Where did all the “gospel-centered” folks go?
I recently read something that made me pause.
Jared C. Wilson (pastor and author) wrote:
“So many previously ‘gospel-centered’ guys have moved on from the gospel in the pursuit of relevance and attention. This pursuit never ends, as cultural relevance is always changing. Stick with the gospel. It is always relevant, even when its ‘out of season’.”
This gave me pause because it put words into a trend I’ve seen and felt over the last 5 years.
You might be wondering what I mean by “gospel-centered.” For our purposes, I understand gospel-centered to mean:
Interpretively of the Bible - Seeing Jesus and the message of the gospel as the key storyline of the Scriptures.
Motivationally for the Christian - The gospel as the growth source of the Christian and not just the conversion gates one passes to escape hell.
Holistically Informing - The core guiding worldview lens one sees all of life.
According to a brief, recent history on "gospel centeredness,' this was the rage and buzzword amongst many churches, networks, and movements in the United States.
I experienced this personally.
It wasn’t that long ago when I felt like I needed to look over my shoulders before my fellow Reformed pastor friends as to whether my sermons were “gospel-centered enough.” I remember having many conversations about the need to hold to a redemptive-historical hermeneutic. I heard so many pastors (local and international) talk about the dangers of legalism, not forming people into works-based righteousness, and how the gospel fuels holiness the way God intends.
But nowadays, I just don’t see or hear as much passion about the gospel. Instead, I see and hear a lot of passion about the implications of the gospel or how the gospel should impact various aspects of our lives as disciples (i.e. how a Christian should engage with politics and issues of justice or set good spiritual practices of rest and digital detox).
Don’t get me wrong, these are incredibly important! To simply “preach the gospel” without getting to the implications of the gospel is unfaithful to the trajectory of the gospel itself. We preach both justification and justice (to use the language of Tim Keller).
Gospel implications are also incredibly relevant. Our society has accelerated in the last few years and so to not speak on things the people of our congregations feel would be unwise and unhelpful. We have to adapt and adjust. I get that.
But I can’t help but wonder: Isn't this the very thinking that brought the gospel-centered movement to relevance and prominence in the first place?
Isn’t this how moralistic preaching that emphasized holiness came to be? Isn’t this how we got to works-based discipleship models of Bible reading, prayer, and true love waits that we critique today?
To have passion for the implications of the gospel without the gospel as the loudest trumpet, aren’t we rinsing and repeating a cycle merely cloaked differently?
Maybe I’m off base here but I can't help but wonder:
Where did all the gospel-centered folks go?
Conclusion
If you’re at a church where your pastor’s greatest joy and passion is the gospel (and has been so for the last few years), you’re lucky to be at a church with deeply embedded core convictions.
If you’re at a church where your pastor’s preaching emphasis has shifted over from the gospel to the implications of the gospel, you don’t have to sound an alarm. It doesn’t mean your pastor has compromised. But you can pray your pastor never loses the wonder of the cross.
If you're a pastor, I want to encourage you to make clear for your people what is at the joyful center of your church, namely the gospel. Yes, let’s hit the implications of the gospel. But may it ever be so clear to our people how the utmost important gospel gives relevance to those things. I leave you with D.A Carson’s impactful words:
If I have learned anything in 35 or 40 years of teaching, it is that students don’t learn everything I teach them. What they learn is what I am excited about, the kinds of things I emphasize again and again and again and again. That had better be the gospel.
If the gospel—even when you are orthodox—becomes something which you primarily assume, but what you are excited about is what you are doing in some sort of social reconstruction, you will be teaching the people that you influence that the gospel really isn’t all that important. You won’t be saying that—you won’t even mean that—but that’s what you will be teaching. And then you are only half a generation away from losing the gospel.
Make sure that in your own practice and excitement, what you talk about, what you think about, what you pray over, what you exude confidence over, joy over, what you are enthusiastic about is Jesus, the gospel, the cross. And out of that framework, by all means, let the transformed life flow.
