Good News to the Poor, by Tim Chester

This book is my first introduction to U.K. pastor Tim Chester, and so far I'm pretty impressed. Chester, as pastor, church planter, and seminary professor, longs to see the church embrace social involvement and ministry to the poor with a focus on the gospel.  His book Good News to the Poor: Social Involvement and the Gospel (an updating of 2004's Good News to the Poor: The Gospel Through Social Involvement) gives a solid biblical, theological foundation for the responsibility of the church to address poverty and other social needs, while placing priority on the salvation of the lost.

His perspective is so refreshing.  There are plenty of churches and Christian organizations that emphasize social involvement, but many neglect the gospel.  They embrace charity and development as a means to address human rights as an end in themselves, but this is a "godless" approach, "an attempt to develop an ethic without God."  Chester writes, "as valid as cultural and social involvement are in their own right, they cannot be seen in isolation from the task of reconciling people to God through the gospel."  Christians are stewards of "greatest gift we have to offer a needy world: the words of eternal life."  We must not be ashamed to make the declaration of the good news of the gospel and integral part of social ministry; the temporal needs of people should not distract us from their eternal needs.

Key to social involvement and sustainable development is the presence of the church in a community.  Unbelievers ought to experience the church as "a caring, inclusive community," where non-Christians can become a part of Christian community.  The presence of the church and the redemptive work of to the gospel ought to set Christian social involvement apart from secular efforts.  Social ministry ought never to be separated from the life of the church, and vice versa.  "It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. . . . Our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. . . . If we ignore the world we betray the word of God which sends us out to serve the world.  If we ignore the word of God we have nothing to bring the world."

Chester's book certainly challenges the conventions and priorities of rich, Western Christians (He points out that virtually every Christian in the U.S. or U.K. can be described as rich compared to the world as a whole).  His quotes American writers and activists like Ron Sider and Jim Wallis favorably, and Chester's perspective is certainly complementary to theirs.  But (at least in my reading of Sider and Wallis) Chester places a much higher priority that these two on evangelism and the proclamation of the gospel.  More than perhaps any writer I have read in the area of social ministry and the church, Chester strikes a great balance between the two by linking them together inextricably.  Well done.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!