What Is the Mission of the Church? with Brian DeVries

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed

00:00

What Is the Mission of the Church? with Brian DeVries

December 11, 2024

Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

Mission is one of those words that Christians use all the time. So are words like “missions” and missionaries.” But what do they mean? Is “mission” even the best word to use to describe what Christians should be doing in the world? In today’s episode, Kevin talks with fellow Michigander, Brian DeVries, about his new book You Will Be My Witnesses. Brian has led church planting teams in South Africa and currently serves as a pastor and a seminary president in South Africa. He’s written an insightful and helpful book calling church and Christians to be witnesses for Christ in speaking, in living, in defending the faith, in working for church growth, and in suffering well.

Chapters:

0:00 Sponsors

1:51 Introductions

11:29 The Book and the Mission of the Church

25:19 The Concept of Witness

32:15 Five Witness Themes

39:17 Sponsor Break

41:00 On Evangelizing

52:35 The Church As Hospital, Temple, Embassy, School, and Fortress

58:07 Stop DoingThis, Start Doing That

Books & Everything:

In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions Through the Psalms

Desiring God | Great Joy

Puritan Treasures for Today

Westminster Theological Seminary Biblical Language Certificate

You Will Be My Witnesses: Theology for God's Church Serving in God's Mission

Transcript

I want to mention a couple of our sponsors for LBE. Grateful, as always, for Crossway and Desire and God. Crossway, I want to mention this book by Dane Ortland.

In the Lord, I take refuge. 150 daily devotions through the Psalms. You may have read one of Dane's books before.

Gentle and lowly is his best known, and this is Dane applying the same scriptural, pastoral lens to look at the Psalms. This book invites readers to experience the Psalms in a new way through heartfelt devotional content written by Dane. Each reading is short enough to read, and just a few minutes will encourage the believer to be thoughtful and prayerful as you read through the great songbook of the Bible.

150 Psalms. Pick up a copy of In the Lord, I take refuge. And you can sign up crossway.org plus to get a plus account and get 30% off with that account.

And then from Desire and God, join John Piper for Good News of Great Joy, a series of 25 daily advent meditations from the Solid Joys Podcast. So this is the podcast starting December 1, so through this whole month, leading up to Christmas. These brief yet profound reflections will help you savor the glory of Christ and the lasting treasure we have in Him.

So make this Advent season. There's lots of good resources out there. And this is a podcast you can subscribe to Good News of Great Joy in the Solid Joys Podcast from Desiring God, or download the free devotional to read for yourself at desiringgod.org slash Advent.

Greetings and salutations. My name is Kevin Deong and this is Life and Books and everything glad that you can join us for the pin ultimate episode of this 2024 season. We'll be back next week, I hope, with Colin and Justin for our annual Christmas episode.

Looking forward to that. This morning, I have a new guest on LBE, Brian DeVries, and I want to talk about Brian's new book, You Will Be My Witnesses, Theology for God's Church, Serving in God's Mission. I just put this on my top 10 list for books that came out in 2024.

And this is what I say in part about the book. On the back, this book is a tremendous resource. Careful, clear, confessional, biblical, hopeful, inspiring, and practical.

This will be one of the first books, if not the first book, on missions that I recommend to pastor, students, and church members. So I really, really like this book. I'll ask Brian to say a little bit more about himself here in just a moment, but he is President of Theological College in South Africa, has planted churches in Pretoria, and is a pastor there as well.

He and his wife are blessed with five children. So there's the very brief bio, Brian, but why don't you fill us in? Since you and I are just meeting for the first time. Where are you from? What are you doing? Why did you write this book? Yeah, thank you, Kevin, and thank you to your listeners as well.

I'm humbled to be part of this conversation. And yeah, maybe a bit about myself first, if I may. Yeah, please.

So I'm originally from Michigan, Kalamazoo, Michigan, actually. So, I do I like that last name. The priest is a Dutch name as, as is the young.

And yeah, so Southwest Michigan, part of the originally my great grandparents came from the Netherlands. So there's the Dutchness of it came to Southwest Michigan, where, where many other Dutch people have settled as well in years gone by. So I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, went to school there, studied first in business, then later in theology started going to college went to college at Western Michigan University.

Oh, yeah. Right. For for business, actually, business, IT management, some of those fields, but Lord had other plans.

So I was called into or called toward ministry and then studied theology at Puritan first Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and Grand Rapids. Yeah, I'm coming from the that tradition, the heritage reform tradition. And so, hence, you know, Puritan was the natural first first choice.

I grew up in that context, studied at Puritan and Grand Rapids. But have been in South Africa here since 2005, actually, living in serving the Lord here in South Africa. And is the work in English or do you also speak Afrikaans? Yeah.

So South Africa is a beautiful nation, many challenges, of course, but also many opportunities and many people's diverse peoples. I'm working with a multi ethnic range of wonderful men of men and women of God. The Ministry of Mukanyo Theological College where I serve is is very multi ethnic.

Our team is from various backgrounds and we use English as a common language that unites us. They're all coming from different traditions. I'm from the American English tradition.

And so we jokingly say that all of us speak bad English because we're all from different places. The church is that I've planted here are multi ethnic. And so, again, English is the common language that unites us.

Although Afrikaans is common, I work with many Afrikaans, people and churches, Zulu, Soutu, Venda and some of the other languages here as well. And being Dutch, I would guess that DeVries is not an uncommon name in South Africa? You're correct. That's right, Kevin.

So as people left the Netherlands before World War I and II and then after World I and II, they went to first to America and then later to Canada or South Africa or other places. And so we do have a lot of Defrieses here. Defries would be the pronunciation here or DeVries by us in Michigan.

And yeah, so many people mistake me at first for someone who is of Afrikaans background. As soon as I open my mouth, though, it's a dead giveaway. And so I'm English.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but my kids are learning some Afrikaans and Zulu as well.

And so, yeah, we're integrated here now. And what's the general response? Obviously, we all know about the history of apartheid and that ended decades ago, but you don't just end something like that and everything is wonderful. So what's the reaction? Are there still, I imagine, tension points? What do people think when they learn, oh, you're from the Dutch Reform tradition.

Is that a plus or a minus for most people? Yeah, you know, South Africa is very complex society. It's a beautiful country, beautiful people. I love the opportunity to serve here and the people here.

But obviously, there are consequences, not just of apartheid, that was awful and wrong, but post apartheid has not been without challenges. And even pre-apartheid, the colonialism of the Dutch, the English, for instance, and some of the other tribal conflicts. South Africa is a challenging environment because there are a lot of tensions, social tensions, not just below the surface either, above the surface even often.

And these are inflamed by brokenness and people who are not believers in society. And we as a church have to work double time, as it were, or rather my God's grace and his spirit, we have to put an extra effort to really overcome some of these challenges. That's what grace does.

And the church is beautiful, multi-ethnic churches, or even Zulu churches, or Alfred Kahn's churches. We need to work with all different groups, and there are places for each church. The church I've been working with is multi-ethnic, though, usually the three church plans, because that's such an important aspect of the gospel.

A multi-ethnicity is not essential to the nature of the church necessarily. It will be certainly in heaven, but it's certainly a byproduct of the gospel. And so it's a very important part of ministry here, I think, is to promote this gospel that transcends social and other cultural barriers.

And so that's why it's very important what we're doing, maybe I'm biased, but I really feel this very firmly, because we need to show how the gospel breaks down these barriers and overcomes them. And God's Word unites us. God's Spirit unites us.

Yeah. I've only been to South Africa once, and so I just went to the major cities, Joburg, Durban, Cape Town. Is the seminary in Joburg? Where is it located? So, Mukanyo, actually, we have five campuses now as a January.

The original work was started by missionaries of Afrikaans churches together with some Dutch churches and Canadian churches. And that was started in the 80s already, in a place called Kondebelli, which at one time was a homeland in the former administration. And that's in Komplanga, which is about an hour from Pretoria to the north-east.

Since then, we've started a number of different campuses. So there are campuses in Pretoria now, in Johannesburg, Rustenburg, which is to the west, Platinum area, and Durban along the coast, and also now, as from January, we'll have a campus in Cape Town, the heart of Cape Town, working with some of the friends there as well. So, six campuses, and then there's also what we call local learning sites, facilitated learning in a hundred-some sites across Southern Africa, where the teaching is taking place as well.

That's great. Maybe we'll have to talk after we're not recording, but we have a number of mission partnerships with churches in all of Southern Africa, but in South Africa, I'm sure we must know some of the same people. We do.

Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Remind me one other South Africa question.

What's the big animal preserve that people go to? They can see all the wild animals? The biggest one that is well-known is Kruger Park. It's Kruger, yeah. The Kruger is the big one, yeah.

So, when I was there, we went there, we flew on a plane, we went there, and we're on the, whatever, the little bus thing with the gates, and you're looking up. I'm not kidding. This is not a knock on South Africa.

I was there in a bad day. I have seen more wild animals outside my front door on a morning with squirrels and deer. No, we joke about it.

I was with a whole bunch of people. We saw nothing. It was like all of the animals decided to sleep that day.

So, as far as I'm concerned, it's a big scam. There are no big animals. There's no nothing there, but I'm sure other people have had great experience.

Yeah, it's a hit and miss because it's, like I always say, it's a wilderness. You can't program it or plan it. It's God's wilderness.

But it's Kruger is an amazing park. You've got to come back, Kevin. You just come back.

I will come back. Yeah, because it's an amazing park and not just Kruger. This place is an amazing place.

I love it. And the people, too, there are challenges, but, yeah. Well, so glad you're there.

And thankful for this book. I'm guessing that this was maybe a missiology course that you've taught. What's the origin of this book? What was the impetus that made you want to write this? Maybe I can go back to my days at Puritan.

Yeah. I did an MDiv at Puritan. And it was good.

I really appreciate my time there in the lectures, of course. This was some years ago now. But the missions wasn't as strong at that time.

I hope it's stronger now because I teach there. So it better be stronger. But so I did a THM with Roger Greenway at Calvin, the Logical Seminary, just down the road.

Yeah. And that's where the CRC. Roger Greenway was a wonderful mentor to me.

Of course, the CRC is a broader church than my background. And that was a huge blessing. And so having done that and then studying at Southern Seminary, too, it was what I was missing, actually.

At Puritan, not because Puritan is bad, but because Puritan just wasn't offering that. And so I was actually asked to start teaching at Puritan. This is in 2004, maybe or five.

I forget when it was 2004. And since then, yes, this has developed from that and also teaching here in South Africa and other places. So this book, it's not a textbook per se for a class, but it came out of teaching for almost 20 years.

The subjects. And it's kind of been on my heart for a long time. And I finally had the opportunity to write it down and hopefully share it with others in a way that's helpful.

Well, I really appreciate it. And as you know, because I was vain enough to see if I was mentioned in the book, and you got a couple of Kevin DeYoung footnotes that I wrote with Greg Gilbert, what is the mission of the church? And our motivation, that came out in 2011. Our motivation then was seeing that mission in a lot of our circles had become all encompassing.

And there's that famous quip with mission is everything. Mission becomes nothing. And my background, you'll be familiar with his Reformed Church in America, which is even broader than the CRC came into the PCA in 2015.

But my background was where mission, sometimes the slogan was, mission is everything or mission is one. And it was kind of every good thing you could do under the sun. And often there was a, from the RCA, there was a strong social justice leaning.

It kind of was coded, left wing politics. And so one of the reasons Greg and I wrote the book was to say, we're not against digging wells and sending agronomists overseas. Those are really good things to do in the name of Christ.

But what is the mission of the church? Now over a decade later, I put it this way, there I think is some mission drift with, say on the right, right coded, that it is the mission of the church to baptize Christian nations as nations. So wherever you are on the spectrum, I think there is always this tendency for churches to drift in their understanding of the mission of the church. And it doesn't have to happen because people have nefarious motives.

It's just always easier to want to do everything. And people in the church come to you as a pastor or a missions committee. Would you support this good thing and you like the people? And so you say yes and mission ends up becoming almost every conceivable Christian enterprise.

So my question is, is that overlap with your concern? It's not a leading question. You can feel free to push back or disagree. But do you see that? And how does your book speak into those kind of theological? Because you cite Bosch and all the people and you know, Stott famously had the two wings of the bird evangelism and social action.

So that's a long standing debate and for some tradition that mission equally includes those two things. What contribution is your book making into that sort of discussion? Yeah, the whole word indeed conversation. And that's somewhat a bifurcation too.

We've kind of had this from different angles and it's difficult. The question of what is mission? And so in a certain sense, I tried to answer that question because that's really what your book was doing too. And it did it well.

What is the mission of the church? I'm saying what is mission? And I think the only way to really answer that question, given all the different books, there's been several five views of mission or four views of mission of the church. And there's some good contributions there as well. Some of them are much broader and that's not where I am.

Even Bosch is broader, a transforming mission and of course his theology is Barthian, I think. And so he's much his doctrine and scripture is not where I am. But the question of what is mission has to be answered, I think, going back to theology and particularly biblical theology.

And so that was kind of my goal because I thought, okay, another book on mission, what good is that going to do, right? Unless we can do something that grounds that conversation and he grounds the answer actually in scripture because ultimately, mission has to be downstream from theology. I can't think of it any other way. If it isn't, then somehow it's just pragmatism or just choosing whatever sounds good to the church committee.

And so we got to go back to scripture and then how far back do you go? Do you go to ecclesiology? Now you got to go farther back than doctrine of church. Because actually, as I say, the church is first the object of mission before it's an agent in mission. And so do you go back to new mythology as my dissertation did or Christology or even theology proper doctrine of the Trinity? And I think ultimately we have to go back to theology proper, Trinitarian theology in order to really understand God's mission and then our participation, the role of the church in that mission.

And so I think that's what I was trying to do with this book is really start with a biblical theology. That's what I found to be most helpful when I teach this subject is to start with a biblical theology with the Old Testament particularly. And because that's the Old Testament was the textbook that Paul used when he went out on his missionary journeys.

And so a biblical theology that looks more all encompassing at what is the role of God's people in the bigger picture of God's mission. And Chris Wright does that too. I'm sorry, I interrupted.

Chris Wright does that too. But I think I'm more from a reform and come into perspective than Chris is here. Yeah, Chris has done lots of good scholar, has done lots of good work.

And yet anyone who can read my book knows that I have some disagreements with his understanding more expansive, I would say, mission. One of the unique things that I really appreciate about your book and it's right there in the title, you will be my witnesses. In some ways, you talk about mission, obviously throughout the whole book.

And I totally agree with you and you point this out. The first use of mission theologically were the Trinitarian mission. It's the father sending of the son and the father and the son and the procession of the spirit.

So you're absolutely right that when we talk about mission, we need to talk about Trinity and doctrine of God proper. But you say in some sense, okay, mission, this is a good word. You give the Latin and you connect it to the Greek.

You say, let's talk about witnesses because this is where mission isn't an English word in the Bible. That doesn't mean it's not a biblical term or we can't use it. But witness certainly is front and center.

So what is the importance of this theme as you see it, witnesses in mission? Yeah, that's a perceptive question Kevin. Thank you. So the word witness is I think perhaps a better term to describe.

It's an umbrella term to describe what the church does in their participation within God's mission. And this kind of comes from, well, when I wrote the chapter on mission in the Old Testament, I was already kind of toying with this and I went back and changed it a bit. But I think it's helpful to separate God's mission, the overarching work of God's saving of centers and the plan of redemption from how the church participates in that work.

And I was also toying with this idea. I read a book by Michael, I think Strope is how you say a surname, Michael Strope. And he was arguing that it's time to get rid of the word mission.

Now, I wouldn't go that far. But he was saying that the word mission in this book, 300 pages or so, he takes to argue that the word mission actually is coming. It's true that Augustine does use it to talk about the divine sin deans, sin of the Father, the sin of the Son and sin of the Spirit.

But it was somewhat hijacked as it were by the Jesuits. Speaking about God's mission, patterned after how the Crusaders did their, what they would call mission in the Middle East. And so the Jesuits took this term God's mission and Missio Dayden and the Latin coming from that.

And they imparted into it their version of mission. And they read back some of the mission activities or the gospel activities of the early church and the church and the Middle Ages in use the word mission to describe these. But then when the reformers came along and some of them just adopted the language of the Jesuits but made it more Protestant and more aligned with, you know, with sound theology.

And so they continued to use this term Missio or mission, God's mission, Vootsius for instance, Heisberg's Vootsius and others following him. But he would argue that that term actually is maybe not the best term to use. And now it has so much baggage.

It has the baggage of the Jesuits and the Roman Catholic missions, even the Crusades to some extent. And it has the baggage of European colonialism and all of that, even though it's maybe not fair to give it that baggage. It comes with that baggage.

And so he would argue that there's got to be a better term. And that's pretty much what he does in his book. I think that better term may be witness not to jettison to get rid of the term mission.

I think it's here to stay. And it's a good term. Good enough.

It's Missio sending up a stello from the Greek. But the idea of witness is actually more central in scripture. And much more, I think, versatile really to describe what the church, the Reform churches, the Protestant church has been calling mission anyway.

And whether it's as a noun, you are my witnesses or as a verb, go and witness or to testify, I think that that term actually can be used in the same way as we've been using mission without a lot of the extra baggage that comes along with this term mission. And so what I've done is I've tried to fairly consistently use the term mission to describe God's activity, the sending of the sun, the sending of the spirits and all that he's doing in the history of redemption in the world, his external works, but then also then use the term witness to describe how the church participates in God's mission. That's not to say you can't use the term witness or mission that way, but I've tried to fairly consistently use it to separate the two.

God's work and then the church's work of witness. You're right that the word mission or missionary and I'm with you in recognizing that baggage and those problems, but also it's here to stay and it does serve a good purpose. I'm a part of something called the Cross Conference, which is aimed at 18 to 25 year olds.

In fact, we should get you there sometime. And one of the things we try to do is just help provide some definitions for people because it's easy to hear the language and you hear it in well meaning churches all the time. We're all missionaries.

You leave on this Sunday morning and I'll go be a missionary. And I don't want to come down too hard on it because I think I know the heart behind it. You go out, you want to make a difference, you want to share Christ.

And yet if we reserve that missio language for sending, then in that sense we're not all sent. The church sends people, but it, not everyone was an apostle, so not everyone is a sent one. But this word mission or rather witness and of course we get the word martyr is a really good biblical word.

And I just want to ask you and say a little bit more about that phrase missio day because this is, this has become really popular. I think maybe it sort of peaked here in the states five, ten years ago, but you still see this and you can find it on PCA websites, this language of missio day and oftentimes it'll say something like this. The mission of God in the world is the renewal of all things and I'll quote from Ephesians or Colossians, very true.

The complete renewal, the restoration of the cosmos and therefore our work is to partner with God in the renewal of all things. Now I think to most Christians in the pews, if you just say that language, they'll probably not and say, oh, yeah, the renewal of all things, that's what God is doing. We get to partner with God and what God is doing to restore the cosmos.

But once you say that, you've made mission quite expansive. So I'm leading you toward disagreeing with that understanding. But how would you tweak that understanding of missio day and how does this concept of witness say something a little different? Yeah, so the term missio day can be used in a good way, I think.

And so I went throughout that term either. That's right. But, and I don't think you are either, but unfortunately, how everyone uses it varies.

And there's actually, we're all using the term, but we're meaning different things by it, I think, in many cases. I just wrote in, well, a little while ago, I wrote an article, an academic article that I've submitted. I'm waiting for, waiting for a response now.

But basically the term missio day, I think is used very, very broadly sometimes to, to mean everything almost. Or used by people like Chris Wright in a way that's, I think, helpful to talk about, you know, God's mission. But I think it has to be a bit more narrow.

I like to narrow it even down to God's mission. God's salvific mission or God's mission of redemption, not just renewal of creation. Creation is the context in which God's mission takes place itself out.

And I think that term missio day needs to be redefined based on Augustinian theology. We got to go back to Augustine and even Aquinas has he interprets Augustine and look at God's, not mission singular, but God's missions plural. Because ultimately God's missions in the divine economy keep God, the Father sends the Son and God the Father and Son send the Spirit.

And so there are two missions. And that is, there's the Pactum Salutis as well, the Divine Council, the Pactum Salutis. And then in time, starting post fall in Genesis three is God's mission of salvation.

And so there we're used, and if we use that, if we use missio day to define, describe that, I think that then the term is good. But if we start to say it's renewal of creation or a broader, then we're getting into trouble. We're going to find, yeah, we're getting fuzzy with our terms and people are going to further misunderstand the use of this term, I think.

So mission to me is God's saving work. God's work of saving sinners. And then I think if we define it that way, we can also circle back and get, solve this whole problem of word and deed as well.

Because witness then is how we participate in God's mission. And witness is basically witnessing of Christ, communicating Christ through our actions and particularly through our words in a way that people will hear the Gospel, understand the Gospel and hopefully believe the Gospel by the part of the Spirit. And so deeds then are important but are supportive of our witness of Christ so that we can participate in God's mission that way.

I don't know if I'm making sense, but that's kind of how I see the big picture. Yeah, you are and you're making these helpful, careful distinctions. For example, you say on page 12, first as considered above the church's witness must be distinguished from the mission of the Triune God, and you just talked about that, that you say the witness of the church is also different than the mission of Christ.

So people use incarnational ministry. And again, I think I know that you learn the language, learn the culture, and yet I agree with Carson and Kostenberger and Todd Billings says this, let's reserve incarnation for the incarnation. You certainly get an idea of what it means to be Christians in the world by looking at Christ.

How could you not? And yet his mission is not going to be identical with the church's mission or witness. And I want to just highlight something you said because it's really important when you talk about witness and we're going to get to some of these specifics because you very helpfully, you're a very clear thinker and you lay out things in order and you have some really helpful diagrams along the way which I want to highlight. But you said there about witness and word and deed.

But I want to, at least I think if I think I'm hearing what you're saying. And one of the things you didn't say there was the two wings of the bird word and deed. So we know we need both.

But one way to conceive of that is to say mission is word, mission is deed. So when you start a soup kitchen or if you plant trees in town or if you help to lower unemployment, that's deed, that's loving people, that's mission. Now I hear you say something a little different but important.

Well, if you talk about witness, so Titus says we adorn the gospel with our good deeds. But to bear witness through those deeds means that the terminus, the telos of those things, is not the deed itself but to bear witness to Christ. Am I hearing correctly and how witness there is doing something a little different than just saying, yes, mission includes both of these things equally.

Yes, absolutely. And thanks for letting me clarify that. So witnesses this overarching term, whether it be the noun or the verb, the person who is called to be Christ witness or whether it be the verb, the activity of that person.

And then under that umbrella term, we have all these different activities of the church, outward facing activities of the church. Word and deed ministries as well could be, it could be biblical constantly, it could be showing compassion. But deeds are ancillary to the actual gospel, the word joined by the spirit that changes hearts and lives.

And so I talk about ancillary witnesses to the gospel ministry, particularly in the area of apologetics. But I think in any form of evangelistic witness, a gospel witness, we have the method by which that witness takes place. And deeds can be a very important method showing compassion or displaying hospitality, a very important method by which we then witness of Christ, the gospel, so that that word of Christ, the witness of Christ can be joined by the spirit to change hearts and lives.

And so ancillary witnesses is the term I use. And I would put deed ministry in that category or even other methodologies of evangelistic gospel communication. And I love the way you say that because we never want to tell people the good deeds you're doing are somehow suspect.

I've been asked to speak on mission of the church probably as much as anything that I've written on. So it's not that I have anything so great to say, but I think it just shows how much pastors and church leaders want help on this issue. And one of the things I always find myself, because they're bringing me in, usually they've read my book and they know sort of what I'm going to push against, but I find myself needing to say, look, if you leave here saying this guy, Kevin, the young came in and said, stop blessing people, stop doing good deeds.

No, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. But you look at Christ ministry, for example, everything is moving toward, like in the gospel of Mark, is moving toward finally when the centurion says, truly, this was the Son of God. That's the title in Mark 1 1, and that's what the centurion gets.

And I point out, and I'm sure I got it from someone else, that Jesus never once goes into a town to set up shop, to heal or cast out demons. He says very explicitly, he goes from town to town that he might preach. Now along the way, he does lots of that.

Those are the three things he does. He preaches, he heals, he casts out demons. But there is a priority to it.

And the other two are ancillary to the preaching. He doesn't say, I got to leave here because that next town has demon possessed people. I need to cast them out.

One of the most helpful things, and again, I encourage people get this book. You will be my witnesses by Brian DeVries here on page 96. You have a whole chapter on this, but you have a table here.

And I want to ask you to walk through these five things because this was really helpful. Bearing witness to Christ, you say these are five dominant New Testament themes. Gospel living, gospel speaking, gospel defense, gospel increase, gospel suffering.

Can you just say a little bit about each of those? And then I got a couple follow up questions. Good. Yeah.

Thank you. So that's, that's the New Testament. I'm just looking into myself here.

That's the New Testament aspects or methods that we see of, of witness. And gospel living. So the word witness is both a noun and a verb, right? So it's actually, it's a noun before it's a verb.

We are Christ witnesses because we have experienced his saving power in our lives and the truth of his gospel message. And therefore, even the way we live, our lives being transformed by that gospel lives of holiness. Similar to the Old Testament showcase community, God has set his people apart from the world so that it can be, you know, a message to the world.

And so to display this truth as the disciples of Christ, that's the term I use, displaying that truth. And we see this in the New Testament church, particularly how, how they live, the way they loved each other. Now, their unity isn't the gospel, but it was certainly a byproduct of the gospel.

And therefore, the unity becomes ancillary to, to the gospel witness of also the words that they spoke as a, as a, as people said, hey, see how they love each other. So that's the gospel living. Gospels speaking is actually the declaration, the communication.

And that's where we, we have the book of Acts, for instance, with all these, these communication words, dialogue and speaking and consolation and exhortation and, and all these other speaking words, gospel speaking. Gospel defense is the apologetics, that, that response to correct where there's misunderstanding or, or defend the truth to the gospel. And we see that, we see that, for instance, Paul and Mars Hill, or in Peter, you know, being ready to give an answer.

Gospel increases a, is a one that maybe gives a little less attention. I, these five categories, by the way, I've developed them over years teaching my students from the New Testament book of Acts, particularly, how to think about, how to think about being a witness as your church. And gospel increase takes into account all the terms, particularly in the book of Acts, about the growth of the word, the increase of the word, the multiplication of the power of the word.

And I know church growth theorists and even the emerging church develops some of their methodologies from all of this. And I, I don't see myself moving in that direction, but that doesn't mean these words and acts aren't to be, you know, to be given attention. I think we should, because certainly the growth of the word is a theme that's dominant in that book as, as the gospel expands and goes into new places.

And so gospel increase and the dispersion of the gospel to the nations is something that we're working for as churches and long to see and, and praying for, for God to, to, to enact through our, through our ministries. And so gospel dispersion. And then finally, the idea of gospel suffering, not maybe as popular, but certainly central to the New Testament account and the book of Acts and, and the whole history of the New Testament church post at, you know, post acts.

The whole idea of witness as martyrs, to die for the truth or even, you know, suffer for the sake of the gospel. And those are five major themes I think we see, particularly in the book of Acts as how the, really the methodology of being a witness as a noun or activity of witnessing a verb, how the church is called to, to echo and to copy and to follow in the footsteps of the New Testament church in this way. And so, so if we're thinking about what to do now as a, as a mission committee, well, we should find that anything we do, everything we do finds a touchstone in these five methodologies that the book of Acts gives us.

And it's helpful because I'm just thinking of somebody in the pew at a church. They, they've heard their whole life to be a witness and that's good. It's very, and they may have in their mind just one way of doing that.

And we don't want to disparage that one way, which may be, you know, go out on a spring break trip and share the gospel with people on the beach. That, that's good. And that's good training to do and cold call evangelism is probably should be doing more of that.

What I like about these five things is it helps say the person who is suffering from a long term illness and they're saying, well, I just don't feel like I have opportunities to share my faith. What you're helping people see is, well, let's use the broader category, actually a more biblical category of witness. And you do have an opportunity to bear witness to Christ in the way that you're suffering or you have an opportunity to bear witness to Christ.

Now, the danger might be that somebody or submissions committee says, Oh, great, we're just going to, we're, we're not going to do the one thing that really is most necessary, which is the verbal proclamation of the gospel. And, you know, share the gospel, use words if necessary. Of course, St. Francis never said that.

And it's not true. And it's not biblical. And that's not what you're saying.

But I like the way in which it helps ordinary Christians say, wow, there are a lot of different ways that I can bear witness. It's not to replace the verbal sharing of the gospel, which is necessary for people to come to Christ, but I can bear witness to Christ in many different ways. A couple other sponsors to mention, thankful again for Reformation Heritage Books and Westminster Theological Seminary.

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One question I have. I remember reading somebody's dissertation on this a number of years ago. I think it was a Southern Baptist, Southern Theological Seminary dissertation too.

But he was looking at, are there actual commands for regular Christians to share their faith? Now, we all believe that. I believe that. We want to teach that in our church.

When you come to that question, not apostles, not ministry given officially to preachers and you say, okay, where are the verses that say non ordained, non apostolic, non office bearers are commanded to evangelize and share their faith. Now, I think they are, but do you have some go to verses because it's actually the Great Commission is first of all for the apostles. That's why I don't think that we all baptize.

Every church member should baptize. I know some traditions do that. So what do you find is the most, what are the most effective verses or theological truths to help ordinary Christians say, yes, I too should be verbally telling people about Christ.

Yeah, so let me take my grandma as an example. My grandma is not with her Lord, but she was a lovely, lovely, wonderful person and a lovely believer as well for many years. And she wasn't educated in theology, but it's amazing the influence she had, particularly in her family and others in her circles of influence.

Just being the kind friend and saying a word in season here and there, everyone knew you could go to grandma. And she would give you some wise advice and somehow even when it maybe wasn't asked for, she would somehow find a way to steer her grandchildren toward the things that really mattered to the things of the Lord. And she would never think of herself as a witness.

Oh, no. If I were to say, grandma, even if she would have heard this now, she's with the Lord now, but she'd be ashamed even that I'm even saying this, but I was always amazed at grandma because she was able to witness of Christ and bring everything, bring her grandkids to Christ. And was that through the way she lived? Well, certainly it was.

Was it through what she said here and there? Yes. Was it the way she refuted in her own little apologetic way, apologetics really, when her grandchildren were maybe living away, that wasn't quite right. And she had a way to refute that.

She was a witness. And yeah, I think if we have more witnesses like grandma in the churches, the Lord uses that. Now, to say there's a particular command in Scripture, well, really, how can we not tell others about Christ if He's made such a huge impact on our lives? It's not like Scripture needs to give us a command to do what is most natural for us who have been transformed by the truth of Christ and the gospel in our lives.

But I also think we can go to places like the Heideberg Catechism of all places, right? On page 161, question 31 and 32. And question 31 says, why is He, Jesus, called Christ meaning anointed? And He gives us this answer that Heideberg does about how He's our chief prophet, our only high priest and our eternal king. And then question 32 says, but why are you called a Christian? And right there, I think the answer is brilliant because the answer isn't because I'm a follower of Christ.

It's because I am by faith a member of Christ. So we see, you know, spiritual union with Christ there. And also a share in His anointing, the Holy Spirit empowering us to be His witnesses, so that I can confess His name, prophet, present myself to Him as a living sacrifice.

And, you know, priestly ministry there, I'm thinking Romans 12, verse 1 and 2. And then of course, strive against sin and fight against the devil, etc. And so why are you called a Christian? Because I'm like Christ. I'm called to be like Christ and the Holy Spirit is empowering me to be like Christ.

And I'm part of Him, spiritually united to Him, so that I can be a member of Him in a way that is prophetic in the sense of speaking His Word. By the way I live, and particularly through the words I use to others in the daily conversations, so that I can be, you know, my priestly service, my, as Paul says, or my reasonable service, my living worship of Christ. And also as a king, fight against sin and promote, you know, the coming of His kingdom, pray for the coming of His kingdom.

And so I think every Christian, by nature of being a Christian, by being united to Christ spiritually and mystical union with Him and being anointed by His Spirit, to be empowered, to be His witnesses, how can we not be a witness? We already are witnesses. It's not a matter of, if we are a witness, it's more a matter of whether we are a faithful witness. We are witnesses already.

We just have to be faithful. You said something there at the beginning that really struck me, Brian, you know, in pointing out from the Heidelberg Catechism. And I had never, of course I grew up with the Heidelberg Catechism too, probably had to memorize this, but I hadn't noticed before.

You're right. Why are you called a Christian? Now, if the answer was, because I follow Christ, that's not a wrong answer. We are told to take up our cross and follow Christ.

And yet you're absolutely true in the New Testament, in Paul's letters in particular, that's not the dominant way that Paul talks about. And I'm thinking about this because it is popular with, you know, a number of authors here in the States right now to depict being a Christian as being an apprentice of Jesus. Now, if that's one metaphor among many, then that's, yeah, we he's a mentor.

We're an apprentice. We learn from him the sort of life. But when that becomes the defining picture of being a Christian, it's really out of sorts with how the Bible describes because the Bible doesn't.

And so my concern when I hear people use that language almost exclusively, leaning on an apprentice of Jesus, I start to my spiritual spidey sense and start to tingle because I think, what are you? Are you pushing us toward a version of Christianity that is almost entirely about the things we do about showing ourselves to look like Christ as opposed to the spiritual realities? Of course, we want to look like Christ. We must. But that are bound up in union with Christ.

You sit it so well. And this is everywhere in Paul's epistles. It's really maybe the dominant theological idea that we are bound up in Christ.

So it isn't just, there's Jesus, follow him, be like him, which is a message that really guts Christianity of a lot of its scandal because, oh, Jesus is great. We want to be like Jesus. He teaches us how to live a kingdom life.

When the New Testament is much richer and deeper than that says, no, you died in Christ and you live in Christ and you're bound up with Christ. And as the catechism says, now you have the spirit of Christ within you. All of this is necessary.

Last, as you said, this message of mission or witness just lands on people like one more thing that they have to do as Christians that they're not very good at. I got to go and witness. I don't think I'm a particularly great personal evangelist.

I pray that I would be better at it. I hope my preaching is evangelistic, but I wish I were better at it. But I know in my own heart, and I say this to my church often, and you just sit it there, Brian.

We are natural evangelists for the things and the people we love most. If you ask somebody about their grandkids, they are not going to have a hard time showing a picture. They love their grandkids.

Now, again, grandkids are not as scandalous as the cross, but it's true. I would say if anyone wants to start, how do I become a better witness? Say, pray for more love for Christ. It's that overflow.

You said, how could I not speak about Christ? As you've given this message and the contents of this book to students or churches or other places, have you found one or two insights that have resonated most with people that people come up to you afterward and say, thank you. I didn't see that before. I needed to learn that.

That's a good question, Kevin. I think this last point, actually, you are a witness, not just you as an individual member of following Christ, but the church as Christ people who gather in a particular place. The church is a witness.

It's not like we become a witness when we engage in these five or six activities on different days of the week. We already are his witness. The question is whether we're being faithful, whether that's seen in us.

I think that also often resonates with people because, yeah, we just spontaneously, we are his witness. We've been called out of darkness into his marvelous light. Therefore, we show forth his excellencies, as Peter puts it.

Therefore, we abstain from fleshly lust, and therefore, we live with honest conversations among the nations and Gentiles. It just comes naturally, spontaneously, almost, from the fact of our identity in Christ and are being empowered, being indwelled and empowered by his spirit. I think people really resonate with that.

The question then becomes, we already are witnesses, if we're true believers and we love the Lord, how are we channeling that? How are we portraying that? How are we using those energies in a way that's most effectively aligned so that, because it's all about the spirit and the word, isn't it? Even though the answer to their witnesses, why should we bother with the answer to their witnesses if they don't bring us to the spirit and the word? Then there are distractions, and so we need to be more effective. I think that's the other point that sometimes is raised that people like the difference between effectual communication and effective communication. If I could just speak to that as well, perhaps.

So effectual communication is our gospel communication that the Holy Spirit uses with power to change hearts and lives. And effective communication is how we can try to understand our audience and to communicate the gospel in ways that are most effective, given the fact that ultimately, we want the spirit to speak through us effectually. And that distinction is I think people have also found helpful, but I'm in the beginning distracted here.

No, no, that is helpful. And I hadn't thought of it that way, because we can work to be more effective, but effectual calling is a supernatural work of the spirit. And I think I heard Zane Pratt from Southern say one time that contextualization is not to make the gospel more palatable, it's to make the gospel more clear.

That's what we're trying to do ineffective. We're not trying to say, well, that's a hard thing. Let's make it an easy thing.

We're trying to say, I want to make sure that I'm explaining this in a way that you can understand. So effective, effectual, I like that. Let me finish with two final questions.

And if you have the book, I'll point to page 236. Again, talking to Brian DeVries about his excellent book, You Will Be My Witnesses. Another one of these helpful figures that you just pull together biblical themes.

And then when you put them all together, you say, yes, we need to talk about each one of these. So you say the church, you can talk about as hospital, temple, embassy, school, fortress, just walk around that wheel and tell us a couple of sentences about each of those five pictures. Good.

So it's the church in the world. And so this chapter, I think it's chapter 10, is the community. So we as a collective body of believers, the church, we share.

And of course, the unity, we're making God's manifold wisdom known. And then it's a posture. What is our posture as church to the world? How do we understand ourselves in relation to the world? Not what the world thinks of us, but rather how do we position ourselves in the world to witness to them.

And it's interesting how each church has their own little signature or their own unique identity, their own DNA as it were. And some churches act as a hospital for sinners and they're busy bringing in everyone sick and lame and maiming spiritually needy. And that's great.

That's wonderful. That's a beautiful picture. The church is hospital.

And we're healing people with the gospel. Others see the church as fortress. So we're protecting the truth.

We are a place of safety, a place of refuge in a hostile environment. And we're a place for people to find that refuge in Christ and to be refreshed. So on 46, for instance, we have this kind of this narrative.

God is our refuge in our strength of fortress. Others see the church as a school. It's there to teach, to disciple the nations or to teach others and to be, you know, theology education fits very well in this metaphor.

To bring God's truth or following in the footsteps of Jesus, the prophetic role of the church and society, teaching society. Others see the church as an embassy. So we go out, as it were, into a foreign society, a society that's foreign and opposed to God in his word.

And we are there to make a beachhead, as it were, or be an embassy and be Christ ambassadors, 2 Corinthians 5, be His ambassadors in the world. Others see the church as a temple. And we witness to others by the beauty of our worship, a very attractive worship, bringing them in and bringing the gospel to them evangelistically in the preaching and in the fellowship of the saints.

The church is a temple where God's worship is attractive and in healing. And so all of these metaphors capture essence, I think, of the church's posture to the world. And I say somewhere here that really we should try to choose two or three and not just be one as a church, but that our church should try to be two or three of these metaphors at once.

Maybe it's hospital in school, or maybe it's embassy and temple, I don't know. But in this way, how you think of yourself as church in the world, and then how can you capitalize on those gifts and opportunities that God has given you? And so that's what I'm kind of pushing people in the last chapter. I'm trying to push church leaders to think through, okay, how does God specifically ask them to be witnesses in their particular context and in their particular area of society? Yeah, I don't want to come to that.

I just want to say again how helpful those five things, again, hospital, temple, embassy, school, fortress, this is sort of thing. You could teach in a new members class, you could teach, you could walk your elders through it, you could do a vision community. And what's really important is that no Christian who knows their Bible is going to disagree with any of those five things.

You're not going to say, oh, well, that's bad. But what tends to happen is churches get completely lopsided and you're right, no church is going to be able to say, we are equally proficient at all five of these pictures. And I think sometimes churches beat themselves up because they look at the thing they're worst at, and instead of spending time on the things they're best at, they just say if only we could do this one thing that we're worst at.

Well, no, you may have a certain DNA. And yet what you said is really wise, because I see it all the time, churches that not only isolate just one of these kind of images, but they isolate it in a way that almost pushes the others aside as bad. So take hospital and fortress because those two things kind of are at opposite ends sometimes.

You've got one church that is worth a church for the sick, the dying, the needy, the hurting, the broken. And so they become very soft on the truth because any kind of that's not building a bridge to the people who need a hospital or the fortress church is all kind of poke a finger in the eye of the culture come here. This is a refuge.

You live in a dark dying place. The limbs have taken over American context, and now you can have this church. Well, there's some truth about the church being an arc sailing through the stormy waters of the world, but that's not the only thing.

So I really like how you just highlight those five biblical ways of looking at the church. And you led nicely, Brian, here to the last question. On page 259, you have another one of these tables.

I won't read through it all. But you look at method of witness, present state, what to stop, what to start. So this is helpful what churches could think about.

You have a bunch of categories, witness as loving confrontation, witness as expectant worship, as discipleship training, as gospel living, gospel speaking, gospel defense. You have these categories. I won't ask you to go through each one, but I wonder in your experience or conviction or opinion, do you have one or two things that you've seen? Either the American church, South African church, that you think, hey, a lot of churches should probably stop doing this and start doing that.

You have a couple of practical things that you've often seen in churches relative to these witness categories. Yeah, you make me think now, Kevin. That's a good question.

Let me just back up and tell you, this comes from, so I was teaching this material in a rural place in Zambia. And I thought, no, how am I going to make this apply? And so I actually drew on the board, this chart. And these are the 10 methods we developed from Old Testament and New Testament, of course.

And then it really worked actually there in rural Zambia some years ago, because the church leaders said, hey, we can assess ourselves with these criteria. And I think, though, to say that there is one area that all churches are weakened and another that they're strong in, I think each church is so different. One church witness is showing compassion in a way that brings to the word of Christ.

Maybe very good at that. And another church defending the gospel truth and doing apologetic type ministries. And I think each church is so different.

We'd rather have to see it as God is using all of us, and we all have strengths and weaknesses. And yet we all can grow in different areas where do you assess your church to be the strongest? Where do you assess your church to be the weakness? And then, of course, seeing these weaknesses, where can we grow? The loving confrontation, I think maybe if you're asking for two of them, loving confrontation, that's coming from the Old Testament prophetic witness. And then gospel defense, it's similar.

Those two, I like to think of it as, I think I say it somewhere, maybe I don't remember. But loving confrontation has to go together because to confront or to be firm with the truth and call out where there's air has to come with the love. And I think many churches are very strong in defending the truth, but perhaps the idea of love and compassion and the idea to win.

There's particularly more conservative faithful churches when it comes to sound theology, maybe a bit weaker, maybe a bit weaker when it comes to loving and compassion. And so I think it's more helpful to say, how can we be more of all of this? Because all ten of these are identified as biblical methods of the witness of God's people. And if you are strong in one area and weak in another, then I think maybe it's a bit lopsided and needs to get some work to do.

Yeah, absolutely. Talking to Brian DeVries, Brian, thank you for being on LBE. His book, You Will Be My Witnesses, came out recently from Crossway.

So excellent book on theology for God's Church, serving in God's mission. Hopefully I'll make it back to South Africa sometime. You may make it back to Grand Rapids, and I may make it back to Grand Rapids, so I hope that we can meet in person.

Thank you for being on today, Brian. Thank you, Kevin. I'm honored by the opportunity.

Thank you very much. So LBE listeners, one more episode this year, and I'm getting started, already started on lining up. Great guests for next semester.

So until next time, glorify God, enjoy him forever, and read a good book.