What if we fail to act?

The parable of the talents, located in Matthew 25:14-30, and Luke 19:12-27, has been interpreted in a variety of ways, some taking the talent literally and focusing on our use of money, others using the coincidence in English to talk about talents as our skills and abilities, still others focusing on our time or energy.  For the most part, these various interpretations focus upon the obligations and responsibilities of the followers of Jesus Christ as individuals.  The local church, and the Church in a community, as well as the Church as a whole, likewise has a responsibility to utilize its talents, whether that be money, abilities, facilities, or whatever other resources, for the kingdom of God.
What happens when a single church, or a whole community of Churches, instead sits on the sidelines and doesn't do much with what they have been given?  The same response that Jesus explained in the parable for individuals applies to the collective body of Christ as well.  If we fail to act, if we fail to be a part of the solution for peace, justice, dignity, and the value of human life, we will have failed in an integral part of our task as the Church of Jesus Christ.  Our primary focus is, and must always be, the reconciliation of the lost to Jesus through faith in his death and resurrection, but that cannot be the only thing we care about as a church nor the only thing we devote ourselves to working toward.  The passage that immediately follows the parable in Matthew contains Jesus' encouragement and warning that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."  There is fear in some evangelical circles of mixing the proclamation of the Gospel with social causes, lest concerns for poverty or social justice overwhelm the spread of the Good News, but there is an equal danger of sterilizing the proclamation of the Gospel and robbing it of its power to transform not only individuals, but communities and society too, if we remove Jesus' often repeated concern for the needs of the "least of these" from our efforts.
What will it cost us to properly proclaim the Gospel?  We will certainly have to invest our time, money, labor, and love in the lives of other people through efforts such as: food and clothing pantries, disaster relief, utilities/housing assistance, and whichever other ways we can strive to help those in need.
There is one other area that we will have to stretch in order to fulfill our calling as the Church of Jesus Christ:  We're going to have to work together.  Individual churches will not be enough, the problems are too big, we need the whole power of ALL of the Church, not just those portions of it with which we feel comfortable, not just those portions of it that look, feel, and sound like us.  The calling of the Gospel of Jesus Christ demands more from us than that which we are comfortable giving, if we truly hope to multiply our talents and hear one day, "Well done, good and faithful servant", we've got to get serious as local churches about working together.

Speaking My Mind by Tony Campolo

This past spring our regional baptist association invited Tony Campolo to speak at our annual gathering.  The suggested topic for Tony was the problem of complacency among Christians (in other words, what do we do to get people on fire for serving God?).  Prior to going to the event, I received a letter written by one of the pastors of our association and signed by all of his board members that condemned the invitation of Tony and warned us that his teachings were dangerous.  The letter included snippets of quotes from a variety of Professor Campolo's books, many of which seemed to be out of context.  As a former English teacher, seeing quotes taken out of context sends up a huge red flag to me.  I went to the meeting, having heard good things about Tony's presentations from my friends, Pastor Jeff Little (First UMC) and Mother Holly (St. John's Episcopal).
What type of message would we hear?  Would the Gospel be clear or lost in the social efforts that Tony's critics accuse him of replacing it with?
It is amazing what you can learn when you give someone the chance to share what is on their heart.  Throughout his presentation, Tony Campolo gave a heart stirring call to the Church to truly be the servants of Jesus Christ that we have been called to be.  The Evangelical nature of his message was beyond doubt, there at the heart of everything he was preaching was the need for each man, woman, and child to find a relationship with God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to turn that relationship into a life-altering experience of righteous living.  What more could any believer in the fundamentals of the faith want?
The hype, fodder for television commentators and blog posts, was entirely overblown.  The venom directed at Tony from his critics was a farce.  If this man's commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not genuine, then nobody who publicly declares their faith in Christ can be trusted.  If this man's passion for the Lost is not acceptable to you, then your problem is with the call of Jesus to champion the poor.
Which brings me to his book, Speaking My Mind, which I finished reading today.  I won't claim that everything in the book made me happy, nor am I in agreement with all of it, I will however confirm that the passion for the Gospel I found while listening to Tony last spring is part and parcel of his written works as well.  Are there things in the book that will cause some Christians to write Tony off as a liberal?  Yes.  Are there things in the book that those same Christians need to hear because they echo the words of the Gospel?  Yes.  Do yourself a favor, read the book, think about it, weigh what it says by the scale of Scripture, and then decide what God would have you do about poverty, nationalism, homosexuality, environmentalism, politics, etc.
If you close your mind, you won't be listening to God either.  If you truly are committed to being a disciple of Jesus Christ, don't you owe it to God to admit when you are in error?  Speaking My Mind may not have all the answers, but at least Tony Campolo was brave enough to ask the questions.

"Freedom as a possession is a doubtful thing for a church"

Another quote from Bonhoeffer's biography; this one arising from his visit to New York in the summer of 1939 (he returned to Germany a month before WWII started)..."Freedom as a possession is a doubtful thing for a church; freedom must be won under the compulsion of a necessity.  Freedom for the church comes from the necessity of the Word of God.  Otherwise it becomes arbitrariness.."  What caused Dietrich to sour on the freedom he saw in the American church?  It was a complete lack of serious study of God's Word in many of the churches he visited; sermons that focused on Henry James instead of St. James; sermons that didn't even mention Scripture or the Gospel.
For someone raised in a church where I heard sound Biblical preaching each and every week, that's hard to imagine.  The theological liberalism of the early 20th Century aimed to remove the miraculous from the Bible and focus on the ethical (we've heard this lie before, John Shelby Spong may be today's wolf in sheep clothing; denying the resurrection from within the church, but he isn't the first to do so).  That any church would stray so far from the true faith as to neglect the preaching and teaching of the Bible is at the same time sad and infuriating.
As someone who believes firmly in Ecumenism within the Church, I believe that there is strength in our diversity of opinion and practice as long as we are all doing so under the authority and direction of God's Word.  If a church, any type of church, forgets that our freedom exists within the confines of God's Word, it will soon cease to function as a church and become another social gathering place.  That Bonhoeffer witnessed this struggle in America 100 years ago should fill us with both seriousness and hope.  We must be serious, because the struggle to maintain a Church committed to Christ's Gospel is ongoing; our vigilance must be unceasing.  We must have hope because in many churches in America today Jesus Christ is still preached as God's Son, crucified for our sins and raised to new life for our justification.

The Social Gospel?

I was reading an editorial piece in the paper today by a national columnist about the long-standing argument between "Conservative" and "Liberal" Christians over the Social Gospel.  The Social Gospel refers to the notion that social/economic justice must have the priority in the work of the Church.  In America, this divide has coincided with the political divide between Republicans and Democrats.  One side side of the argument: the desire to keep the Gospel message focused on the Spiritual needs of the Lost and the Flock; on the other, the belief that the very nature of the Gospel message requires that it be conjoined with concerns over poverty and rights.
In the end, both extremes of the divide have lost something vital by reacting against their opposite position.  Those who want to put the Gospel in a hermetically sealed box where it won't have any interaction with the culture in which the Church operates risk becoming detached from the real needs of those they are trying to minister to.  The Church does indeed need to prioritize its spiritual mission, but forgetting that God created people with physical needs too is an affront to the poor, the downtrodden, the hopeless.  Jesus spent a great deal of his effort with such as these.
On the other hand, those who devote the bulk of their ministry to social missions are in danger of forgetting that social solutions will never fix spiritual problems.  The problems in our world today are SIN problems; not the kind of thing that can be fixed with a government program or non-profit's initiative.  If the Church fails to ensure that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at the forefront of its mission, it'll be of no more use than other well-meaning social groups who offer temporary aleviation for a root problem.
So what is the solution?  As is often the case, the Truth lies between these two extremes.  The Church must be both Spiritually AND socially aware.  The Gospel without the Cross and the Resurrection won't SAVE anyone, but the Gospel devoid of care for those in need lacks the Heart of our Savior.