'The Hole in Our Gospel' provided to Willow Creek Community Church members
'Read this and you will read a story of total surrender,' senior pastor says
Contact: Dean R. Owen, World Vision, 253-815-2103, 253-906-8645 cell, dowen@worldvision.org
SOUTH BARRINGTON, Ill., May 7 /Christian Newswire/ -- Willow Creek Community Church Senior Pastor Bill Hybels has purchased 10,000 copies of "The Hole in Our Gospel" by World Vision President Richard Stearns for his congregation because "it is one of the finest books I have ever read."
Hybels, who interviewed Stearns at two services on April 26, remarked that two church donors enabled his church to buy 10,000 copies of Stearns' book.
"Rich Stearns is one of the finest leaders I have ever met," Hybels said.
Stearns joined World Vision in 1998, leaving his seven-figure salary as president CEO of Lenox, America's fine china and tableware company, and taking a 75 percent reduction in salary.
"He walked away from what the world worships," Hybels said. And Stearns' decision shows that "if you surrender your life fully to God, He might change your career and give you a self-sacrificing assignment."
That "self-sacrificing assignment" has taken Stearns to more than 40 developing nations. His book, "The Hole in Our Gospel," challenges American Christians, many of whom, he contends, have embraced "a shallow and diminished version" of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Hybels noted that the book "explains how intelligent Christians should engage with the poor in a more compelling way than any other book I've read," and told the Willow Creek congregation that he purchased the 10,000 copies as "an investment in your mind and in your heart on engaging with the poor."
Stearns calls the book "an authentic and transparent account by an ordinary person God called to an extraordinary mission," and challenges Christians to think about their faith as "more than a fire insurance policy, that is, just a private transaction to between an individual and God to secure a seat in heaven."
"The gospel, which literally means 'good news,' begins with a private and personal reconciling of each of us with God through Christ," he said. "But then it should manifest in a revolutionary expression publicly, as each person devotes his or her life and resources to 'loving our neighbors' through tangible acts of compassion and standing up for justice. Jesus intended to charge God's people with igniting a social revolution and changing the world."
Stearns argues that 2,000 years ago, 12 individuals, Jesus' disciples, changed the world forever.
"Christians today can do it again," Stearns said. "We can help eliminate severe poverty in a world where more than one billion people live on less than one dollar a day and do not have ready access to clean water. I don't deny that American Christians and churches are doing good. The question is whether our definition of good is good enough. Is God pleased by what He sees?"
