Daniel Salinas - Prosperity Theology and the Gospel: Good News or Bad News for the Poor?

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of transformation and of hope wherever it is announced and lived out. This gospel is also missional; it wants to be, and needs to be, announced again and again, all over the world.

To announce it well and live it out in all its integrity, is a challenge that the church of Jesus Christ continually faces. New opportunities and challenges emerge in different forms; it is not always easy to understand the motives of those who embrace them, and some motives will be seen with clarity only by future generations.

During the last decades, so-called prosperity theology has emerged with surprising strength, and has had a massive impact on the life and growth of the Church around the globe; whether in rural Brazil or sophisticated American suburbia.

The message comes as good news, a blessing from God envisaged in many forms: employment, promotion, a dream car. Its essence is that prosperity is to be commended; it is something promised by God in the Bible and, therefore, to be sought and even expected. Its proponents encourage churches in poorer areas to look to God for material provision; and lead those in a more comfortable context to go after blessings never possible through a typical working wage.

Discerning the true nature of the prosperity gospel is a challenging task, since it comes in different tones and forms. It may be a simple message in a poor church that God wants to bless everyone and move people out of poverty; or a sophisticated preacher may arrive in an expensive car, wear clothes that few can afford, and challenge the congregation to give beyond their means in order for God to pay them back according to the desires of their hearts. In the Cape TownCommitmentthe outcome of the Third Lausanne Congressthe diagnosis is quite clear. It says that the widespread preaching and teaching of the prosperity gospel around the world raises significant concerns. It continues:

We believe that the teachings of many who vigorously promote the prosperity gospel seriously distort the Bible; that their practices and lifestyle are often unethical and un-Christlike; that they commonly replace genuine evangelism with miracle-seeking, and replace the call to repentance with the call to give money to the preachers organization. We grieve that the impact of this teaching on many Churches is pastorally damaging and spiritually unhealthy. We gladly and strongly affirm every initiative in Christs name that seeks to bring healing to the sick, or lasting deliverance from poverty and suffering. The prosperity gospel offers no lasting solution to poverty, and can deflect people from the true message and means of eternal salvation. For these reasons it can be soberly described as a false gospel. We therefore reject the excesses of prosperity teaching as incompatible with balanced biblical Christianity.

Some participants at the gathering had been influenced by aspects of prosperity theology. After the Commitment was published, it did not take long for the questions to emerge: Is it possible to define the prosperity theology movement in such clear, critical terms? Are there dimensions that are positive and even necessary, especially as we witness the arrival of the gospel in poor neighbourhoods? More study was needed, a consultation with minds from around the globe, to explore the issue more thoroughly. From here the Lausanne Consultation on Prosperity, Poverty and the Gospel was shaped. It brought forty pastors, practitioners and theologians, drawn from all the continents, to Atibaia, So Paulo, Brazil in April 2014, to listen, pray and meditate on Gods word; the goal was to gain a better understanding of the growing influence and work of prosperity theology in our world today. Participants considered how prosperity theology relates to poverty, and how it affects the mission of the whole Church in taking the whole gospel to the whole world. In the words of the Atibaia Statement: We came together, driven by our passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ and in obedience to the mandate to share the good news through words, deeds and character, because of a shared concern that [prosperity theology] offers a shallow gospel that actually undermines the fullness of the good news of Jesus.