Book, and Life, Review:
The Hole in the Gospel

Article by Jim Lulejian

He,y everyone. I hope you all are well. Forgive the boldness of this e-mail, but here goes: - I've recently started a book by Rich Stearns called "The Hole In Our Gospel." He is the CEO of World Vision, which, as many of you know, sponsors children and is a Christ-centered humanitarian aid organization that reaches people in all parts of the globe.

What's amazing about this story is that Rich Stearns was CEO of Lenox Fine Crystal, and was an extraordinarily successful businessman. World Vision staff recruited him to join them, and his initial reaction was a firm "no." He had a huge house with his wife, five beautiful children, and knew that working with World Vision would be a radical change in his lifestyle. However, he had been a Christian for many years, and through a lot of heartache and soul-searching, agreed to take the position. It meant a huge paycut, moving his family, a change in a very comfortable lifestyle, and coming face-to-face with some heartache suffered by people all over the world due to poverty, political strife and natural disasters.

The link to the book's study guide:

http://www.theholeinourgospel.com/images/Complete-studyguide-all-weeks.pdf

**But what's also amazing is that Rich began to see the Gospel in its true form, and made this connection:

Helping out others in need is just as central to Jesus' message as evangelizing, prayer time, and our church community. As Christians, faith without action is missing a central part of Christ's message. His book "The Hole In the Gospel" was very highly rated when published last year, and is one of those rare books that gives you a glimpse as to what Christ meant when he told us to "Love our neighbor as ourselves."

**Below is an excerpt from the book - early on, the World Vision staff decided to train him "by fire," so with almost no training, flew him to Uganda, to one of the poorest communities there, to meet some of the children there with whom World Vision works. The story is amazing, and worth reading.

I didn't share this to "sell" the book or even World Vision. Rather, as I reflect on my recent trip to Honduras, I felt move to share this with you all.

I must admit, I've been fielding a lot of questions from God about how much of my own life and time I've been willing to give to help others, and admittedly, at times have resisted doing more out of my own comfort and lifestyle. But I only shared this because its something I think all Christians could benefit from.

I ask that you take some time this week, read the excerpts below, and just see what God would share with you about it. Whether it's attending a missions trip meeting, taking one night at a homeless shelter in Atlanta, or helping to give to a favorite charity.

I've been really, really blessed to have friends in my life who have spent so much time on short and long-term missions, those who have traveled to or lived in Mexico, Honduras, France, Uganda, Venezuela and even Sandy Springs - :-) to give their time and energy to make a difference in at least one person's life.

And this year God has really opened my eyes and asked me to consider how I could spend my own time serving Him. And really, God has asked me the simple question: how far am I willing to go to follow Him? Admittedly, its an uncomfortable question for me, so this book has been a blessing, to put it mildly.

I hope you can take some time this week to read and reflect on the passages below, and I hope, in some way, God will speak to you through them. This isn't meant as a criticism of the church, or to take a radical agenda, or push anyone to start serving more than you do. But maybe, God has some things to share with all of us through these passages, and I hope it's a blessing to each of you. Thanks everyone.

Jim Lulejian



Reflections

“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”

—Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision (p. 9)


“We are the carriers of the gospel—the good news that was meant to change the world. Belief is not
enough. Worship is not enough. Personal morality is not enough. And Christian community is not
enough. God has always demanded more. When we committed ourselves to following Christ, we also
committed to living our lives in such a way that a watching world would catch a glimpse of God’s
character—His love, justice, and mercy—through our words, actions, and behavior. ‘We are . . . Christ’s
ambassadors,’ wrote the apostle Paul, ‘as though God were making his appeal through us’ (2 Cor. 5:20).
God chose us to be His representatives. He called us to go out, to proclaim the ‘good news’—to be the
‘good news’—and to change the world. Living out our faith privately was never meant to be an option.”

—Rich Stearns (p. 3)


“But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following
Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This
brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not
oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting
that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to
be dug up for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the
resurrection itself—accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world.
Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and
delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read
or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and
for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching,
every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than
corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through
the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of
the mission of God.”

—N. T. Wright (p. 69)



Richard’s Story (Excerpt from "The Hole in Our Gospel" by Rich Stearns)

His name was Richard, the same as mine. I sat inside his meager thatch hut, listening to his story, told through the tears of an orphan whose parents had died of AIDS. At 13, Richard was trying to raise his two younger brothers by himself in this small shack with no running water, electricity, or even beds to sleep in. There were no adults in their lives—no one to care for them, feed them, lovethem, or teach them how to become men. There was no one to hug them either, or to tuck them in at night. Other than his siblings, Richard was alone, as no child should be. I try to picture my own children abandoned in this kind of deprivation, fending for themselves without parents to protect them, and I cannot. I didn’t want to be there. I wasn’t supposed to be there, so far out of my comfort zone—not in that place where orphaned children live by themselves in their agony.

There, poverty, disease, and squalor had eyes and faces that stared back, and I had to see and smell and touch the pain of the poor. That particular district, Rakai, is  believed to be ground zero for the Ugandan AIDS pandemic. There, the deadly virus has stalked its victims in the dark for decades. Sweat trickled down my face as I sat awkwardly with Richard and his brothers while a film crew captured every tear— mine and theirs. I much preferred living in my bubble, the one that, until that moment, had safely contained my life, family, and career. It kept difficult things like this out, insulating me from anything too raw or upsetting. When such things intruded, as they rarely did, a channel could be changed, a newspaper page turned, or a check written to keep the poor at a safe distance. But not in Rakai. There, “such things” had faces and names—even my name, Richard.

Not 60 days earlier I had been CEO of Lenox, America’s finest tableware company, producing and selling luxury goods to those who could afford them. I lived with my wife and five children in a 10-bedroom house on five acres just outside of Philadelphia. I drove a Jaguar to work every day, andmy business travel took me to places such as Paris, Tokyo, London, and Florence. I flew first-class and stayed in the best hotels. I was respected in my community, attended a venerable suburban church, and sat on the board of my kids’ Christian school. I was one of the good guys—you might say a “poster child” for the successful Christian life. I had never heard of Rakai, the place where my bubble would burst. But in just 60 days, God turned my life inside out, and it would never be the same … Two crude piles of stones just outside the door mark the graves of Richard’s parents. It disturbs me that he must walk past them every day. He and his brothers must have watched first their father and then their mother die slow and horrible deaths. I wondered if the boys were the ones who fed them and bathed them in their last days. Whatever the case, Richard, a child himself, is now the head of his household.

Child-headed household, words never meant to be strung together. I tried to wrap my mind around this new phrase, one that describes not only Richard’s plight but that of tens of thousands, even millions more. I’m told that there are 60,000 orphans just in Rakai, 12 million orphans due to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. How can this be true? Awkwardly I asked Richard what he hopes to be when he grows up, a ridiculous question to ask a child who has lost his childhood. “A doctor,” he said, “so I
can help people who have the disease.”

“Do you have a Bible?” I asked. He ran to the other room and returned with his treasured book with gold-gilt pages. “Can you read it?”

“I love to read the book of John, because it says that Jesus loves the children.” This overwhelmed me, and my tears started to flow. Forgive me, Lord, forgive me. I didn’t know. But I did know. I knew about poverty and suffering in the world. I was aware that children die daily from starvation and lack of clean water. I also knew about AIDS and the orphans it leaves behind, but I kept these things outside of my insulating bubble and looked the other way.

Yet this was to be the moment that would ever after define me. Rakai was what God wanted me to see. My sadness that day was replaced by repentance. Despite what the Bible had told me so clearly, I had turned a blind eye to the poor. Now my heart was filled with anger, first at myself, and then toward the world. Why wasn’t Richard’s story being told? The media overflowed with celebrity dramas, stock market updates, and Bill Clinton’s impending impeachment hearings. But where were the headlines and magazine covers about Africa? Twelve million orphans, and no one noticed? But what sickened me most was this question: Where was the Church? Indeed, where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time?

Surely the Church should have been caring for these “orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). Shouldn’t
the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion? Shouldn’t they be flaming today? Shouldn’t churches be reaching out to care for children in such desperate need? How could the great tragedy of these orphans get drowned out by choruses of praise music in hundreds of thousands of churches across our country? (pp. 7-11)