The Elephant in the Room

"So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound… But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."

(Martin Luther King Jr. - Excerpts from his Letter from the Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963)

This martyr spoke about the elephant that nobody wanted to admit was there. Back then, it was the elephant of black injustice in America. For the most part, the Church ignored that the elephant was there even though it was huge and could not be avoided.

Just last week I returned from Haiti, a small Caribbean island just south of Cuba. Ravished by years of poverty, the toll upon the women and children there is tragic. Reports by CBN, claim that one in five children die from hunger causes. Can you imagine your children so hungry that you offer to give them to strangers - not because you don't love them - but so that they will live? That happened to us on Saturday night. A peasant woman handed us her son Job, just 6 weeks old, because she had no food for him.

One out of four children in developing countries is underweight. 350 to 400 million are chronically hungry. 40% of the people of the world live on less than $2 a day. One child dies (dead) every six seconds from hunger related causes. Thankfully, the Church is helping to correct this modern day injustice – defined so clearly in the Bible. But read this carefully: the American Church, with the wealthiest Christians in all of history, gives less than 2% to assist the poor worldwide.

Friends, there is an elephant in the room of the Church and sadly, many are choosing to ignore it. I have heard some leaders shrug and say that is not their fault that so many are poor in the world today. Some church leaders believe that the elephant will go away on its own. Others say that the government must care for the elephant. Still others say that it is the mission of the church across the street to care for the elephant. The elephant is like a prophet of old telling us what we do not want to hear. The elephant trumpets loudly that God says WE are guilty if we allow people to remain deprived when we have the means to help them. Why are there over 2,000 passages in the Bible dealing with poverty and injustice? Are we to cut those passages out and ignore them? Some do because it is easier to deny that the elephant exists than to do something about it.

Friends, we cannot continue to spend more on hiring staff, more on building plans and more on worship venues until we address the needs of the poor. Martin Luther King, Jr was correct in his jail house writing from 1963. Now nearly 50 years later, what MLK wrote is still true: We must re-capture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church or be dismissed as a country club for the elite.

We all need to ask our leaders about the elephant we see in the Church. Ask for and examine the church budgets. Churches need to pay staff and they need to expand - but how much and to what extent? Ask these questions in the context of all tithes and offerings that are given:

• How much is spent on salaries, benefits, expenses for the staff?
• How much is spent on worship expenses and activities? Or on a planned new Sanctuary?
• How much is spent every year on correcting known injustice in the world (AIDs, the plight of the 143 million orphans, the slave trade of children, etc)?
• How much does the church sacrifice, really sacrifice to feed the 10 million children who will starve to death this year?
• Who is getting the largest piece of the missions budget?

I encourage you to read The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. Ask your leaders to do the same. If the elephant is still not acknowledged, then you have a decision to make. Stay or find a church where the whole Bible is preached and not the one with the holes in it.