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The gospel-driven churchToo much like a religionTHE GOSPEL-DRIVEN CHURCH This is an infuriating book! There is so much that is good and helpful, insightful and challenging. The author is able, erudite, passionate and persuasive. He writes out of a charismatic context and into a charismatic context. One of the back-cover commendations describes the book as ‘A must for all serious charismatic leaders’. Stackhouse is critical of the preoccupation within his tradition of revival, or at least of the revivalism into which it has degenerated. The book promises much and delivers a considerable amount. Although I do not belong to the grouping ad-dressed by the author, much of what he says was tremendously helpful in causing me to ask uncomfortable questions about my practice and assumptions. Yet in the end, somewhat reluctantly (such is the force of his argument), I am not persuaded that I want to go where Stackhouse is trying to lead me. Allow me to illustrate the strength and weakness of the book with an extended quote from the closing: ‘…recent voices have advocated a thoroughgoing restructuring of the church such as Liquid Church, Cell Church, church from scratch and Youth Church…such an innovative approach does not get to the heart of the problem, for at root the problem is not structural, nor cultural, but a crisis of faith and a loss of gospel speech. To attend to only the structural apparatus of the church…is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. The nature of the crisis is theological amnesia concerning the dogmatic core of historic and evangelical Christianity, to which the answer…is the recovery of the classical practices of the church as a way of reconnecting with the gospel.’ As I read that I found myself saying a loud and enthusiastic Amen. Yet the ambiguity comes in the final sentence. The classical practices that will reconnect the church with the gospel are preaching, baptism and communion. At first reading, that might sound like music to an evangelical’s ear! However, Stackhouse argues for a rediscovery of the category of sacrament in relation to these classical practices. Although he concedes that the term is ambivalent, he sees that the ‘concept of mediation’ is ‘inherent in a sacramental understanding of Christianity’. Here is the point of my disaffection. For all the book offers by way of critique, for all its scholarly and insightful analysis, for all its helpful and provocative correctives, I am far from persuaded that reconnection with the gospel requires a sacramental approach. The word sacrament is used in the Vulgate (Latin version of the Bible) as a translation of the word ‘mystery’ (cf. Ephesians 3.3&9). Yet, according to Paul in Ephesians, the mystery is a mystery no more, for it has been revealed in the gospel. This is far more significant than a debate about semantics. As important and integral as communion and baptism are to the life of a Christian community, we cannot look to them to reconnect us with the gospel. To try and reconnect with the gospel through ‘the recovery of classical practices’ is like trying to understand my relationship with my wife through the medium of the wedding service. We must look to the gospel itself; the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. It is not that the gospel is to be seen through baptism and communion, but that baptism and communion must be understood in the light of the gospel. The Gospel-Driven Church really does have much to commend it, but it ends up sounding rather too much like religion to me. If we follow the lead of Ian Stackhouse we, or at least the next generation, may find ourselves enjoying the rich experience of religious practices that give an imagined connection with a common Christian tradition and yet ignorant of the gospel of which they were meant to speak. Steve Timmis,
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