"For the last 12 years I've travelled to several parts of the world and seen some of the worst poverty and cultural decay imaginable. The one principle that I've come away with after being on the ground, and reading thousands of pages of Christian social teaching, is that church planting and preaching the gospel alone do not create the conditions for human flourishing. Many contemporary evangelicals seem to have developed a myopic view of God redeeming the whole creation that reduces human flourishing as a church-based activity--especially the hearing of sermons.
The reduction follows this way: if only community X had more gospel centered-churches then the community X would flourish. Historically in the West, there has never been human flourishing without flourishing institutions other than the church like businesses, for example. After all, "work constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life, which is a natural right and something that man is called to," as one tradition teaches. This reduction sadly has had costly implications with respect to what the many churches currently teaches about vocation and calling."
- See more at: http://www.whatisyoursalvationfor.com/blog/2014/7/16/church-planting-is-insufficient-for-social-change
