If a politician had THE solution to end poverty but also believed we should have a right to choose to kill lesbians, you’d still vote for them?

Politics cannot solve the problem of poverty – it’s not just about a change the law.

But a change in law can save millions of unborn children’s lives. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “The law cannot make white people like me but it will stop them from lynching me.”

That’s the key difference.

Imagine if they said the same thing about slavery. Was it an economic issue? A spiritual issue? Sure. But it’s nonsense to say that it also wasn’t a political issue.

If thousands of Black Americans were being killed every day and politician was “prochoice” about that but also advocated for helping the poor, would they deserve the vote of Evangelical Christians (or from anyone else for that matter?).

There’s a difference between government battling poverty and social justice issues and battling the legal killing of innocent people – it isn’t legal to kill poor people but it is a legal choice to kill unborn ones. The fact that these two “leaders” can’t see that should make all of us question their position.

nice shot.

I see a vast difference between “bragging” and a church actively getting involved in a community. A church is made up of individuals, and those individuals make up the face of that church. And there’s a HUGE difference between a church bragging about what it’s doing and it saying “hey, so and so is starting this ministry, help him/her out by doing this, that or the other.”

Now, insofar as the megachurch that I went to, I DID meet and talk to everyone in the college group. And as a matter of fact, it was callous remarks made by a member of that college group regarding why I felt no need to join the worship team that helped me to make up my mind to leave. But, anyway, the college aged group, the group of people that are supposed to be young and energized and eager to go out into the world did nothing of the sort. They went to church on Sunday, some of them went on Wednesday, and none of the people I met did anything other than that. And if the college aged members of the church aren’t being active in the community, I can pretty much guarantee you that they learned that apathy from their parents and elders of the church. That said, the pastoral staff that I met there weren’t interested in doing much for the community, either.

If your mega church supports parachurch ministries and the such, then good for your megachurch. But it didn’t seem to be the case at this one. And it didn’t seem to be the case at any of the conservative churches that I went to. And believe me, I asked around at all of those churches to find out if there were ministries that I could get involved in. And time after time, outside of getting handfulls of Chick tracts or supporting some missionary going to (insert far off place here), they had nothing.

So, once again, I come back to, I’m 9 for 9 in finding conservative churches that don’t do outreach in their communities. Your conservative churches may vary. But that’s MY experience. Getting uppity because of the experiences that I’ve had does nothing to help either your cause or mine.

Paul, I feel like you either didn’t “listen” or purposely ignored the point of my post. My point was there is a difference between organized institutional outreach and individual personal outreach. In the churches you visited, did you get to know each and every person in the 5k-6k congregation to ascertain that they were living in a bubble and not doing anything for the kingdom? Or did you walk in and see that the “institution” did not have anything big and showy that you approved of and then sit in judgment of those people?

I think there is a perception that institutions, whether government or the church, are going to solve the world’s problems. We forget that institutions are made of individuals.

So my friend, who has a ministry with inner city teen mothers, may go to a mega church like the one you visited and you may not have met her or heard about her ministry. Actually, she goes to my mega church and my church supports that ministry financially. Many church members volunteer with that ministry. It’s outside the walls of the church and there’s no big show to advertise it or brag about all the good works our church is doing. Our church supports pockets of parachurch organizations all over the city and around the world, both financially and with boots on the ground. But someone visiting the church may not know about those things until they get seriously involved in the church. I come from a generation where it is considered crass to talk about all the wonderful things you’re doing.

Honestly, I’ve listened to some of Rob Bell’s sermons and talks and I’ve been really…almost embarrassed for him because a lot of what he says comes across as bragging. I hear the same thing from Claiborne when he talks about his good deeds. “When I went to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa…..when I went to Iraq….” OK already! We hear this every time he gives a talk! I understand you’ve been raised in a generation that needs a lot of affirmation and everyone gets a trophy and you can’t use red pens on the homework because it will hurt the kid’s self-esteem. Enough already!

“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:3-4)

nope. The beautiful difference between “old order Mennonites” and “new order Mennonites.”

Actually, when my wife took me to her college (Goshen College in Goshen, IN), it looked more like the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show back in the day than a well revered Christian college. I saw more llama’s wool sweaters and manskirts than anyone should ever expect to see at a Christian college. And I also schooled some folks at hackey sack.

you must go to a way different conservative church than the ones I ever checked out.

I went to one megachurch in Naperville, IL, a town of 180K people, a church of 5-6K members, and they did virtually no public outreach.

All three of the churches I checked out in Wheaton, IL (home of the famous Wheaton College) did little if any public outreach.

It wasn’t until I went to a church that was definitely affiliated with the emergent church idea that I saw someone trying to do anything to reach out into the world outside of passing out Chick tracts. Even then, though, it didn’t seem like much.

Now that I’ve joined my wife in as a mennonite, I’ve finally seen a church which truly has a heart for missions. While theologically, they’re pretty conservative, politically, they’re as liberal as it gets.

So, let’s review stats here…

Paul’s been a Christian for 10 years.

In that time, he’s been to countless churches, but we’ll narrow it down to the ones I went to more than 3 times and actually considered being a member of.

13 churches overall.

9 classically conservative churches. All nine did little to none in the missions or charity department.

1 was a church that was in the process of discovering the prosperity gospel while I was going there. This was a black church that did anything and everything for its community, but did very little outside of its church community. I dunno if you realistically call that charity or not.

1 was a church based around the idea of racial reconciliation. I didn’t last long there, but at least they went out of their way to give free ESL classes, free lunches for folks in the area, neighborhood cleanup days and other things where they used these kinds of ploys to try to reach out to the community at large.

2 mennonite churches that send people all over the country, continent and world trying to get the gospel out there in every way possible. Our church alone has a homeless shelter, a womens shelter, a 10K Villages Store a camp for at risk kids and a couple of other things that I don’t remember off the top of my head.

Maybe I just went to the wrong conservative churches. I dunno. But going 9 for 9 seeing nothing but people eager to stay in their bubbles doesn’t really give me much to work with here.

I think that some are confusing institutional policies with individual Christians. While evangelical church policies may push tracts and do nothing for the poor and build no relationships with those outside the church (although I don’t believe it happens nearly as often as some may think)I don’t think it’s fair to lump individual “evangelicals” (for lack of a better term) in with that mentality.

Our pastor has apparently been reading Dan Kimball’s books and has been going on and on about how we live in our Christian bubbles and we need to step out of our comfort zones and form relationships with the outside world. I’m sitting there listening and wondering, “Who on earth is he talking to?”

The next hour I go to my Sunday school class, made up almost exclusively of white couples over 35, and listen to prayer requests from people who are involved in REAL ministry with REAL people in the REAL world. A man who ministers to troubled teens, someone with a bipolar Jewish friend, a university biology professor who builds relationships with foreign students, a family with children who has taken a crack addict into their lives and even their home for a time, a lawyer who helps the disabled, a couple who has chosen to move to the worst neighborhood in our city to start a ministry. And just average people who have friendships in their neighborhoods and their children’s schools and find ways to share Christ with them through their daily lives.

The vast majority of Christians work in non-Christian jobs 40+ hours a week. They’re quietly volunteering at homeless shelters and pregnancy centers week after week, year after year…I know people who have done it for more than 30 years! They’re not staging protests for the news, writing books, or giving interviews…they’re just quietly serving food and teaching Bible studies to unwed mothers.

Maybe, instead of mischaracterizing an entire generation (Tony Campolo excepted!) some of the naysayers ought to get to know some of the quiet servants of my generation.

Saying that Mohler kind of did is quite a stretch!

Brett,

Thank you for clarifying! And I enjoyed your rant. It did in fact make me happy.