Thought-provoking post, Tyler, but think you’re painting with too broad a brush. There are still many many churches who neglect serving the poor and underpriviledged and marginalized (right… “social justice”) because they are so busy focussing on preaching and teaching the gospel message. It’s like they sat down at the spaghetti dinner before the big race… and they just stay there, feeding on the Word. So, we must embrace a both/and mindset. But for as many of the 20-something generation whjo have plunged headlong into social justice to the neglect of evangelism, there are many churches who are learners and talkers but not doers. One of my first blog posts was about this… the necessity of living in the tension of BOTH/AND in many areas of life. [http://su.pr/2E9iDx] This is a great example. Thanks again, Tyler. Love your blog.

I completely agree that too many churches have ignored the importance of meeting physical needs and only embrace the importance of meeting spiritual needs through evangelism. Hard to talk about this subject without painting with a broad stroke.

Yes – it’s very hard in this forum (blog posts, short and focused) not to use a broad brush. That wasn’t meant as a criticism. You’ve got to write from a point of view, otherwise all of the nuance would tangle up your main point. Thanks again – I long to be a part of a church who more and more is effective in both realms.

Tyler, I don’t know if it’s intended, but this statement,

“I find it interesting that in my generation it is socially acceptable to join a social justice movement or organization, but it is not as acceptable to promote the Gospel through evangelism.”

and this statement

“Despite my support of the movement within Christianity to support social justice, I wish we wouldn’t have abandoned our desire to reach unbelievers with the Good News in the process.”

make it sound like you are drawing a line between “evangelism” and “social action.” Or at least to me it lacks any sense in which social justice is a facet of “evangelism.” I would offer that Really what we are speaking of is not social action v. evangelism but about how much of evangelism is done by word and how much is done by deed.

I want to be wary of drawing a line between these two because they are about the same thing. Being engaged in social action, loving our neighbors, etc is a large part of what we call evangelism. That is the words without the actions are pretty cheap and the actions without the words are pretty cheap, but I think it isn’t fair to draw social justice as different than evangelism, because it implies that our actions are not part of bearing witness.

I agree that there are some in our generation that have swung the pendulum from being all about word to being all about deed, but I’m not sure that this is a fair generalization. I know many more of our generation who instead take the tack that our actions make room for our words to be heard. As an example, I am familiar with C.A.I. which I’m a part of and we have realized we can’t do one without the other. I think you’d find a similar stance with the Ecclesia Network and Acts 29 amongst others, which leads me to question how prevalent the mindset that it’s just about deed really is.

Obviously, you are involved in different circles than I am, I just want to be wary that we aren’t swinging at an old social gospel strawman that no longer exists.(at least not in a widespread fashion) But I will also leave room that maybe there is a large contingency of people saying deed is enough with whom I am not familiar.

ugh… was not intending my comment to be as long as the post itself.

All fair points. I completely agree on your “words without action and action without words” point. I do believe the Bible says the same thing. In my experience, social justice is often done completely lacking any words or focus on spirituality. Many people would say that they let the Holy Spirit do the work without ever even talking about faith. I agree these two subjects aren’t mutually exclusively and often a line doesn’t need to be drawn between social justice/evangelism, but I brought up the point because far too often people do draw a line.

This is something we’ve talked about before, so despite me coming off maybe even too strong in this post, I know we agree on the majority of this topic.

I actually think that the disciples themselves differentiated between proclamation of the word of God and social justice. Acts 6 explains that the widows and orphans were being neglected but the disciples gathered and agreed that it was not their place to “give up the preaching of the word” to tend to the social needs of widows and orphans. Obviously they didn’t believe that serving widows and orphans was the same as the preaching of the word because they said they would not, “give up” one for the other.

Acts 6:1-5:

1 Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.5 And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

The disciples did appoint others to take care of the widows and orphans but my point is that they “drew a line” between evangelism and social justice.

In this instance yes, but does that capture best how they dealt with this throughout the book of Acts and the rest of the NT that we have?

It’s easy to disagree but I would say yes. I would say that the disciples saying, “But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Is not a statement that is unique to this instance. I think it’s the disciples establishing early priorities as it pertains to the organization of the growing church. As the church is growing they are making decisions based on what they feel the Holy Spirit would have for them. Here they come to the conclusion that it would not be right for them to leave proclamation of the Word to tend to the needy. It’s not that they disregard them but they do place the priority on proclamation and delegate ministry to the widows and orphans.

I think OT references also point to the fact that people perish from lack of knowledge, not lack of food, water, or shelter (Hosea 4:6). And the prophet Amos spoke of a famine that was not food or water but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:9-12). Isaiah 61′s prophetic announcement is that Jesus has come to PREACH GOOD NEWS to the poor.

We feel the need to do works in order to introduce people to Jesus rather than just introducing them to Jesus.

I think the overall Biblical narrative leans toward Spiritual Justice over Social Justice. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is riddled with examples of people seeking the tangible rather than the seemingly intangible. The problem with our generation is no different. We would rather do works (something tangible) than introduce people to a seemingly intangible God and trust him to do the works.

So just to be clear…you believe the Bible teaches us that we should giving a starving person the Good News of the Gospel rather than some food? And if it is both, the Word must come before the food?

Yeah. That’s the “go to” question in this topic. “So if someone’s starving you would rather give them the Gospel?” It’s the go to question because our belief in the Power of the Gospel and believing that it’s only good for intangible, Spiritual purposes. We have to recognize that relationship to the Word of God has been God’s primary purpose since the beginning. Relationship with God. The words of God cause tangible things to come about. God’s words bring forth tangible light, earth, creation.

Why don’t we believe that the Word of God holds more power than a slice of bread? The Word is the only solution.

Once again I will reinforce that I believe in compassion ministries etc. I don’t believe that we abandon bringing social solutions but there is no real solution that does not begin with proclamation of the Word of God.

After reading this, all I can say is, “Well said Tyler, well said.”

@tyler & jordan:
if you give man bread- you ARE giving him the gospel. if you rescue a girl from prostitution, you ARE evangelizing the gospel of jesus christ. the fact is- our actions speak louder than our words and therefore, i do not think under any circumstances, that our generation is separating the two. i think we have discovered that the action IS jesus. he went into the world and healed the blind w/o having to tell them who he was. he told stories, laughed and ultimately everything he did showed, pointed to his father. if i live serving, seeking justice for the helpless, i am being jesus. the words will come if and when they are needed. and i believe our generation wants to participate in that.

Ash – completely disagree. It’s this kind of logic that our generation uses to justify doing good deeds without including any sort of proclamation of the Gospel. Thts exactly what I was saying in my first post. The Gospel is not simply meeting someone’s materialistic need of being rescued or fed. Our generation has become so unbelievably meterialistic in our own nation that we have begun to arrogantly and wrongly believe that of w only meet the meterialistic needs of the world we are preaching the Gospel. We are not.

Um, do both.

Why is that a difficult concept?

Instead of spending your time wondering IF you should do it (this whole thing seems over-thought), spend your time figuring out HOW. We all know it’s difficult. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be finding excuses to neglect one for the other.

My point is not that you should do one and not the other. I’m just saying that they are not the same thing.

You are too kind Dave.

“If you give man bread- you ARE giving him the gospel.”

How is that possible?

Agreed!

I’m curious on this one as well.

I agree as well.

Great post! Just yesterday I sat through a couple of workshops at Catlyst West Coast in the Origins track where Scot McKnight and then later Dan Kimball emphasized the need for both social justice and evangelism. The Origins Network (www.originsproject.org) emphasizes both of these important means for bringing transformation. The notes from these workshops are up at my site. Thanks for this post!

Wish I could have gone to Dan’s lab sessions. Thanks for sharing that Eric.

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by shradar: @tylerbraun nails it on social justice. http://bit.ly/dg3OBw extremely challenging….

I don’t think Ash is as far off as you guys feel he is with this statement.

An action can be a proclamation. I’m hoping that we can agree on that.

Giving a hungry man a piece of bread is the beginning of proclaiming the good news. It goes beyond just a piece of bread to the message that there is someone who cares about them and that there just might be a reason to hope that there are people who believe the world can be a different way.

Freeing a woman from forced prostitution is a proclamation of freedom, that there is something going on in the world that says that what she is forced into is wrong and broken and not how the world is supposed to be. Jesus and the gospel of his kingdom are all about this sort of freedom. Jesus is also about something deeper.

But in that moment, where someone is in brokenness, an action that says “this isn’t how the world is supposed to be” is indeed a proclamation of the gospel. Because it says “there is another way for the world.”

So we may not be able to say it is a complete proclamation of the gospel. Surely there is more that needs to be proclaimed, but it is indeed a proclamation. I can think of another incomplete proclamation as well, which is to only speak but not offer another way of being. This is also incomplete.

While we may feel Ash has gone too far in stating that it is a proclamation, it begs the larger question of whether any of our actions or words are ever a complete proclamation. My feeling is no, but if we don’t have both, we are not truly evangelizing (Tyler I know you’ve heard me say this over and over, so apologies )