Jesus, Evil, Social Programs, N.T. Wright, and Joel Watts

J.L. Watts writes concerning N.T. Wright's desire to connect the cross to the problem of evil:

Excellent. Agreed. Cheers. But, in this, he goes on, and I quote, “(T)he evangelists are reflecting a train of thought and prayer and vocation which was Jesus’ own train of thought.” I get the part that we cannot simply believe that Jesus had no clue as to what He was doing, leaving the creation of the mythos to the Gospel writers. But, my focus is, is the idea that the Gospel (telling/writing) is a vocation in of itself and was a means to confront evil so that the Gospel is still Jesus working a social justice concern through the salvic moment of the Cross which allowed the Evangelists to speak of Jesus, in the present, still working.
Thoughts? - J.L. Watts

Yes, but no.

The gospel writers also believed that Jesus was personally present with them. So, sure Jesus is definitely the one working through them in the sense that his words and thoughts are the impetus behind the work of the gospel proclaimers/writers. But, Jesus is not merely contained in the church, according to the gospel authors at least. The doctrine of the resurrection and ascension were crucial to their understanding of God's work in this stage of history.
For instance, a major theme in Matthew's gospel is that disciples are with Jesus to become like Jesus (summarized here: Matthew 10:24-25). Yet, Matthew tells us that Jesus commands his disciples to enlist more disciples after the resurrection (28:16-20). The major assumption is that Jesus is way ahead of them in this work, somehow making way for this to happen. Matthew's narrative assumes that Jesus is the one who goes before the disciples in all of his commands, enabling them to do as he says. So, Matthew assumes that Jesus is personally active in preparing the way for the disciples to do their work. Interestingly enough, Matthew, John, and Luke all include the explicit saying that disciples will be like Jesus and in each gospel is the command to work in the world beyond Israel. This likely means that the authors believed that Jesus himself was working in the world beyond Israel.
My instinct is to say that they got these ideas from Jesus himself. Sure, Jesus works through the church and in that sense his work continues, but he is not bound exclusively to the church, he just promises to work through them.