“God wants to see his kingdom break loose on earth. He wants to see it happen in Charleston, in Philadelphia, in New Orleans,” Tony Campolo declared at the 12th annual John A. Hamrick Lectureship Jan. 21-22.
Guest speaker Tony Campolo, center, chats with Mitch Carnell, chairman of the Hamrick Lectureship committee, and Marshall Blalock, pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston.Campolo told an audience of approximately 135 people gathered at First Baptist Church, Charleston, that “transforming the world that is into the world that ought to be is the purpose of our salvation.”
The author of 33 books and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University asserted, “Being Christian is not simply about being free from sin so you can go to heaven when you die, but being transformed by the Spirit of God into persons through whom God can work to transform this world into the world it ought to be.”
To make the kingdom of God a social and historical reality, it must begin within individual believers, said Campolo, associate pastor of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, an American Baptist congregation in West Philadelphia.
“Strange as it may seem, as much as I am committed to social change and social transformation, I am also one who is aware that the kingdom of God cannot happen socially unless it happens personally – unless there is a transformation of the heart, the mind, and the soul,” he explained.
“At this point, those of us who are Baptists aren’t very good at facilitating personal transformation,” he bemoaned. “Oh, we do know how to get people down the aisle at the invitation. We are very good at that: 50 verses of ‘Just As I Am.’ They come down just as they are, and go out just as they were,” he quipped.
“Jesus said the kingdom of God begins within you,” Campolo said, observing that when it does, “it changes everything.”
“When the Holy Spirit fills you, it changes the way in which you look at the world in which we live,” he continued. “You cannot look at people the same way you did before. Certainly, you can’t look at the poor and the oppressed that you meet on the city streets in the same manner as you once did.
“When you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, every time you look at those who are in need, those who are suffering, those who are distressed, you will have this eerie sensation that Jesus is staring back at you,” he avowed.
Campolo told of encountering a schizophrenic, homeless man on the streets of Philadelphia who offered his cup of coffee to him and asked for a hug in return. At first, Campolo was embarrassed as people passing by stared as he hugged the dirty, filthy man.
“But little by little, my embarrassment turned to reverence,” Campolo said. “I could hear a voice echoing down the corridors of time, saying, “I was hungry, did you feed me? Naked, did you clothe me? Sick, did you care for me? And, in this case, I was the bum you met on Chestnut Street, did you hug me?”
Recalling the words of Jesus that “in as much as you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto me,” Campolo said, “Little by little, I became aware that I wasn’t holding some bum in my arms. I was holding Jesus.”
If Jesus’ followers begin to see the poor and oppressed as incarnations of Christ, Campolo asserted, “You will not ask, ‘Am I noble enough to help you?’ Instead, you will ask, ‘Am I worthy?’
Phil Bryant, a former South Carolina Baptist pastor who now serves the French Huguenot Church in Charleston, and Rene? Marshall, former director of the Huguenot Society, tell about the history of the Huguenots, a Protestant group that fled persecution in 18th century France.“If the other person is confronting you as though he was Christ, you will not feel yourself reaching down. You will come to that person with awe and respect, and you will come with the sense that you are privileged to serve,” he said. “It changes everything.”
Campolo underscored the need for churches working in inner-city communities to become involved in evangelistic endeavors, not just social programs, “because these brothers and sisters out there on the streets – if they are going to survive spiritually, emotionally and psychologically – need the empowering presence of Christ.”
And he called young people away from the dominant materialistic culture to live “adventurous lives for Jesus,” working alongside those who live in the inner city to transform the situations in which they live.
“It’s up to the church to sit down with young people and really help them to understand that their calling is to live out the gospel, to, in fact, be instruments for God,” Campolo urged.
Campolo also challenged churches to start creating jobs for the poor. “Education only works if there are jobs for the educated,” he explained, observing that many inner-city young people do not believe in education because they don’t see jobs at the end of their high school experiences.
He countered churchgoers who may dismiss the idea with “we’ve never done that before” by pointing out that “we’ve done everything else.”
“When there were no hospitals, who created the hospitals? The church. When there were no schools, who created the schools? The church. When there were no recreational facilities, who created recreational facilities? The church,” he retorted.
“Well, now the call is for jobs, and it’s time for the church to step up to the plate and say, ‘Here we are. We’re going to do it,’ he insisted.
Challenging those who may be fearful about ministering in inner-city neighborhoods, he charged: “Isn’t it true of each of us that we’re all quite willing to be Christian up to a point?”
Instead, he stressed, “Jesus says, ‘Let’s go all the way.’ The Christ of scripture says, ‘If you’re going to be my follower, are you ready to forsake it all? Take up your cross and follow me.'”
Rewriting the words to a familiar hymn, Campolo humorously intoned, “‘One tenth to Jesus I surrender; one tenth to him I gladly owe.’ All together on the chorus, ‘I surrender – one tenth.'”
The first and foremost question, Campolo maintained, is “to what degree is a church ready to establish a physical and spiritual presence in these neighborhoods? Jesus never said, ‘Allow them to come?’ He said, ‘You are to go.'”
In his second lecture, Campolo emphasized that there were more than 2,000 verses in the Bible that call upon the church to respond to those affected by poverty. “Of all the issues that scripture addresses, it addresses none more emphatically or more often than poverty,” he said.
In fact, the only description of what believers will be asked on Judgment Day, he underscored, is how one relates to the poor: “I was hungry, did you feed me? Naked, did you clothe me? Sick, did you care for me?”
“Our response to the poor is the ultimate mark of whether or not we are Christians,” he asserted. “What Jesus says is you can’t have a personal involvement with me without having a personal involvement with the poor. You cannot separate the two.”
Quoting 1 John 3:17, Campolo said that once one is aligned with Christ, one cannot help but find Jesus waiting to be loved in other people.
“Any Christianity that is not that (concerned with social justice) is egotistical, self-centered narcissism. And a lot of Christianity is exactly that,” he charged.
“People say, ‘I want to be saved so I can go to heaven when I die,'” he elaborated. “Man, is that self-centered. Is that what it’s all about? ‘God save me, my wife, my boy, my girl; we four, no more. Amen.’ Or is it about a commitment to the poor and oppressed of the world?” he asked.