Review: Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

“Preach the Gospel always. Use words if necessary.” – St. Francis of Assisi

It’s 1998 and Richard Stearns’ heart is breaking as he sits in a mud hut and listens to the story of an orphaned child in Rakai, Uganda. His journey to this place took more than a long flight from the United States to Africa. It took answering God’s call on his life, a call that hurtled him out of his presidential corner office at Lenox-America’s finest tableware company-to this humble corner of Uganda.

This is a story of how a corporate CEO faced his own struggle to obey God whatever the cost, and his passionate call for Christians to change the world by actively living out their faith. Using his own journey as an example, Stearns explores the hole that exists in our understanding of the Gospel.

Two thousand years ago, twelve people changed the world. Stearns believes it can happen again.

Stearns share his own personal journey through becoming aware and gaining more compassion for the injustice and impoverished people of the world.  He uses plenty of Scripture, real stories of individuals around the world and statistics to show how the Church in particular has failed to fulfill what God calls believers to do.

I admit that it is easy to fall into these theological debates over social issues versus spiritual issues (i.e. preach the saving message of Jesus verus giving the starving man a sandwich).  In fact, I remember hearing a predominate preacher in the last year say that perhaps the sacred golden calf of idolatry for this next decade for the church is social work. It’s easy to create an argument that the title of the book isn’t right because it’s not that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has a hole in it.  But these arguments just create more barriers or smoke screens to the issue at hand.

Stearns does a compelling job to show that God does save us by faith, but he saves us for works.  He does a compelling job illustrating how blessed we are as Americans.  For example, if you make $50,000 a year, you are wealthier than 99% of the world’s population!  He does a compelling job illustrating how far our wealth could go to eradicate many of the world’s problems.  He also does a compelling job illustrating how little we give our wealth to see solutions obtained.  It’s not that we have become less aware of the needs or that we have less access to the solution.  The problem is that we have become compassion fatigued and blinded (let alone near-sighted) by our own wealth around us.

He also does a compelling job illustrating that neglecting these issues goes against what God designed for a believer to be, how it hurts our own spiritual growth, and how issues like this has caused the world to see Christianity as an unloving and unfavorable spiritual system to believe in.  It is us neglecting and omitting to take a stand against them that has caused people to see that our Gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, has a hole in it.

Although the book is slow reading at times, and the stories can cause one to become compassion fatigued, it is an inspiration that the much daunting task is really something that can become a reality.  “And if Jesus was willing to die for this troubled planet, maybe I need to care about it too.  Maybe I should love the people who live on it more.  Maybe I have a responsibility to do my part to love the world that Jesus loves so much” (p. 2).

For more information and resources, check out www.worldvision.org and www.theholeinourgospel.com