George W. DeHoff
The business of the church is to preach the Gospel of Christ. It exists for this purpose. Without the Gospel men are lost. The Gospel is God’s power unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). There is nothing else that the church does that it is secondary to preaching the gospel. Moreover, there is nothing else done by the church but that some other organization is doing the same thing—and sometimes doing it better. If the church is not going to conduct a militant campaign of preaching the gospel it had as well go out of existence, and that is what it will do unless it preaches the Gospel.
It is not the business of the church to operate colleges and universities soup kitchens, relief stations, summer camps, youth centers, entertainment bureaus, ball teams and such like! The church must preach the gospel and “visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.”
If the church goes into the entertainment business in an attempt to reach people (reach them with what?), men of the world will say, “That is real Christianity.” If the church opens a soup kitchen, worldly people (who believe that men are saved out of the church as well as in it and who do not know what it’s all about anyway) will say, “That is real Christianity.”
But if the church preaches the Gospel, men of the world will be displeased—that is the purpose of Gospel Preaching: to cause them to become displeased with their condition and to become Christians.
Every inch of ground which we now occupy has been gained by Gospel reaching, by a campaign of teaching Facts to be Believed, Commands to be Obeyed, and Promises to be Enjoyed.
Every Christian should teach, preach, dispute, confute, refute, rebuke, exhort and whatever else is necessary know the difference between truth and error. This is the work of the church.
