Holy Woke! VP of NAMB’s SEND Network: ‘Gospel is Not Good News without Economic Restoration’
Dhati Lewis, the Lead Pastor of Blueprint Church in Atlanta, Georgia and the Vice President of Send Network with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) has some wild things to say about what the gospel is and isn’t, adding another brick in the wall of our claims that the SBC is going to hell in a handbasket over their failure to cut off and cauterize this progressive gangrene.
Dhati made the following comments on Sept 21 on his Where life exists channel.
Props to @WokepreacherTV for the video and transcript:
The gospel is not simply a message for the afterlife. It has real-time, real-life applications for our day-to-day lives. We see it modeled perfectly in the life of Jesus. We know he met the spiritual needs of people, but we also know that he met emotional needs, as well. He met economic needs and also social needs. He healed the sick, challenged corruption in leaders and systems. He honored the poor and the outcasts. Wherever Jesus went, holistic restoration was taking place.
The gospel is not good news without spiritual redemption and restoration, but the gospel is also not good news without emotional, economic, and social restoration, as well. The good news of the kingdom is that God is establishing a new order where all things, spiritual, emotional, economic, and social, are restored to their original, sinless design.
So let’s take a look at the gospel using my tool that have called the Three Circles. Traditionally, this is how we share the gospel, right? We see on here: God’s design. What do we mean? God created the world, and it was good. We lived in perfect relationship with God, with one another, and his creation. However: sin. Adam and Ever came in, sinned, and the whole world was put under a curse, bringing separation between us and God, and that’s why we understand and we look at brokenness. But the problem is is that we only are addressing spiritual brokenness. Sin led to our spiritual brokenness. We cannot earn our salvation, but we try to anyway. We look to sex, money, power, fame, and so many other things to try to get back to God. But they only lead us further and further away.
But when we learn the truth of the gospel, we learn that Jesus came to earth, died for our sins, and rose again, and that if we repent and believe, then we can have access to God. The Holy Spirit indwells in us [sic], gives us the power to recover and pursue God’s design for us, to live in perfect harmony with him.
But! Do you recognize how this gospel presentation falls short? Sin caused brokenness to more than just our spiritual needs. I believe Tim Keller is spot on when he says we must neither confuse evangelism with doing justice nor separate them from one another. You see, the gospel demands the church engage holistically with our cities.
But hey, as our #BigEva overlords tell us: There’s no liberal drift in the SBC.
Folks, it’s time to lose the leg.
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It is just amazing how much this “new gospel” always seeks to satisfy the carnal desires of mankind. Who is there that, in their own human desire, does not want a little more money, a little better health, etc.? This perverted “gospel” causes people to make demands of God for temporal, earthly blessings, instead of living a life of gratitude that He has mercifully, graciously rescued them “from the wrath that is to come.”