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Christianity Today, January, 2009 |

The Greatest Social Need

It happens to be something that evangelicals are specially gifted to meet.

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 1/19/2009 10:15AM

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Throughout history, many groups within the commonwealth of Christianity have specialized in mercy and justice, and they have done marvelous things. Evangelicals have done their share as well. But the one thing evangelicals have done better (if not always perfectly!) than most other Christian movements is sharing the euangelion, the Good News that God loves and forgives us and invites us into his family, into his work, and into life abundant, now and forever. It is our unique charisma, our special gifting of God.

The mainline American churches up until the middle of the last century held in healthy missional balance social action and evangelism. But slowly the evangelistic mandate got squeezed out. A myopic concern for the social undermined the church's spiritual mission. This has led to spiritual decline, from shrinking membership to a loss of spiritual vitality to faddish theology. It would be a shame if evangelicals did not learn from this sad history.

We are not calling for creation of more evangelistic institutions or more evangelistic tracts and techniques—we have plenty of each, thank God. We are not threatened by our newfound enthusiasm for social action, and in fact rejoice in it.

But we are urging that we not inadvertently "do violence to the poor." We must enter into neighbor-loving outreach with a mindset that fully incorporates the greatest need we are called to meet.

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January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1

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beth sheffield (Registered User)

Posted: January 24, 2009 3:52 PM

Spiritual needs are far more important than social needs. The God-Man Christ is mankind's greatest need because He is the ONLY ONE who can solve ALL of our problems, including social problems that we have. Depraved mankind does not have the power or ability to solve any problem without Christ, and that includes misguided politicians who wrongly and arrogantly make themselves out to be a "messiah". People need the good news of Christ more than they need anything else, so if I had an opportunity to give the gospel to a homeless person I would. I would also give them Bible doctrine if I had it on me. I would then give them money for a meal and direct them to a shelter to get the help they need. I am not a pastor or an evangelist, but as a believer in Christ (Christian), I have my first and most important responsibility to people is to be an ambassador for my Lord and only Savior of the world, Christ. This editorial is actually one of the better ones that I have read.

Ruth Wilkinson

Posted: January 24, 2009 9:26 AM

In the context I live and work in (sgworship.blogspot.com), I've found that most people GenX and older have heard the gospel repeatedly as kids and in soup kitchens. Most have 'prayed the prayer' at least once because someone in authority wanted them to. It's made no difference in their lonely addicted lives. All of the 'preaching' has accomplished little if anything in bringing them to a Jesus filled life. So, we've chosen very deliberately to not go down that road. We don't even say grace at our weekly and monthly meals. (Feel free to tell me why that's wrong. I've heard all the arguments.) But we do have conversations with friends (and they are truly friends) which are painful and challenging in both directions. The rest is up to the Holy Spirit. To tweak Mr. Green's quote, we do a violence to "the poor" by treating them as a group and not as individual people, and the church fails by trying to solve the problem as an organization, rather than as individual people.

Beau in NC

Posted: January 22, 2009 5:14 PM


Why are we even debating this after 2000 plus years? It's not an either/or. 'Tis a both/and.

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