Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church

For centuries, Christians sought to rescue people from this world. Today, we're trying to fix it. While this shift is helpful in some ways, in other ways it can be quite dangerous. Endangered Gospel flips the script on this conversation by stressing the core gospel truth that rather than ushering in a new world through social activism, God's people already are the new world in Christ. It's not our job to make this world a better place, but to be the better place God has already made in this world. That's good news! If we let go of this truth, we become servants of the world and not God. We also lose the great joy and abundant life that God intended us to have in community. Jesus himself said that the world will know we are Christians by our love for one another--not the fervor of our activism. Social action makes us feel relevant and alive, but it can't be the center of our new life in Christ. Endangered Gospel explores how we might enthusiastically embrace the social dimensions of the gospel without divorcing them from the church or forcing them on the world. Read this book, hear the gospel story afresh, and embrace the good news of God's kingdom! ""Endangered Gospel is at the same time a prophetic critique of a church that has lost its way as well as a careful, patient, accessible sketch of what a kingdom-shaped church is designed to look like. John Nugent is a careful scholar, a deep thinker, a judicious critic, and a committed churchman, and in this book he reveals once again why he is becoming a leading Anabaptist voice when it comes to church and society. I have read very few books with which I agreed as much as Endangered Gospel."" --Scot McKnight, Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary ""In an era where more and more Christians desperately long to make the world a better place, John Nugent dares to question these well-meaning desires by challenging us to recover our unique and peculiar calling as the church: to serve the world by embodying and bearing witness to God's better place, the in-breaking kingdom of God."" --Philip D. Kenneson, Professor of Theology and Philosophy, Milligan College; Author, Life on the Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community John Nugent is Professor of Old Testament at Great Lakes Christian College. He is the author of The Politics of Yahweh (2011), editor of Radical Ecumenicity (2010) and The End of Sacrifice (2011), and coeditor of the three-volume Yoder for Everyone series (2012-14).Read less