I want to raise an ecclesiological question that I’ve been mulling over since I read What is the Mission of the Church? a couple of months ago To what degree are representatives of the different tendencies talking past each other because they mean different things when they use the word church?

We were pleased to host Christopher J.H. Wright at Southeastern Seminary last week as he delivered the annual Page Lectures. His theme for the lectures was “The Bible and the Mission of God,” which is an important and somewhat controversial topic among evangelicals. His two lectures were titled “Reading the Whole Bible for Mission: What Happens When We do?” and “God, Israel, and the Nations: The Old Testament and Christian Mission.” Both of his excellent lectures can be viewed on the multimedia page of the SEBTS website.

Wright is a prolific Old Testament scholar and missional theologian. He is the author of a couple of very important books on mission titled The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative(IVP Academic, 2006) and The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Zondervan, 2010).

In those books, Wright lays out a holistic understanding of mission that is rooted in the Bible’s grand narrative and that results in the final redemption of the cosmos. The church participates in God’s mission by proclaiming the good news of God’s salvation in Christ through word and deed in every sphere of life.

In many ways, this view of mission is a continuation of the position advocated by John Stott in his classic book Christian Mission in the Modern World (IVP, 1975) and articulated by the Lausanne movement through the Lausanne Covenant (1974), Manila Manifesto (1989), and Cape Town Commitment (2011). (Stott was the principle author of the Lausanne Covenant, while Wright was the principle author of the Cape Town Commitment.)

Recently, Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert have offered a friendly critique of this understanding of mission in their book What is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission (Crossway, 2011). DeYoung and Gilbert are hesitant to define mission too broadly, preferring to focus on verbal proclamation of the gospel.

They argue that Christians can and should engage in social justice ministries, but they don’t necessarily see this as being as crucial as evangelism. I may be misreading them, but I think they’re arguing that deeds complement gospel proclamation, but deeds aren’t mission in and of themselves in the same way as proclamation. While affirming a grand narrative reading of Scripture, DeYoung and Gilbert want to be clear that we not confuse what God and God alone does in his mission and what the church has been tasked with in her mission.

I’m going to go ahead and say what everyone already knows, but in my circles is mostly whispered in hushed tones. The aforementioned books (and many others I haven’t referenced) represent a massive debate among evangelicals that has simmered below the surface for several years and is just now coming to light, in part because of the publication and responses to What is the Mission of the Church? It is, for the most part, a friendly debate among substantially like-minded brothers—that’s the good part.

But when it comes to the question of mission, there are at least two different tendencies present among inerrantist, non-Arminian, complementarian evangelicals, and these tendencies have the potential to become out-and-out factions. All you have to do is read Ed Stetzer’s review of What is the Mission of the Church?, the responses to Stetzer’s review, and the responses to those responses to see that there is at least the potential for significant controversy. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

For my part, I’m not interested in offering a substantive review of the relevant books; plenty of folks have already done so, and from a variety of perspectives. Rather, I want to raise an ecclesiological question that I’ve been mulling over since I read What is the Mission of the Church? a couple of months ago (I’ve previously read Stott, Wright, and several of the other authors whom DeYoung and Gilbert critique). To what degree are representatives of the different tendencies talking past each other because they mean different things when they use the word church? To say it another way, to what degree is this a debate between folks who prioritize the church universal versus those who prioritize local churches?

Many representative voices of the “holistic mission” tendency are either Anglican (Stott, Wright) or intentionally non-denominational (the Lausanne movement). This stands in contrast to DeYoung and Gilbert, who are Reformed and Southern Baptist, respectively.

As a general rule, Anglicans and interdenominational and/or parachurch evangelicals are referring to the wider body of Christ when they use the word church, whereas Baptists and at least some Reformed Christians are typically speaking of particular congregations when they use the term. Both believe in both the church universal and local churches, of course, but the primary emphasis tends to be on one or the other.

One reason I think this ecclesiological difference might factor into the mission debate is because, to my understanding at least, both tendencies are in about 95% agreement about what Christians ought to be doing. Both affirm, unequivocally, verbal proclamation of the gospel as the center of mission. Both agree that Christians should do justice and love mercy. Both advocate Christian cultural engagement. In other words, everybody agrees that both word and deed is part and parcel of faithful Christian living.

And yet, we have this disagreement. Is it at least possible that Wright (to name just one example) is arguing that Christians in general—the church—should be about X & Y, while DeYoung and Gilbert are arguing that local congregations—the church—may engage in X & Y in different ways and to varying degrees? This seems to be the case to me.

By raising this question, I’m by no means minimizing real differences that are present within the various positions. It’s clear that there is a spectrum of evangelical opinions regarding the church’s mission, though again, I think the differences might seem at least somewhat wider than is really the case. But if we are to work toward any sort of consensus—and avoid factionalism—then we need to understand why different folks land where they do on this issue. I’m convinced ecclesiology has been under-discussed in reviews and other discussions of the key books on the topic. Perhaps as we ask what the church’s mission is, we would do well to be clear what we mean by the word church.

Nathan A. Finn [follow on Twitter] is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.. This article appeared on Between The Times, a blog site featuring a number of SEBTS Wake Forest faculty and is used with permission.

[Editor’s note: Original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]