Abstract
Over the last decade numerous books have appeared to describe the mission of the church in Western culture, especially in North America. Name the adjective: e.g., “missional,” “provocative,” “passionate,” “irresistible,” “sticky,” “seeker,” “attractional,” “presence-based,” “slow,” “neighborhood” – to name only a few! A whole genre now exists to come to grips with how the church understand its mission.
In The Compelling Community, pastors Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, also add an adjective, only this time it is “compelling”: the church as a local community is to be a “compelling” community, or a community transcending all natural boundaries with the supernatural power of the gospel (13). As Christians, we may cultivate this community and feed it, protect it and even use it, but we dare not pretend to create it (14). Instead, we must realize the bottom-line question of how God’s Spirit is at the center (20).
To emphasize this point, Dever and Dunlop distinguish between “gospel-plus” community and “gospel-revealing” community: “gospel-plus” community is characterized by the natural similarities persons may share with others: e.g., by how Sam and Joe are both singers in their 40s in the praise band and how they have a passion to combat poverty (22); “gospel-revealing” community, on the other hand, exists because of the depth of the gospel and the common relationship that brings persons together in Christ, disclosing to the world why the church is the church - the supernatural power of the Spirit (23).
Dever and Dunlop also expounds upon another critical aspect of the “Compelling Community” and that is the distinction between “comfort-based” and “calling-based” commitment (50). Here the authors warn of the consumer characteristics of ministry and the need to challenge persons with the gospel of new life in Christ, calling persons to radical commitment and not simply recapitulating demographical affinities (54). Instead, the call to follow Christ comes with a cost; anything less falls short of Scripture’s demands (56).
In reading The Compelling Community, persons will not be surprised that Dever and Dunlop advocate the kind of community that moves away from the affinity-based relationships advocated by church-growth experts. The argument they share with respect to the supernatural aspects of the gospel will hopefully resonate with those who have grown accustomed to the “same-old” formulas of ministry. At the same time, Dever and Dunlop’s work may also prompt discussion of how deep Christians may want to go. As Christians are discovering, the shallowness of Western culture speaks to the need for other forms of what C.S. Lewis called “deep church,” or the need for church to realize how the Holy Spirit may bring us all into the riches of the gospel – not simply with Scripture and community, but with creed, liturgy, canon, etc. (Ephesians 2:7). Such a “deepness” in no ways distracts from Dever and Dunlop’s book, but only seeks to compliment what the Spirit is already doing.