What Church People Ought To Be About

This past week was Moody's annual Founder's Week. I have been able to listen to two powerful messages from the week (you can find all of them on youtube). One of them was given by Pastor Erwin Lutzer. He referenced a poem that one of my mentors, Dr. John Fuder, shared with Moody Church. It is a poem by George MacLeod, and we need to hear his words today as the American church. Here is what it says,

“I simply argue that the Cross must be raised again

at the center of the marketplace

as well as the steeple of the church.

I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified

in a cathedral between two candles,

but on a Cross between two thieves,

on a town garbage heap,

at the crossroads of politics,

so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title

in Hebrew, in Greek, and Latin

and at the kind of place

where cynics talk smut, thieves curse, and soldiers gamble,

Because that is where He died and that is what He died about

and that is where Christ men ought to be

and what church people ought to be about.”

Erwin Lutzer added, "What an awesome reminder that we are not just called to love one another, but it seems to me that throughout church history whenever a church got serious with God, it got serious with its community; it got serious with evangelism through works of service and it began to make a difference."

Amen