The Hole in Our Gospel
Richard Stearns had the perfect life. He and his family lived in their dream house. He was president of a company that made fine china for the wealthiest of the wealthy. He had the American dream.
Fast forward to a hut in Africa. After accepting a position as president of World Vision kicking-and-screaming, he wound up in this hut. There he met a thirteen-year-old boy who was raising his younger siblings because both their parents had died of AIDS. Turns out that was quite common in that village. AIDS had wiped out much of a generation.
Then Stearns realized: very few Christians even cared about this tragedy. A few rock stars and Hollywood actors seemed to care — enough to even go over and hold some of these children and to raise money on their behalf — but the church, especially the church in America, didn’t seem too upset.
Life was too good. These problems were too far away.
This is what Stearns calls The Hole in Our Gospel.
There is a “hole” in our gospel because too often we have dumbed down the good news to mean little more than personal salvation and cool worship services. We have failed to grasp the impulses of the message that launch us into a desperate world. To follow Jesus is to offer ourselves for God’s purposes in this world.
Here are a few select quotes from this book I highly recommend.
“On Sunday morning, safe in our church pews and surrounded by friends, it can be all too easy to leave the world’s violence, suffering, and turmoil outside — out of sight, out of mind.”
“. . . Being a follower of Jesus Christ requires much more than just a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world.”
“The whole gospel is a vision for ushering in God’s kingdom — now, now in some future time, and here, on earth, not in some distant heaven.”
“Those words from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven’ were and are a clarion call to Jesus’ followers not just to proclaim the good news but to be the good news, here and now (Matt. 6:10). This gospel — the whole gospel — means much more than the personal salvation of individuals. it means a societal revolution.”
I understand what you are saying. Maybe that is why your job change is happening. The pull of the gospel does make you want to be more like Christ. There is no time chart for this, sort of starts with a hole in your heart that only Jesus can help.
Thanks for the heads up…….ordering this book TODAY!
DU
Thanks for the conscience prick this morning, Mike.
Of course, it’s not just the comfort factor that keeps us complacent. It’s also the demands of life — providing, maintaining, caring for — that make it hard for us to break out and be societal-changing.
But it’s also true that such criticism is easy for people whose job it is to motivate others to action. I’d counter that our pews are filled with people who are societal-changing, but often for one or a few at a time — in the prisons, in the hospitals, in the schools, in the workplace, and on and on.
Amen Jim
I had a doctor’s appointment the day after I landed from Rwanda, to clear up some little bug I had picked up over there.
While waiting for the nurse to bring the injections, we had a little chat about what I had been over there doing. This doctor is a man of faith, with religious posters everywhere and Christian magazines in the waiting room. He got this strange look on his face and asked, “Now, why do you think you need to ask the Federal Government (of the U.S.) to pay for these things? Don’t you think churches should be helping out?”
I gave him some pat reply about the government being the only entity large enough or wealthy enough to adequately respond to the crisis, but I wish I had asked him to point me to any church or Christian philanthropic organization that was able and willing to meet basic needs, without requiring a Bible study, or permission to plant a church. With the billions and billions spent annually, worldwide, by those who call themselves Christians, of any stripe, there ARE resources to respond, but…
The Hole in Our Blog Post…
Richard Stearns earns over $400,000 a year in salary and benies from World Vision.
-Jim
Jim -
The Hole in Our Stupid Comment . . .
What’s your point? Do you know HOW he’s using that money? Are you claiming that he’s not using that nice salary to benefit the poor of the world? How do you know that? And what’s up with that ridiculous, buffoonish website you link to?
I believe this is my first post, but I have lurked off and on for several years.
I understand that Jesus said we would always have the poor with us but particularly sad is our increasing lack of empathy in the church. It’s not that benevolence is always a miniscule part of a church’s budget. But as we sit in our tax sheltered multimillion dollar church buildings one to three times a week, the reality is that as a we really don’t care.
Years ago, I boiled down our lack of church growth to the reality that we don’t really love God or our neighbor. We simply fail at what Jesus calls the two most important commandments. If we actually loved God and had faith in his commands there would be an urgency to save our neighbors and the world. Yet because we can’t judge and don’t believe we have a unique message of salvation, we talk about reaching the “unchurched” but we really don’t want to want to associate with them either.
It’s not for lack of programs, it the lack of concern. Our landscape is littered with churches of 30-100 members where the loneliest place in the building is the baptistery. These churches will continue to decline as long as the local regulars bar across town has more caring, more love, more fun and deeper fellowship than the church with Christ’s name above the door.
I keep hearing about the “dumbing down” of the gospel, but for me the gospel of personal salvation, when understood more fully and with maturity, has always carried with it the imperative for compassion to the suffering and oppressed. This has been my experience as a Church of Christ kid, and I don’t know… maybe it’s unique. But I doubt it.
I wonder if we’re confusing the implications of the gospel with the gospel itself? Too often these days I feel like a dichotomy has been set up — either personal salvation from sin OR the call to social justice.
I’m open to correction.
I do believe we have a hole in the gospel. There is a strong point in preaching a relationship with an untameable God.
Loved the third quote RE: the Lord’s Prayer!
I sometimes think we have too often transformed (another trendy word from American evangelicals) Christ’s Great Commission into the Great Demotion.
The way Obama is spending, soon it will all be a mute point. Nobody will have any money to do anything, he is destroying the private economy.
Chris, that’s the most boneheaded thing I’ve heard today.
The private economy ran itself into the ditch. Obama didn’t crash Wall Street or GM. You might disagree with how he’s trying to fix the mess he inherited from “the private economy,” but his spending was defensive in origin. Economists on both sides of the ideological divide advised his stimulus policies. Plus, he’s resisted the most liberal economists who’ve wanted him to spend more. Even more, he’s got key Wall Street players (you know, those people in the “private economy”) calling his economic shots. This has also infuriated liberals. In short, Obama’s been a moderate in all this.
Clint,
Obama is responsible for his budget, the Democrat congress passed the stimulus plan with not a single Republican vote, the Senate passed it with only 3 Republican votes. So far it hasn’t done a bit of stimulating. The unemployment rate is over 9%. It’s panic time for Obama.
Chris:
America’s economic problem long pre-dated Obama. Funny: he’s been in office 5 months and he is getting blamed for “destroying the private economy”.
About The Hole in Our Gospel:
Can you imagine what people would be like if we were as concerned with the suffering in Africa or Asia or South America as we are with our own family members? We would be useless and miserable. We have evolved so that we aren’t concerned with pain thousands of miles away–that is for our own good. Otherwise, we could not function. So, you should not feel bad about not selling your house so you can go hold an AIDS baby in Zimbabwe. And please: those of you who live in +$50,000 homes and worship in +$1,000,000 “worship clubs”, please don’t tell the rest of us to “give more” and “care more”.
chris, your first comment, and every subsequent one are completely off-base and off-topic… Your insistence on bashing Obama on a post discussing the gospel is utterly ridiculous. We’re talking about the gospel here, and all you can think about is worldly politics?
Frankly, I don’t know why people respond to your crass, tangential comments.
Martin — apathy is the work of Satan. To celebrate the evolution of “not caring” about suffering half-way across the world is purely sick. To lose this emotion is to cease to be human, to cease to be created in the image of God.
Yes, we should feel convicted about suffering, but it doesn’t mean we pack up and move around the world every time we hear about something. There’s plenty of suffering in the communities around us. The problem with the gospel is sitting in a pew at church, completely oblivious to the family down the street suffering, or the suffering in our inner cities in which we live. Trust me — there’s plenty of suffering around us, without packing up and moving 5,000 miles. If one can’t see it around us, then God help us.
You must not live in a city, because it’s nearly impossible to buy a house for less than $50k.
Is the “Hole in Our Gospel” about care and compassion, or about money? GKB — I can certainly understand how bringing the enormity of the federal govt in could help monetarily, but it sure seems to me this would create an exponentially greater degree of apathy.
People on here paint with such a broad brush. “Christians don’t help the poor unless a Bible study is required.” “The church doesn’t really love God or their neighbors”. Those who despise judgementalism seemed to be pretty judgemental.
What a miserable, self loathing bunch.
By the way, it’s always easier to help the poor with other people’s money. The government does not create wealth, it confiscates it at the point of a gun. If you don’t believe that try not paying your taxes.
Again the clint above is not me
Why do we so often insist in interpreting the call of Christ to preach, teach, feed, visit, love and so on, through the lens of our political views. President Obama, President Bush or any other president has nothing to do with my following of my Lord
GKB, I don’t often agree with your takes on stuff, but in this case, I think I can finish your last sentence in a mutually agreeable way:
“…instead, our resource-richest congregations are busily building big-box monuments to pastoral empires built on the assumptions of today’s narcissistic-therapeutic-consumptive culture.”
Among other things.
But qb’s not bitter about’t.
qb
Robert-
May the Lord lead your wicked heart to repentance and saving faith in the Christ of the Bible. That website is intended for Christians by the way, you should check out http://www.goodpersontest.com instead seeing you are either an unbeliever, or worse a false convert.
-Jim
My feeling is that the “Hole in our Gospel” has been discovered even here, in the comment section of a blog post. The conversations here bear a striking resemblance to a description Brian McClaren illustrates in his book, A New Kind of Christian. There seems to be a line and you’re either on the right or left. Both sides are content to defend their own moral grounds, militantly if needs be. Yet we are called to join with Christ, above the line, concerned more about being a window into Kingdom life NOW. While we bicker back and fourth over who is right or wrong, moral or immoral, we are blinded to a world in desperate need an experience in redemptive love.
The book sounds great! I’ll probably check that one out. Will we be people who patch the hole in our gospel, who remove ourselves from the typical religious banter and work to make this world a better place, or will we continue to make the hole bigger absorbed with our own piety?
Logan
Mike,
Thank you for commenting on Rich Stearns’ new book, The Hole in Our Gospel, and generating all this coversation around it! This book has already had a tremendous impact on many Christians. Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Church, just bought 10,000 copies of the book to give to his congregation. Hybels told his church, “This is one of the finest books I have ever read. It is my goal to get every member of Willow Creek Church to read it.” To find out more information about the book and Stearns, you can visit http://www.theholeinourgospel.com. You’ll find on this site a lot of great resources and supplemental material to the book. You can also read Rich’s blog and engage in a forum discussion there. It’s a fantastic site – I encourage you to check it out!
Mark: I resonate with you in your comment: “I feel like a dichotomy has been set up — either personal salvation from sin OR the call to social justice.”
Reading Tim Keller’s excellent piece, “The Gospel for the City” (in The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University, Summer 2008), I found these quotes to be so relevant to the above discussion:
“Christians (should be) interested in both evangelism and conversions as well as service to our neighbor and working for peace and justice in the world. However, it’s my experience that these individual and corporate aspects of the gospel do not live in easy harmony with one another in our preaching and church bodies. In fact, many communicators today deliberately pit them against each other.”
“Often people who talk about the good news as mainly doing peace and justice refer to it as `the gospel of the kingdom.’ But to receive the kingdom as a little child (Matt. 18:3) and to believe in Christ’s name and be born of God (Jn 1:12-13) is the same thing — it’s the way one becomes a Christian (Jn. 3:3,5).”
My observation of trends in our churches these past few years is that so much emphasis has been placed on us being change agents for Christ and less emphasis on personal conversion to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
It just seems to me, in my study of God’s word and in living in His grace for the past 30 plus years, that if one is going to be a change agent in this world for Jesus one must first let Jesus save and transform her or him. I know that without the power of the Holy Spirit in my life I am powerless to truly care for a lost world, for the poor, the disenfranchised, etc. I desperately need Christ in me to love the world as He loves the world.
Jim