For more than fifty years—encapsulated in a famous backroom debate between Billy Graham and John Stott, but in reality stretching back further, to the beginnings of the neo-evangelical movement and Carl F. H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism—evangelicals have wrestled with the nature and extent of the church’s mission.
Is the mission of the church narrow, focused primarily on conversion through sharing the gospel and seeking to persuade others to trust in Christ? Or is it broad, encompassing everything that Christians are sent in the world to do, through following Christ’s commands? How does the mission of the local church when gathered relate to the obedience required of Christians scattered about in their various vocations? Should evangelism take priority over social action, or are both evangelism and social action equal partners, or as John Stott memorably suggested, like two wings of a plane?
These questions have proven remarkably persistent, not least because they press into deep theological convictions, ecclesiological instincts, and contextual pressures that vary widely across cultures and eras. All four of David Bebbington’s oft-cited markers of evangelicalism (biblical authority, the centrality of the cross, the necessity of personal conversion, and social activism) converge in this debate.
In the early years of this century, no figure has been more influential in arguing for a holistic (more often now termed “integral”) understanding of the church’s mission than Christopher J. H. Wright. Nowhere is this vision articulated more comprehensively than in The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, first published in 2006. The book prompted extensive discussion, particularly regarding the Old Testament’s contribution to the biblical storyline, the relationship between the church and ethnic Israel, and the appropriate breadth of responsibility assigned to the people of God in reflecting God’s mission in the world.
Wright is a disciple of John Stott. He is a distinguished Old Testament scholar, and one of the primary architects of The Cape Town Commitment that emerged from the third Lausanne Congress in 2010. His influence on global evangelical missiology is difficult to overstate.
I read the recently released second edition of The Mission of God with keen interest and genuine appreciation. Wright has clearly taken seriously criticisms of the first edition, offering further refinement, engagement with subsequent scholarship, and clarification of contested points. In many respects, this revised edition is stronger than its predecessor.
And yet, despite the book’s improvements, I remain concerned about the practical outworking of Wright’s vision in the day-to-day life of local church congregations.
Put simply, I believe when considering the church’s mission the language of primacy or priority for verbal proclamation of the gospel is warranted. Wright disagrees. He prefers the language of centrality rather than primacy, and he offers two principal reasons for this preference.
First, Wright worries that the language of priority easily implies that everything else is secondary at best, rendering evangelism the only real expression of mission while other forms of obedience are treated as optional or substandard. He cautions against taxonomies or any attempt to rank our good works, noting in a footnote that Jesus, in the Great Commission, did not say, “teaching them to obey whatever you consider to have priority among all that I have commanded you” (401). The comprehensiveness of Jesus’s command—all that he has taught—resists such hierarchies.
Second, Wright argues that the language of primacy assumes evangelism must be the starting point in every context. On the ground, however, mission often begins with physical, social, or relational needs. In such circumstances, any number of entry points may serve as the beginning of faithful witness. Wright therefore proposes the language of ultimacy rather than primacy. Mission resembles a wheel, he suggests, with multiple spokes addressing the complex needs of the world, all connected to the hub of the gospel. Verbal proclamation is vital, but not necessarily first in sequence.
To be clear: Wright is emphatic that there is no genuinely holistic or integral mission without evangelism. On this point, we agree:
“Mission may not always begin with evangelism. But mission that does not ultimately seek for and include bearing witness in some form to the good news of what God has done in Christ, the call to repentance, faith, and discipleship, has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission.” (418)
I had the opportunity to discuss these matters briefly with Dr. Wright during the Fourth Lausanne Congress in Seoul in 2024, on a brisk walk from our hotel to the convention center. He expressed some frustration that this question remains a source of contention among evangelicals globally when, in his view, the decisive issue is ensuring that the gospel remains the motivation and central hub of all Christian mission. Given the diversity of gifts within the body of Christ, different believers and communities may appropriately emphasize different forms of service.
I do appreciate Wright’s insistence on evangelism as indispensable for integral mission as well as the cautions he lays out for those who believe evangelism should take priority. In the end, my concern is one of emphasis.
In a vision of disciple-making that includes obedience to all Christ has commanded, are there certain responsibilities that carry a certain weight or that are required for all believers, regardless of their gifts and passions?
My position on the extent of the church’s mission aligns in important respects with what missiologist David Hesselgrave has called “restrained holism.” This approach preserves a traditional priority for evangelism while affirming the indispensability of social action. It recognizes that the church embodies and extends the kingdom of God across multiple spheres of life, especially as Christians live out their faith in their ordinary vocations. At the same time, it maintains a distinction between the mission of the gathered church—which remains more narrowly defined—and the wide-ranging obedience of believers in the world, while reserving a special priority for evangelistic proclamation.
The case for retaining the language of priority is compelling for at least three reasons.
First, the history of the modern missions movement is sobering. A survey of missionary conferences and movements since 1910 reveals a repeated tendency for believers to drift away from evangelism every time the parameters of Christian mission broaden.
This outcome is not inevitable, and Wright is right to insist that Scripture, not history, must govern our understanding of mission. Still, historical patterns should alert us to recurring contextual pressures that result in a loss of evangelism. History may not repeat itself, but it seems often to lead to this particular rhyme. And when verbal proclamation quietly recedes, we risk losing precisely what Wright insists is essential to integral mission.
Second, in our contemporary context, the world almost always and everywhere pushes back harder on the exclusivity of Christ for salvation than any other part of our message. Full-throated gospel proclamation dares to announce something that many people in our culture are increasingly unwilling to hear: that we are not speaking of my truth or your truth, but of a public reality that holds for all people, in all places, at all times.
The gospel announcement is profoundly subversive. It strikes at the root of a dominant pluralism that allows Jesus to function as a private helper or personal savior but forbids the claim that his lordship is objectively and universally true. Wright himself affirms this understanding of evangelism, which is precisely why he presses the implications of “Jesus is Lord” into public and social life rather than confining them to privatized faith. He is right on this. Throughout The Mission of God, he upholds the uniqueness of the God of Israel, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He acknowledges the Scriptural teaching on Christ as the fulfillment of Israel’s story.
Our disagreement lies more on the strategic plane: how do we keep this daring proclamation at the forefront so that it does not, in practice, become merely one activity among many?
Wright addresses this concern in a footnote, summarizing a common argument this way:
“The world doesn’t hate, oppose, or persecute us when we do good… It is only when we proclaim the gospel… that we encounter opposition. So that should be our prime focus in mission.”
He then pushes back on this line of argumentation:
“It is an odd argument, first because Jesus and Paul and Peter (on good Old Testament authority) do urge us to do good works on the grounds that the world will see and (sometimes) approve and ask questions about our faith and our God. If the world approves when we do good, that is hardly an argument for withdrawing from some acts. Good works are one way of being the light of the world.
“But, second, it simply isn’t true in many parts of the world. It is a sentiment that reflects a rather comfortable Western Christian context but is far from the experience of many Christians in other parts of the world and through history. Christians do suffer opposition when they do good in a way that exposes evil or challenges vested interests, when they combine compassion with seeking justice for the victims of oppression, and (in the case above) when they seek to protect creation from destructive, greed-motivated exploitation. Such Christian advocacy for creation can stir up political, legal, and even violent opposition. After all, Peter was fully aware of the possibility—likelihood indeed—that Christians would suffer for doing good (which in the context means concrete acts of good-doing, not just evangelistic witness) and urged them not to retaliate but to go on doing good.”
I do not dispute Wright’s pushback here, but I don’t believe he’s interacting with the heart of the initial critique. No one is saying that evangelism is the only good work that stirs up opposition. Neither is anyone advocating we retreat from ministries of mercy that receive approval from the world.
Rather, when certain activities that flow from Christian mission get celebrated (such as mercy ministry) and others (such as evangelism) are vilified, our emphasis on evangelism must increase, not diminish, lest societal pushback reshape our witness. I’ve heard Ed Stetzer illustrate this point with a simple analogy: imagine pushing forward with both arms—one representing evangelism and the other social action. When one arm encounters greater resistance, additional pressure is required on that side, not to displace the other, but simply to keep both in alignment.
This leads to a third concern: evangelism is what makes our good works as Christians salty. It is the cup of cold water offered in Jesus’s name that distinguishes us from the almsgiving or mercy ministry of other religions, or those with no religion at all. Historically, this distinctiveness is often the first element to erode unless it is frequently stressed.
In our conversation in Seoul, Dr. Wright urged me to look further back than the modern missions movement for a better representation of holistic mission among evangelicals. He noted that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evangelicals did not bifurcate between gospel proclamation and social action. He is right.
But if we’re going to stretch back to the time of the Wesleys and Simeons and Wilberforces, we should also acknowledge that one would be hard-pressed to find any Christian prior to the mid-twentieth century who would have listed “creation care” alongside evangelism as one of the five marks of mission (as is now the case in the Church of England). I say that not to deny or diminish the Christian responsibility to fulfill the cultural mandate and steward creation wisely. My point is that in terms of New Testament attention, surely our emphasis is skewed if we lay recycling next to evangelism and say the language of “primacy” or “priority” for the latter is inappropriate.
Doesn’t the weight of eternal separation from God require a corresponding weightiness in how we think about our Christian responsibility as God’s people?
I realize that some may fear that stressing the eternal stakes will lead to an overemphasis on evangelism and a diminishing focus on seeking justice and showing mercy. But I believe the eternal weightiness of personal salvation should lead not only to a priority on evangelism but an intensification of the church’s social witness. After all, Scripture is clear that faith without works is dead, and that to neglect the weightier matters of the law draws condemnation.
I sometimes wonder whether the bifurcation between evangelism and social action in our era is not the result of evangelicals being so eternally minded that they neglect social responsibility, but rather the consequence of a broader diminishment of the weight of eternity across every area of life. Without that grounding, some evangelicals grow presumptuous and self-assured in their evangelistic fervor, even as their lives betray a complicity in injustice or resentment. Meanwhile, other evangelicals throw themselves into various forms of social action while losing sight of the eternal destiny of those they serve, quietly drifting toward a works-righteousness or a functional universalism.
I appreciate Wright for decrying both of these distortions as falling short of truly integral mission, and on that point we agree. The lingering question is whether the language of ultimacy—and the placing of all the good works Christians are called to perform, from creation care to evangelism to mercy ministry, on the same plane—leads in practice to greater holism, or whether it risks reinforcing the very bifurcation Wright is right to resist.
This debate is unlikely to disappear, and maybe the tension can remain a fruitful one. The relationship between evangelism and social action remains a defining feature of evangelical self-understanding. For readers seeking an entry point into the conversation, Four Views on the Church’s Mission offers a helpful spectrum of perspectives, with contributions from Jonathan Leeman and Christopher Wright, as does The Mission of the Church: Five Views in Conversation, in which Ed Stetzer, in dialogue with advocates of integral mission, presses the case for retaining a strong emphasis on evangelism.
Clarity about the church’s mission can help us order our emphases rightly. The church is a sign and instrument of the kingdom of God—a people united by faith in the gospel announcement of the crucified and risen King Jesus. Our mission, therefore, is not merely to do good in the world, nor merely to speak true words about salvation, but to go into the world in the power of the Spirit and make disciples by proclaiming this gospel, calling people to ongoing repentance and faith, and demonstrating the truth and power of that gospel by living under the lordship of Christ for the glory of God and the good of the world. The challenge before us is not to choose between proclamation and demonstration, declaration and display, but to hold them together in a way that preserves their proper order—so that neither eclipses the other, and the church’s witness remains faithful, compelling, and whole.