The Church Proclaims and Performs the Gospel

The key question for communities that embrace the gospel is this: Does our church practice what it preaches? Do we perform “grace”? Whether we like it or not – and the truth is often hard to bear – it is the life of the church that truly manifests (or fundamentally denies) the gospel we embrace. Scot McKnight sums it up well:

A church always performs the gospel it proclaims because its performance is its proclamation. If you look at a church and what it does and how it operates you will see the gospel of that church. The important point to make here is that the deepest indicator of that church’s gospel cannot be limited to the pastor’s sermons, or the Sunday school teachers’ teaching, or the doctrinal statement’s affirmations, or the summer camp offerings, or the aesthetic expressions. The sure indicator of the gospel in a local community is how those Christians live.

Because the church both proclaims and performs the gospel, the goal of church life is “the formation of a community that embodies the gospel” To accomplish this, the church must inhabit the story of grace that unfolds in the sacred Scriptures.