Updated Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008

Baptists urged to help the poor

By Steve DeVane

BR Managing Editor

ATLANTA - Baptists from across North America focused on helping the downtrodden during the morning session of the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting Jan. 31.

Tony Campolo, a professor emeritus at Eastern University and the founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, spoke about what the Bible has to say about the poor. He said Americans have turned Jesus into a "cultural deity."

Campolo said as he goes across the country, he sees people portraying Jesus as "a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, middle-class American."

"The Jesus of Scripture comes to challenge us," he said.

Campolo, a well-known and sometimes controversial speaker, said Jesus challenges the church.

"The Jesus of Scripture calls us to live radical lives," he said.

Campolo said he was not necessarily saying people shouldn't make $1 million.

"There is something wrong with keeping it," he said.

The church needs to challenge young people to a radical commitment to Jesus, who calls His followers to forsake all the follow Him, Campolo said.

"We're losing young people not because we've made Christianity too hard for them, but because we've made it too easy," he said.

Campolo said the church needs to share the gospel by telling people that Christ died to save people from their sin. He encouraged retired people to give their time to missions.

"Rise up, you suckers," he said.

The church can't call individuals to give their lives if it doesn't sacrifice itself, Campolo said.

"I contend that the church is the only organization in the world that exists for its non-members," he said.

Marian Wright Edleman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund, said it's time to end child poverty. She listed a host of statistics, including that a child is born into poverty every 36 seconds.

The figures show a national catastrophe that requires a resetting of America's moral compass.

"The church ought to be the locomotive, not the caboose," she said.