What Is The Mission Of The Church?

In Tim Keller’s forthcoming book Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, Keller addresses this issue:

. . . [I]s the mission of the church only to preach the Word—evangelizing and making disciples—or is it (also) or mainly to do justice? Increasing evangelicals are talking about the church’s “justice mission.” See Amy L. Sherman, “The Church on a Justice Mission” in Books and Culture, July/August 2010. In this articles examples are giving of local evangelical congregations that have added the combating of sex/human trafficking to their churches’ mission work. Indeed, sex trafficking is an important justice issue and an easy one for most evangelical churches to get a handle on. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that Kuyper is right: It is best to speak of the “mission of the church,” strictly conceived, as being the proclamation of the Word. More broadly conceived, it is the work of Christians in the world to minister in word and deed and to gather together to do justice. (p. 216 n. 128)

Justin Taylor