The Buttress Over the Cathedral

August 11, 2009 – 3:51 pm

Justin Taylor, over at Between Two Worlds, posted an extended quotation from D. A. Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry regarding the need to keep the foolishness of the cross primary and central in one’s church planting strategy (and, by implication, every other aspect of one’s life and ministry):

At the moment, books are pouring off the presses telling us how to plan for success, how “vision” consists in clearly articulated “ministry goals,” how the knowledge of detailed profiles of our communities constitutes the key to successful outreach.

I am not for a moment suggesting that there is nothing to be learned from such studies. But after a while one may perhaps be excused for marveling how many churches were planted by Paul and Whitefield and Wesley and Stanway and Judson without enjoying these advantages.

Of course all of us need to understand the people to whom we minister, and all of us can benefit from small doses of such literature. But massive doses sooner or later dilute the gospel. Ever so subtly, we start to think that success more critically depends on thoughtful sociological analysis than on the gospel; Barna becomes more important than the Bible.

We depend on plans, programs, vision statements–but somewhere along the way we have succumbed to the temptation to displace the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of strategic planning.

Again, I insist, my position is not a thinly veiled plea for obscurantism, for seat-of-the-pants ministry that plans nothing.

Rather, I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry. (p. 26) [italics added]

I find myself particularly susceptible to this form of dilution, namely allowing the “buttresses” to displace the “cathedral” itself. In the mountains of missio-cultural strategy manuals it is easy to miss the “one needful thing,” the gospel itself - the pure, untainted, unencumbered message communicated in the simple, yet profound “The Gospel Song“:

Holy God, in love, became
Perfect Man to bear my blame.
On the cross He took my sin
By His death I live again.

Lyrics: Drew Jones
Music by Bob Kauflin

May the Spirit of God protect us from this idolatry as we give ourselves to reading, studying, praying, singing, preaching, teaching, and edifying with the good news of the Son of Man found in God’s Word!

See also C. J. Mahaney’s review of Carson’s book.