In September Brent Thomas, pastor of Church of the Cross in Peoria, AZ, took issue with a 9 Marks review of Jim Belcher’s Book, Deep Church. Brent saw the review by Greg Gilbert as not only “snarky,” but also unfair. In fact Gilbert’s review actually received a response from Belcher himself on Trevin Wax’s blog. There Belcher explained how Gilbert had somehow missed the point of his book. In his blog post Brent wondered if there was something of a growing rift within Reformed Evangelicalism related to the issue of the “missional church.”

Just last week Brent’s suspicions seem to have been confirmed through another 9 Marks publication by Jonathan Leeman. Leeman’s article, “Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small” is troubling in that he argues missional thinkers place a heavy emphasis on social justice that moves the church away from a proper emphasis on the gospel. Brent explained,

Throughout his piece, Leeman equates “missional” with a focus primarily on “social justice.” I don’t know any Reformed, missional believers who make this equation, and I know many Reformed Evangelicals who would indeed call themselves “missional.” Nowhere does he admit that he is speaking of a specific subset of the use of the word “missional” in the larger Reformed, Evangelical world. I just wish that Leeman had pointed out, just once, that he is, in fact, using the word in severely different ways than most people. I’m sure that conservative believers like Ed Stetzer, Mark Driscoll, and Tim Keller take issue with Leeman’s equation of missional = focus primarily on social justice = new liberalism but nowhere does Leeman acknowledge that such conservative believers use the word “missional” in very, very different ways.

(Leeman wrote a generally helpful article a few years back on “What in the world is a MissionalChurch?”)

I share Brent’s concern. Clearly there is a misunderstanding at some level. Either men like Leeman are not putting much effort into understanding missional thinkers, or some missional thinkers are not being clear enough. My guess is, guys like Leeman can try harder, and some missional thinkers could be clearer.

Read more here.