“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
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it might be more compelling to know how much he makes (and gives) off the earnings of his books, seminars, etc.
although that might be curious more than compelling, I think that's the trap that most of us need to keep away from. The trap of not taking a solid look at what we personally can do. The trap of looking at what others do ends up giving us an "out" by telling ourselves, "see they make millions and I don't so he doesn't understand and I can't help."
He does mention people like Bill Gates and previous Presidents and the effort they do to bring awareness and solve issues and sure I could say "well if the clean water issue is $10 Billion, then Bill Gates can do that one easily so that's a nice story." The book was not designed to list the wealthiest people in the world and see if they are helping enough.
The book was a book to make aware of the condition of the world of poverty and help and to use statistics to show how 'easily' is can be solved with people becoming more aware, more compassionate about it and more giving towards the solution. I think it also makes us more sensitive to noticing those in need right around us as well.
I think the shift in the christian cruhch stems from the way they look at necessity and experiences. I think the west determines the value of any given action based on it’s end result (moral-utilitarian ends justifying the means type stuff). I think this causes the cruhch to take a more hard-liner counter stance (because a lie told in good faith is still a lie and god commands his subjects not to lie) and makes the value of any given action the experience itself of doing that individual thing, even if no one is harmed or even effected and the end result is good. for example: so while one would say it’s ok to lie to your fat spouse when they ask you if they look fat in that dress. the other would encourage you to find an alternative way to compliment your spouses appearance. at times the cruhch tacitly supports ends-means-justify’n and all that good stuff, I think primarily their ethos places the good in individual experiences. the obsession with experience I think would heighten scrutiny on what would be the ultimate human experiences like sex, drugs and rock and roll. all the pleasurables become the focus of the cruhch’s energy as opposed to one’s devotions to one god over another or others. the focus on the pleasure seaking experiences creates this cruhch vs culture dichotomy we all hear about so much in which the cruhch sort of sees the experiences of the world as one packaged group of a way to live; then it see’s itself as THE way to live and lumps in everything it sees in that picture of the world’s version of living and runs counter to it. I think this is why there is an alternative christian consumer brand of everything the world has right down to christian toothpaste.maybe I’m just extrapolating too much. but if I’m right then this could explain why they’re sometimes more concerned with the fact that madonna kissed brittany at the VMA’s rather than the fact that there is a homeless dude they see every day on their way to work. I think the emergent movement is changing these habituations and reclaiming at least a part of a generation of youth who is slowly rejecting even the non-denom’s because they simply don’t see how their choice of experiences is relevant to their moral code.