D. A. Carson: Five Trends in the Church Today

 D. A. Carson in a talk before last week’s Desiring God national conference:

4. There is a trend in our churches to be consumed by social concern.

In the most intriguing point of his talk, Don said that the Gospel plus caring for the poor was an inseparable couplet. He cautioned that if the gospel was merely assumed (and not clearly articulated), our passion for social justice would overshadow the gospel. While we are not intentionally exalting social concern over the gospel, people learn what we are excited about (gospel over caring for the poor). Carson warned, “Our passion must first be the gospel and not assume it to be understood.” He continued, “We must be careful to keep the gospel central and not turn our responses to the gospel as the main target.”

(read the rest here)

This question is of particular interest to me having gone to the Everything Must Change conference one weekend and the Desiring God conference the next.  At the first conference global issues were front and center, at the second there was no mention of global social issues at all.