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Leffel, Book Review  75 

  

Book Review 

 

Participating in Abundant Life:  

Holistic Salvation for a Secular Age 

By Mark R. Teasdale 

 
Reviewed by Gregory P. Leffel 

 
 

 
 

2022. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. $24.00 

 

Mark Teasdale is Professor of Evangelism at 

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, United 

Methodist clergy, and church consultant. He worries 

that clergy, church members, Christian activists, 

development workers, and even his seminary students 

are entirely tongue-tied when trying to explain the 

content of their salvation and their motivation for social 

mission in public life. Too often, he notes, they become 

timid, downplaying personal faith and evangelism in 

their social activism to get along in pluralistic public 

spaces (or we might ask, to attract funding?). Or else 

withdrawing from social involvement in fear that secular 

values will confuse their evangelistic mission.  

Teasdale writes to clear the air about what salvation 

means in and for the world and the common good. He 

wants to help “Christians better articulate their beliefs 

... [and to equip] Christians to live out their salvation in 

the world as it is, learning how they can maneuver in a 

secular culture without feeling embattled or as if they 

must trade off the fullness of their faith to be effective” 

(27). Effective, that is, in evangelistic witness to their 

faith as well as effective in their public-facing actions to 

support humanitarian aid, development programs, and 

community organizing.  

Drawing from the Good Shepherd—“I came that 

they may have life, and have it abundantly,”—Teasdale 

defines salvation as “abundant life.” A fulness to be 

experienced by participating in God’s life-giving 

abundance now as well as in eternity. Salvation’s 

abundant life is much more present-tense, earthly, 

wholesome, lively, and social than Christians often 

conceive it. Even now, salvation breaks into the world’s 

life as people of good will work for peace, justice, and 

human fulfillment. People of faith naturally join them 

while also pointing to the source of abundance in God’s 

mission of salvation.   

Teasdale is not alone in this perspective. For 

example, the World Council of Churches Commission 

on World Mission and Evangelism’s 2013 document 

Together Towards Life: Mission in Changing 

Landscapes (Keum 2013) makes much the same point 

about pursuing abundant life.  While refreshing, 

Teasdale’s argument is not new. His remarkable 

innovation is to bring this pursuit down to earth by 

measuring it; that is, by defining specific quantifiable 

criteria Christians may use to measure our progress 

toward bringing forth abundance in public life.  

These metrics are grouped around three concepts: 

standard of living, quality of life, and eternal life, 

measures, he argues, that express the common human 

desire to flourish and that are shared in one way or 

another by all people of good will. Each of the three 

concepts gets chapter-length treatment, offering 

theological and sociological arguments to justify them, 

and then—here is the breakthrough—defining them 

quantitatively using commonly accepted public criteria. 

These include the UN’s Human Development Index 

and Sustainable Development Goals, the Global 

Happiness and Well-Being Policy Report, and the 

OECD’s Better Life Index, among other measures. 

By drawing upon objective measures developed 

through well-vetted social science research and that 

represent broad consensus nationally and 

internationally, Teasdale has appropriated a common 

language—i.e., everybody can agree on improving 

people’s standard of living and quality of life—to get 

Christians, persons of other faiths or no faith, civil 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 4(2),  Winter 2023 

Leffel, Book Review  76 

  

society actors, even politicians on the same page to work 

for the common good. And to do it efficiently and 

effectively by providing criteria to set mutually-agreed-

upon, measurable goals, and then to measure progress 

in attaining them. On this common ground religious 

and secular groups can build a kind of missional 

ecumenism based on shared vision and values, a space 

where Christians can demonstrate their faith and be 

understood, even appreciated, as they try to bring 

eternal life to bear abundantly on the present.  

Teasdale writes most directly for the benefit of 

congregations and lay leaders, pastors, and future 

pastors (his seminary students). His book is a primer, 

though a sophisticated one, not a research monograph. 

It fits into the evangelism genre but overlaps with 

development studies. It can be read along with William 

J. Abraham’s The Logic of Evangelism (1989) and 

Bryant L. Myers’s Walking with the Poor (2013) for 

greater depth. Denominational and other Christian 

NGO leaders will appreciate it if just by being warmly 

reminded why they do what they do. But with its use of 

metrics and developmental concepts, the book also 

provides a useful language to help NGO leaders better 

communicate with supporting congregations and 

contributors. The book may also be helpful in 

strengthening the faith of new development workers 

who might well be shaken by the difficulty of their work 

in public settings.  

For a “practical” book, Participating in Abundant 

Life is admirably rich in its combination of biblical, 

theological (broadly Protestant; curiously Roman 

Catholics and Catholic Social Teaching are left out of 

his ecumenical picture), philosophical, sociological, 

and global development perspectives. There is a lot 

here. Lay persons may find it a bit challenging, but not 

terribly technical; an experienced lay leader or pastor 

could easily lead parishioners through it. Indeed, it 

provides a solid foundation for a serious and necessary 

program of discipleship and spiritual formation for 

Christian engagement in public life.    

A solid foundation, yes, but not the whole building. 

In an era dominated by the managerial expectations of 

performance philanthropy, analytic measures, and 

objective outcomes, congregations will benefit from 

Teasdale’s recommendations to quantify their public 

engagement and meet the accountability and quality 

measurements the public expects. Such a professional 

approach can move well-intended but unfocused 

charity towards concrete social investment. Teasdale 

provides the rationale to create public-facing programs 

and simple numerical measurement methods scaled to 

the needs of pastors and their congregations to 

implement them. Seasoned development specialists 

will necessarily have a more sensitive, extensive, and 

sophisticated mix of quantitative and qualitative 

measures.  

Let us also remember that fundamental social 

transformation is a job rough enough to try the faith and 

wear out the commitment of any saint. Yes, structural 

injustices must fall, legal and economic systems be 

reformed, minds changed, the causes of poverty erased. 

Sadly, in today’s contentious times, when we engage 

with the deep political and economic roots of the 

problems that prevent many from finding a decent 

standard of living and quality of life, we discover that the 

“common good” is a rare and contested commodity; 

that one’s “person of good will” is another’s “agent of 

destruction,” that rancorous politics divide the well-

meaning from one another. There is no reason why 

Christians cannot thrive in this tangled environment, 

because we are called to this sacrificial fight for the 

world’s sake, even if we struggle to find abundant life 

there, but Teasdale gives us little guidance in dealing 

with such inevitable political conflict. Being wise as 

serpents and innocent as doves requires a sophistication 

that the church rarely achieves and Participating in 

Abundant Life is only a start.  

All the same, Mark Teasdale has framed in a 

paradigm to pull the church out of itself, and to put it 

squarely into public life where he believes it can thrive. 

He has laid a foundation for congregations and 

individual Christians to build upon.  

 

References 

 

Keum. Jooseop, Ed. 2013. Together towards Life: 

Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. 

World Council of Churches.  

Abraham, William. 1989. The Logic of Evangelism. 

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.  

Myers, Bryant. 2011. Walking with the Poor: Principles 

and Practices of Transformational Development. 

Revised and expanded edition. Maryknoll, NY: 

Orbis Books. 
 

 

Gregory P. Leffel is Director, One Horizon Institute, 

Lexington KY, past-president of the American 

Society of Missiology, and author of Faith Seeking 

Action: Mission, Social Movements, and the 

Church in Motion (Scarecrow Press. 2007). 

 

Author email: gleffel@onehorizon.org 
 


