Keller's Missiology - Part 3

So we've done the nature, we've done the goal, now it's time for the method of Keller's mission.

  

In a word, the method of Keller's mission is the gospel. [An the crowd goes wild!] According to Keller,

The gospel is the dynamic for all heart-change, life-change, and social-change. Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering [...] the radical grace of God.

 (Redeemer Vision Paper #1: The Gospel: Key To Change)

Keller has totally the right answer, but it is frustratingly right. It is like the Sunday school kid who always answers: God, Jesus, HS, Bible, Prayer... It's the right answer but you were hoping they might go a little deeper, or spell things out a bit more specifically. So how does Keller apply the gospel so that it brings about change? 


To do this, Keller has seven elements of a missional church which are how it applies the gospel to their context. (The seven elements are from a paper called 'The "Missiology" of Redeemer' pages 223-25 of the Redeemer Church Planter Manual, or you can get a re-worked version online here. This one has five points but he has just combined a few.)


1. "Loving the city" by having a positive attitude toward the city, and a willingness to live in the city.
 
2. "Re-telling the gospel in the culture’s story" by having sympathy for a culture’s aspirations and demonstrating how the gospel is the best realisation of those aspirations. (E.g. You want to be loved? no one has loved you more than God as shown by his sending of Jesus.)


3. "Discoursing in the vernacular" through avoiding “tribal” language, “we-they” language, and speaking in a tone appropriate to the culture and anticipating that non-believers will be present. (This is my fav. He finds a complicated way of saying something that is supposed to encourage us to speak in a way that "real" people understand! 'Don't mind me, I'm just discoursing in the vernacular...')


4. Having a "counter-intuitive word-deed ministry" through the combination of zeal for gospel proclamation and social justice, which, according to Keller, are not ordinarily seen together at the same church.


5. "Being a counter-cultural community" through modeling a whole alternative way of being a human society by the way they live in community.


6. Having "lay vocational cultural renewal" by supporting Christians being devoted to their work in secular vocational fields. This involves training them to be Christian in public as they engage in their work, public life and culture of the city. 


7. Having a "global church kingdom consciousness" through showing the watching world unity within the wider Christian community whist still maintaining integrity.


Now, when Keller's missiology is compared to others that seek to bring the gospel to the post-Christian west, his priority to the city sticks out like a sore thumb. Stetzer, Bosch & Newbigin don't have anything like it.


I know I haven't detailed much yet about the priority to the city, but the point here is that in his missiological method, the city priority is what sets him apart from the rest.


Next week I'll outline Keller's city priority.