Thursday 26 June 2008

The Gospel Coalition

A lot of you may know about this already... but if you don't, you should...
The Gospel coalition (http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/) is a network of American pastors who are trying to maintain (reclaim?) a truly Evangelical approach to ministry. That is, ministry that really is driven first of all by the Gospel - driven by Christ, his death and resurrection; pattered according to the Bible; not fundamentally driven by numbers, being "contemporary" or "relevant", or anything else. Some of the Council members I recognised were Don Carson, Mark Dever and John Piper (Reformed Baptists), Ligon Duncan and Tim Keller (Presbyterians), C. J. Mahaney (of Sovereign Grace ministries) and Paul Zahl (Evangelical Anglican).
What I found most interesting was their "theological vision for ministry" - part of their foundational documents (http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/foundational_documents.pdf). It's a statement of how their convictions shape their approach to ministry. It's got sections on the nature of truth ("epistemology"), how to approach to the Bible ("hermeneutics"), how to approach the non-Christian world ("contextualisation"), and ministry generally. I highly recommend having a read.

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