Book Review: You Will Be My Witnesses, by Brian A. DeVries

Brian A. DeVries, You Will Be My Witnesses: Theology for God’s Church Serving in God’s Mission. Crossway, 2024. 320 pages.

If you want your car to drive straight, you need properly aligned tires. In a similar way, a healthy local church must ensure its ministries are aligned with its mission.

What is the mission of the church? Unfortunately, the array of available answers can lead to a lack of clarity and, ultimately, to mission drift.

Brian DeVries, principal of Mukhanyo Theological College in Pretoria, South Africa, recognizes this danger and has written a helpful volume arguing that the primary mission of the church is to bear witness to God’s glory in Christ (xviii). But more than merely the work of the church, DeVries contends that witness is essential to the very nature of the church. He writes, “Christian witness is essential to the identity and calling of the church: it is not simply an activity the church performs at specific times” (176).

Helpfully, then, DeVries nests the mission of the church as a witness to the gospel within God’s mission to save sinners through the gospel. The three parts of his book defend this claim and offer a step toward clarity in an often-muddled conversation.

Mission Clarity

Throughout Part 1, readers will appreciate how DeVries faithfully traces the biblical-theological evidence for his thesis. He demonstrates that God’s consistent mission is seen through his initiative in coming into his creation, calling the sin-dead to life, convicting of sin, and comforting as he saves sinners in Christ and for his glory. In separate chapters, DeVries traces God’s mission in the Old Testament, the mission of Christ, and the mission of the Holy Spirit. Having done so, he makes the important distinction between God’s mission in Christ and the church’s mission as witness to Christ. He also rightly highlights a church-centered vision of God’s mission in the world, contending that the church is both the object of God’s mission and an agent in it (13).

In Part 2, DeVries provides a truncated glimpse of the historical discussion surrounding the mission of the church. Here he offers his definition as a contribution to the discussion, which we will consider in greater depth below. Part 3 concludes by illustrating this mission through the church’s presence, message, response, and community. These chapters present an important case for gospel proclamation as a confrontation of idolatry with the truth—helpfully highlighting the oft-neglected task of elenctics or persuasive conviction—and the importance of gospel community in the service of witnessing to the gospel and its effects. All told, this book takes an important step in clarifying the central purpose of the church: to promote obedient worship of God by witnessing to his glory and salvation in Christ.

What Is Bearing Witness?

While appreciating the merits of his proposal and the overall emphasis of the book, readers may find themselves disappointed with DeVries’s definition of witness. Offered in Part 2 as his contribution to the discussion related to the mission of the church, his definition falls short of the precision needed to clarify the difference between witness and corroboration. This is what he proposes:

The role of the church in the world after Pentecost is to bear witness to Christ by participating in God’s mission through evangelism, apologetics, global gospel partnerships, church planting, compassion ministries, cultural engagement, gospel worship, gospel suffering, and the many other related aspects of Christian witness. (117, cf. 156)

By including compassion ministries, cultural engagement, and “the many other related aspects” in how the church bears witness to Christ, DeVries unfortunately conflates evangelistic witness to the gospel with the gospel-corroborating evidence the church displays in its character and compassion. In so doing, he loses the precision that is necessary to distinguish between a church’s mission and the means by which its mission is supported.

This may seem like an unfair critique since DeVries does well elsewhere to clarify that the gospel must be proclaimed as a part of our witness. Indeed, his overall intention seems to be to rightly hold together proclamation and demonstration rather than bifurcate them (147). Furthermore, DeVries himself is sensitive to this tension, writing,

Keeping the witness of the gospel primary and foremost has always been a challenge for the church, especially when overwhelmed by the urgency of human need for compassion. A common mistake is to separate the witness of compassionate deeds from the witness of spoken words, trying to promote the one in isolation of the other. While verbal proclamation of the gospel is central (Rom. 10:14), it is also impossible for a living faith to witness without corresponding deeds (Jas. 2:26). . . .

 

Christian compassion throughout church history has been a powerful form of gospel witness, especially when the church was marginalized and powerless in society. As proven by the early church, charity in Christ’s name, especially when least deserved, often speaks the loudest in gospel witness (1 Cor. 13:1–3). (147)

His proposed evangelistic trialogue (187ff) makes it clear that he avoids the traps of preferring deed to word. But, rightly seeing how the Bible holds word and deed together, he unfortunately collapses both into his definition of witness.

If the church’s mission is to witness to God’s glorious salvation in Christ, then we must clearly maintain the distinction between witness and corroboration of witness lest we fall to thinking our deeds articulate more than they do. After all, a Christian and a Muslim handing out food to the poor are not witnesses of anything distinguishable from one another, even though their deeds are motivated by their faith. Until they proclaim what motivated their compassion, they have not witnessed. Compassion, then, is not Christian witness, even though it is a necessary and corroborating adornment of the gospel and its effects.

If I could be so indulgent as to offer a proposed edit to DeVries’s definition that maintained the distinction while reinforcing the unity of word and deed, I might suggest the following:

The role of the church is to bear witness to Christ by participating in God’s mission to save sinners and receive the worship of the nations. The church bears witness through evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Inextricably related to this, the church corroborates this witness with compassion ministries, cultural engagement, gospel suffering, and the many other related aspects of Christian worship and obedience.

Such a definition provides distinction between witness and evidence while also showing the natural connection between the gospel to which we bear witness and its manifold effects in the life of the church.

To reiterate my earlier commendation, this book is a helpful resource for churches who are wrestling with their answer to the question, “What is the mission of the church?” DeVries is right to see the church’s purpose being woven into God’s larger purpose to make himself and his salvation known in Christ, and he is right to see the idea of witness as a central thread in the church’s mission. He is even right to remind us that gospel-effected character and compassion are inextricable from and beneficial to our gospel witness. Read with clarity regarding the difference between witness and corroboration, this book will serve churches well as they seek to ensure that their ministries align with their mission.