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The Gospel Coalition kicked off in late May with little fanfare, just how organizers wanted it. Any conference headlined by D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, and John Piper would likely attract more than 500 attenders with a little publicity. But Gospel Coalition leaders chose a word-of-mouth strategy and capped attendance by hosting the two-day conference in the chapel at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). They wanted to test their ideas on a relatively small, friendly group.

Don't let the low-key strategy fool you. This new group, spearheaded by 40 stake-holding theologians and pastors, has big goals. They want nothing less than a renewed evangelical commitment to core confessional beliefs. And they have the strategy to match their ambition.

The Gospel Coalition already boasts one hallmark achievement with its foundational documents, a confessional statement and theological call to ministry. Gospel Coalition's diverse leadership, ranging from Presbyterian pastor Phil Ryken to emerging leader Mark Driscoll, hashed out the documents in meetings over more than two years. Carson wrote the original draft of the confessional statement, while Keller penned the theological call to ministry. The confession, dense and comprehensive, addresses current trends with a positive tone meant to attract rather than condemn. But because the confession betrays a broadly Reformed perspective and expects that men lead churches and homes, it will not appeal to every evangelical. The ministry statement, on the other hand, can help all evangelicals navigate cultural challenges such as politicized faith, consumerism, and theological and moral relativism.

Nearly every speaker during the May event expressed a sense of loss. They lamented how the evangelical movement has fragmented as it has grown in the last 60 years. Holding in one hand a statement of belief and in the other a cultural strategy, Gospel Coalition leaders could have been reenacting early meetings of the National Association of Evangelicals.

"I want to see more churches and leaders joining hands across denominational and network lines to think out how to do effective mission based on the historic, classical understanding of the gospel as it has come down to us from the Reformation and through the Awakenings," said Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Carson, a New Testament professor at TEDS, said the Gospel Coalition wants to renew evangelical faithfulness to a set of unimpeachable doctrines. One popular workshop, led by Ryken, addressed justification by faith alone.

"There are lots of people today who call themselves evangelicals, who no evangelical would have recognized as such 50 years ago," Carson said. "And partly because of the drift toward postmodern epistemology, there is less and less sense of the need for a center."

Even five years ago, this group could not have come together, Carson said.

"Maybe the drift is so bad in the broader culture that [the group's members] want friends, they want colleagues in ministry who have a similar vision," he told CT. "They're not always found in the same denomination or same geographical areas. They're crossing all kinds of boundaries to strengthen their understanding of the center."

But if the center could not hold these last few decades, how can it hold today with a larger and more diverse evangelical movement? Gospel Coalition leaders warn that cooperation cannot come at the expense of clarity. They hope to avoid the problem of whittling away important beliefs in order to reach a lowest common denominator. They also recognize that too much definition will end in a fellowship of one.

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October 2007, Vol. 51, No. 10