http://gfa.org/slumministryToday, our missionary teams serve in thousands of slum neighborhoods, bringing hope in a two-fold mannerthrough the message of Jesus' redemption and through living out His sacrificial love. They conduct free medical clinics and teach basic hygiene and preventive health measures. They provide literacy classes for adults, conduct tutoring classes for children and hold weekly Sunday schools. They have planted hundreds of churches, and thousands have heard the Gospel.
http://gfa.org/slumministry
You see this ministry helps people physically and materially. It is typical of so many Bible-believing, bornagain evangelical ministries.
But is does not support the social gospel. In fact GFA is fundamentalist in its adherence to the bornagain Gospel message. For them the social works are good works, not a work program to get forgiveness.
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
Read Ezekiel, tell us why Sodom was destroyed:"What care I for the number of your sacrifices? says the LORD. I have had enough of whole-burnt rams and fat of fatlings; In the blood of calves, lambs and goats I find no pleasure.
When you come in to visit me, who asks these things of you?
Trample my courts no more! Bring no more worthless offerings; your incense is loathsome to me. New moon and sabbath, calling of assemblies, octaves with wickedness: these I cannot bear.
Your new moons and festivals I detest; they weigh me down, I tire of the load.
When you spread out your hands, I close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood!
Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow."
Which Nation does this remind you of today if it is not our own? Sad to say but the Church has become as Sodom as well."And look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy."
There is no Social Gospel there is only the Gospel.
I appreciate what you are saying and thank you for it. Ask yourself if there is an equally plausible interpretation: That the commands of the Bible are not the Gospel.Mayfly, the user was suggesting that trying to split Jesus' message into a religious gospel and a social gospel is impossible because they are the same.
The gospel is the good news about Jesus: Jesus is Lord. That is the basic gospel, the basic creed. Don't try to add anything unecessary to it!
Perhaps you can see that adding social works is the unnecessary part. (One can embrace the gospel and repent and die at once and go to heaven without doing social work, so social work is a addition, a follow on after salvation.)That is the basic gospel, the basic creed. Don't try to add anything unecessary to it!
