Tim Gombis on What is the Mission of the Church?

Last updated on: October 22, 2011 at 8:06 am by Joel Willitts

Tim Gombis on What is the Mission of the Church? 2011-10-22T08:06:27-04:00 Joel Willitts

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Tim Gombis over at his blog Faith Improvised is also writing a series of posts critically engaging Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book What Is the Mission of the Church?. In his third post, Tim reflects on the DeYoung and Gilbert’s dichotomy between worship (which they think is the mission of the church) and the creation mandate to steward God’s creation. Tim notes that Gen 1-2 speaks of the Garden of Eden in Temple terms and therefore all the work in the Temple of creation is rightly understood as worship. Tim explains:

Humanity’s furthering of shalom and their management of creation’s flourishing constituted exactly and precisely their worship of the Creator God. It was the means whereby they enjoyed being all God designed them to be in God’s good world. God delighted in their filling out what it meant to be human and enjoyed it all along with them.

Tim sees DeYoung and Gilbert setting “discipleship over against good deeds. They set worship over against seeking the flourishing of creation”.

Tim writes further of their view:

We’ll address the important question of whether God is recovering what was lost at the fall, or if he sets aside humanity’s original design and pursues something else. DeYoung and Gilbert indicate that salvation involves the latter. Since God’s design has gone wrong, the tasks to which God committed humanity are no longer our responsibility. They claim that Christ has fulfilled Adam and Eve’s commission (p. 211), and indicate that after the consummation of God’s saving purposes humanity will once again take up its original task (p. 213). For now, however, human flourishing is a distraction from the church’s central task. The Christian church should focus on worship and making disciples. The flourishing of creation is not our responsibility.

How should we define the worship that the church is to preform; does it include tasks that contribute to human flourishing?

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