greatest possible display of his glory and the greatest possible joy for his people."

"If there were some other way to receive eternal life, God would be guilty of the most massive violation of justice in the history of the cosmos... If there were some other way for people to be saved from their sinful plight, if God had a Plan B that worked equally well as “the Jesus way,” then one would have to conclude that the death of Jesus Christ was not really necessary for the salvation of sinners."

"...humans have refused to honor God as king, which explains the rising earthly kingdoms filled with evil opposition to God."

"Christians refuse to believe that there are only two options in engaging our culture: either to assimilate or to separate, to capitulate or to evade, or to over-contextualize or to under-adapt. Jeremiah 29 encourages Gods people not to accommodate the foreign culture but to move in and get involved in the life of the city economically and culturally. The prophet is asking the people to be spiritually bicultural. They are being called neither to worship the city nor to hate the culture, but to love the city."

"Kingdom- driven alternative communities will have a healthy balance between 'theologically substantial preaching, dynamic evangelism and apologetics, and church growth' and planting of churches that will 'emphasize repentance, personal renewal, and holiness of life' and winsome 'engagement with the social structures of ordinary people, and cultural engagement with art, business, scholarship, and government.' "

"The local church and its love represent the only sure antidote to a post modern world mired in sin and despair. People today are trying to put 1 foot in front of the other and sustain a meaningful existence but Are consistently sinking into the quicksand of uncertainty and confusion. Looking for friendships, they absorb the wounds of the soul. Craving companionship, they become mired in loneliness. Seeking assurance, they are riddled by self-doubt. Yearning for security, they are wracked by anxiety. People are weary, marooned in darkness with little real contentment, and yet they trudge onward seeking solace in anything that might distract them from their empty lives- a screen, a beer, a dalliance... It is to see what society lacks, a love without which souls wither and die, a love that all people (whether they know it or not) passionately crave. It is the love found exclusively in the local church."

See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!

[Colin Fast · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid resource for walking through some key aspects of evangelical theology. Multiple authors perspectives make for diverse writing styles; some chapters were more readable than others.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This serves as a great but rigorous primer for a book on systematic theology for me. It was full of knowledge and anecdotes.

[Elienai Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um bom resumo das principais doutrinas relacionadas ao evangelho, alguns capítulos melhor tratados que outros, mas no geral, bom desenvolvimento.

[Gareth Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful collection of essays running through key Christian truths.

[Jeanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gospel As Center is a book for ministry leaders and lay people. As the title suggest it will renew your faith and have you take a good look at ministry practices. It mentions the Gospel Coalition which you can get more information by going to www.thegospelcoalition.org. It is a great resource for me to receive sound teaching in troubling times. The book was written by contributors of the Gospel Coalition and basically goes over the doctrine statement. I have found that most churches have a doctrine statement however, many of their members do not understand or they may not understand the focus of the churchs' mission due to their doctrine statement. This read covers many doctrine issues and our fight for the truth. It does claim rightfully so that none of us will know the complete truth but the Lord does reveal in his word truth that we can know and knowledge of him that we can live out so others may know him as well. What I found interesting that truth is authoriative. Is that why the church may be suffering and will suffer greatly in the future? The crisis of truth in our postmodern times: our society dogmatically rejects truth in theory but cannot live that way in practice. (page 28). Reading the word of course is way for us to know our King and Lord, however, if we are going to read the bible rightly , we must see it in all its parts as it relates to Christ. How it relates to our hearts set against God, truth, his authority and then you begin to see our problem of sin. This book offers truth, the gospel, redemption and with redemption hope!

[Markevans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good, straightforward summary of Christian doctrine in short, readable chapters. It displays the wonderful balance of taking a convicted, confessional, evangelical stance on all the ever-so-controversial core Christian (protestant) beliefs like the exclusivity of Christ, justification by faith, the eternal torment of hell, and the necessity of proclaiming the message of salvation, while it still maintains the charitable, ecumenical spirit that we have all come to love in Carson, Keller, and the Gospel Coalition crew. On one hand, this book doesn't contribute a lot in terms of responding to current trends in the culture and the church per se - it is simply recovering and championing the centrality of the gospel and those core doctrines, which, when denied, have a direct consequence on how we understand that gospel. On the other hand, that alone is totally relevant, as it will always be, to current trends in our culture and church! For anyone who desires to read some doctrine or teach a short class but who lacks the time/energy to work through something like Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, this would be a great place to start.

[Aden · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book that covers the basics of Christianity. The best chapter is the first by Timothy Keller and D.A. Carson, but the rest can tend to be rather dry.

[Bill Forgeard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in anticipation of the launch of the Gospel Coalition Australia (http://australia.thegospelcoalition.org). The real gold is in the Appendix, which contains the foundational documents of The Gospel Coalition -- the Confessional Statement and Theological Vision of Ministry (available here: http://australia.thegospelcoalition.o...). These documents were substantially authored by D. A. Carson and Tim Keller, shaped by rigorous discussion with the 40 original council members of TGC US. They display a fantastic blend of theological clarity and cultural awareness, with the gospel as the central point of reference for every issue. The 14 chapters of the book are longer discussions of the key issues from these foundational documents. For anyone new to this way of thinking about theology and ministry these are helpful guides, but otherwise they are not particularly noteworthy.

[Dottie Parish · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gospel as Center, edited by D.A. Carson & Timothy Keller, features chapters by influential Christian leaders from a variety of denominations. Their purpose is to clarify, unify and strengthen the gospel message in the church today. Their hope is that this will stem the tide of cultural in roads into our faith and practice. It's an excellent resource book for concerned Christians.

[David Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read with great explanations of the tennets of our faith which must be held in common. An effort to explain fairly different views on baptism and the sacraments as they relate to the fundamentals of the gospel. Whether a laymen, clergy, or Christian educator this needs to be read and considered as you construct your theology.

[JJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me some months (15 or so) to finish this book. That was no problem, though, because the chapters can be read independently.
Some chapters are a bit dry, but all chapters provide a great introduction to the foundational topics of christian (reformed) faith.

[Bauer Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each chapter is as mini-book in itself: thematic, enjoyable, clear.

[Mark-robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good summary of many of the key theological and ministry related issues in Christianity.

[Justin D. Braun · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://justinbraun.blogspot.com

[Benjamin]

Good book, but not suited to read multiple chapters at a time per se. I look forward to going back and rereading certain individual chapters again and again!