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Churches driven by a Center Church theological vision will pursue an integrative, balanced ministry. Because the gospel not only converts nonbelievers but also builds up believers, the church should not have to choose evangelism over discipleship. Because the gospel is presented to the world not only through word but also through deed and community, we should not choose between teaching and carrying out practical ministry to address people’s needs. Because the gospel renews not only individuals but also communities and culture, the church should disciple its people to seek personal conversion, deep Christian community, social justice, and cultural renewal in the city. These ministry areas should not be seen as independent or optional but as interdependent and fully biblical.
The reality is that very few churches furnish all of these “ministry fronts” with balanced resources and attention. Many churches are committed to evangelism, church growth, and church planting. Some put all the stress on fellowship and community. Others are radically committed to the poor and issues of social justice. Still others make much of the importance of culture and the arts. But seldom are these traits combined. Indeed, it is normal to find the leaders of these various ministries resisting or even resenting the other ministry emphases. Those working with the poor think “integrating faith and work” is elitist. Those stressing community, discipleship, and holiness often think that emphasizing church growth produces spiritual shallowness.
But engaging on all of these fronts is required by the nature of the gospel. The experience of grace inspires evangelism as well as intimate, glorious worship of the God who saved us. It creates the new transparency and openness that make deep fellowship possible. The grace orientation of the gospel humbles us and gives us a new passion for justice. And the nature of the gospel helps us discern idolatry in ourselves and in our culture that distorts the way we do our work and live our lives in society.
What’s more, engaging on all these fronts is required by the nature of our culture. Ministry in which Christians sacrificially serve the common good of the city is not only biblical but a necessary context for any convincing evangelistic call to believe in Jesus. After all, why should the people of the city listen to us if we are perceived to be out simply to increase the size and power of our own tribe? Or consider cultural engagement. In a previous chapter we said that culture cannot be changed simply through people trying to integrate their faith with their work or simply through lots of conversions. It must be both. There must be an increasing number of Christians who are shaped by the gospel through a deep experience of Christian community and who are known for their commitment to the poor. It is only as we do all of these ministries at once that any of them will be most effective. Success on any one front depends on success in the other fronts of ministry. The truth is that if we don’t make a strong effort to do all of these in some way at once, we won’t actually do any of them well at all. In other words, Center Church ministry must be integrative.
Only if we produce thousands of new church communities that regularly win secular people to Christ, seek the common good of the whole city (especially the poor), and disciple thousands of Christians to write plays, advance science, do creative journalism, begin effective and productive new businesses, use their money for others, and produce cutting-edge scholarship and literature will we actually be doing all the things the Bible tells us that Christians should be doing! This is how we will begin to see our cities comprehensively influenced for Christ.
Balancing the Bible’s Metaphors for the Church
In an important article, Edmund Clowney demonstrates that there are literally dozens of metaphors used by the Bible to describe the church.1 The church is called “a chosen people . . . a holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9) — literally, a distinct ethnic so changed by our encounter with Christ that we are more like one another than like others in our own particular races and societies. The church is also a “family” in which other Christians are my brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers (Matt 12:49 – 50; 1 Tim 5:1 – 2; 1 John 3:14 – 18). The church is called “the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:12 – 27), suggesting that all of us, like parts of a human body, have our own different but irreplaceable and interdependent function. These metaphors describe the new connection we have to one another in Christ.
Several metaphors emphasize the unique access we now have to the love and presence of God himself. The church is depicted as the bride of Christ (2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:32), pointing us to a level of intimacy that goes beyond the deepest of human relationships. It is also referred to as “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9) and “a holy temple” of God’s Spirit, “a spiritual house” (Eph 2:20 – 22; 1 Pet 2:4 – 8).
Other metaphors speak of growth, in both quality and size. The church is “God’s field” of crops (1 Cor 3:9), his “harvest” (John 4:35), an “olive tree” (Rom 11:24), and the “branches” on a vine (John 15:5). Along with the references to our role as a priesthood offering sacrifices by sharing and doing good (Heb 13:16) and to our calling to declare God’s praises (1 Pet 2:9), these images speak of how we are to serve God as we connect to the world. And these are only a handful of the eighty-some metaphors used by the Bible to describe the church. Clowney rightly warns against focusing too much on any one of them. All of them must inform our practice of church life, and that poses a great challenge.
Our natural tendency is to prioritize one or two particular metaphors in our understanding of the church and its identity in the world and to neglect others. Cardinal Avery Dulles’s book Models of the Church points out how, at various places in the history of the church and in particular settings across the range of cultures, this has indeed been the case. Various biblical metaphors of the church have come to dominate Christians’ thinking and push out other metaphors, and he lists five church models that tend to emphasize one of the metaphors over all others:2
1. The church as institution model emphasizes doctrine, theology, and ordained ministerial authority.
2. The church as mystical communion points to the church as organic community and fellowship.
3. The church as sacrament accents corporate worship.
4. The church as herald preeminently does evangelism and preaching.
5. The church as servant is a radical community committed to social justice.
Church models are in one sense unavoidable. The spiritual gifts and callings of a congregation’s leaders, together with their social context (e.g., university town versus inner-city neighborhood) will necessarily mean every church tends to be naturally better at fulfilling some metaphors and doing some kinds of ministry. Some churches will be better at evangelism, others at teaching and discipleship, others at gathered worship and preaching, and others at service to those in need. We know that no one Christian can have all spiritual gifts and carry out all ministries equally well — this is the clear point of 1 Corinthians 12. It can also be argued that no one congregation has all the spiritual gifts (at least not all in proportion) and is therefore unable to do all things equally well. Local churches, just like individual believers, should humbly acknowledge their limitations and recognize that they are just one part of the whole body of Christ in a city, region, or nation.
Four Ministry Fronts
None of the metaphors used to describe the church can be ignored — they are all biblical. Every church must seek to be true to all of the rich images in Scripture. Yet no church has a perfectly balanced set of gifts and strengths; nor does it have excess leadership or financial capacity! What does it mean, practically, to be faithful to these limitations yet true to all the biblical metaphors?
It means a church should strive to supplement its strong ministries by seeking to do all the forms of ministry as skillfully as possible in an integrative way. It should recognize and capitalize on its strengths but never give up seeking to shore up its weak areas out of respect for all the things that Scripture says a church is and does. It is not unlike the relationship of individual spiritual gifts to Christian duties. For example, the Bible tells all Christians to evangelize and love their neighbor. Yet some people have gifts of evangelism (Eph 4:11) and others gifts of mercy and service (Rom 12:7 – 8). So Christian individuals should find ample opportunities to use their gifts but must still take care to do what the Bible says are their duties, even those they do not feel they are very good at.
We must admit the difficulty of this task. In fact, it is one of the hardest balances church leaders have to strike. They must recognize that no church can do all things equally well, and yet they cannot let any functions given to the church “fall off the map.” And city churches in particular, because of the complexity of metropolitan society, must be especially careful to engage each area of ministry with as much generous commitment and emphasis as they can.
Instead of speaking about metaphors and models of the church, I prefer to talk about distinct “ministry fronts.” These are based on the understanding that the various models and metaphors tend to emphasize particular types of ministry and prioritize them over others. Let me propose four “fronts” to ministry:
1. Connecting people to God (through evangelism and worship)
2. Connecting people to one another (through community and discipleship)
3. Connecting people to the city (through mercy and justice)
4. Connecting people to the culture (through the integration of faith and work)
Of course, very few churches actually engage in all four of these fronts with completely balanced focus and attention. The norm, more often than not, is an atmosphere of competition within the church and between churches, with different ministries vying for resources and attention. But engagement of some kind on all four of these fronts is the only way to honor the full range of the biblical metaphors of the church. This is what I am calling integrative ministry.
I have not found anyone who has taught the integrative nature of the church’s ministry better than Edmund Clowney. In his biblical-theological work on the church, Clowney speaks of the biblical “goals of ministry” as threefold: (1) we are called to minister and serve God through worship (Rom 15:8 – 16; 1 Pet 2:9); (2) we are to minister and serve one another through Christian nurture (Eph 4:12 – 26); and (3) we are to minister and serve the world through witness (Matt 28:18 – 20; Luke 24:48; Acts 5:32). These three goals of ministry show the comprehensive scope of what the church is called to do. We are not called to “specialize” in one of these areas — only connecting people to God, to each other, or to the world. We do them all. And Clowney argues that all of these goals are really one goal, one fundamental calling and purpose as a church:
The calling of the church to minister directly to God, to the saints, and to the world is one calling. Paul witnesses to the world of the Gentiles so that they may sing praise to God. Nurture and worship go together too: we sing to God in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, but as we do so, we teach and admonish one another (Col 4:16; Eph 5:19). When our hearts are filled with praise to God our very worship becomes a testimony to the world. At Pentecost the disciples praised God in many languages and their praise was a witness to those who heard.3
There it is. We have one calling — to sing the praises of God, to declare the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). When we show forth and sing God’s praises to the world, we witness. When we show forth and sing God’s praises to each other, we build up and disciple. When we show forth and sing God’s praises to God in his presence, we worship. We declare and demonstrate the glory and goodness of God in diverse ways to different groups of people. That’s why we exist as a church.
The Spheres and Roles of the Church
At this point, it is also helpful to reflect on the distinction Abraham Kuyper made between the spheres of the institutional church and the organic church. The institutional church is the local church under its officers, while the organic church refers to Christians united in a host of formal and informal associations and organizations, or believers simply working as individuals out in the world. The church, both institutional and organic, must be engaged on all four fronts, either directly or indirectly — and the Kuyperian distinction suggests some differences of role and scope between the two spheres.
The ministry fronts of worship/evangelism and community/discipleship are preeminently the work of the institutional church and its ministers and elders. All individual believers are to be witnesses and to build up other believers. And many parachurch agencies have been very effective in these areas. But the ministry of the local church is the irreplaceable agent for this ministry in the world, for its main task is the ministry of the Word and the sacraments — winning people to faith and building them up as disciples.
When ministering to the economic and material needs of people — the third ministry front of mercy and justice — there is an overlap between the institutional and organic church. The church does the diaconal ministry for people within and immediately around its community. Those in the Reformed tradition believe that the diaconate is a special office within the church dedicated for just this purpose. But there is also the work of economic development and social reform that more systemically tackles the problems of poverty and other societal needs. I believe this type of work is best done by individual Christians or in organizations they form for these specific purposes.4
When the institutional church gives attention to cultural engagement — the fourth and final ministry front — it does so primarily by discipling a community of believers who work as the church organic. By teaching the Christian doctrine of vocation, the goodness of creation, the importance of culture, and the practice of Sabbath, it should be inspiring and encouraging its members to go into the various channels of culture. It equips its filmmaker members, for example, to be distinctively Christian in their art and work through solid Christian instruction. But in the end, I believe the local church should not form a production company to make feature films.
In the chapters that follow, we will unpack in greater detail what ministry can look like on each of the four fronts, particularly as it integrates with the others. Some of this is merely suggestive, since we obviously cannot set out everything a church should be doing in every area of ministry. Still, I hope it will bring clarity and focus to the mission of the church, along with a much-needed balance in the way we engage in ministry.5
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Which of the metaphors of the church given in Scripture (a holy nation, a family, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, a royal priesthood, the temple of God’s Spirit, God’s field and harvest, branches on a vine, etc.) do you naturally tend to prioritize? How do these priorities make your church unique?
2. Which of the five models of church described by Avery Dulles most closely align with your own church’s model?
• the church as institution model — emphasizes doctrine, theology, and ordained ministerial authority
• the church as mystical communion model — points to the church as organic community and fellowship
• the church as sacrament model — accents corporate worship
• the church as herald model — preeminently does evangelism and preaching
• the church as servant model — a radical community committed to social justice
How would you describe your church model to others? What would you emphasize?
3. Keller writes, “When the institutional church gives attention to cultural engagement — the fourth and final ministry front — it does so primarily by discipling a community of believers who work as the church organic. By teaching the Christian doctrine of vocation, the goodness of creation, the importance of culture, and the practice of Sabbath, it should be inspiring and encouraging its members to go into the various channels of culture.” Do you agree with this premise? What are some of the dangers of the institutional church getting directly involved in this work? What are some of the practical ways your church can disciple believers to engage the culture?