James Montgomery Boice on the Poor

“The only times in history in which the church has been really godly and really strong have been times when it was out rubbing shoulders with the poor and helping them. Revival has always borne fruit among the masses. John Wesley and George Whitefield preached in the fields to common people, not in cathedrals to the privileged. But most of us do not even know the poor. We will give contributions to help them, sometimes—if we are not asked for too much. But we are not a church of the poor. We are not even a church of the masses. We need to repent of our elitist dispositions . . . There is a city in which a suburban white Christian school got into financial trouble and the evangelical community immediately aroused itself to help out. But in the same city the struggles of an inner-city school were ignored. Young Life thrives in the suburbs. In poor areas, Young Life can barely find money to pay a skeleton crew, yet the problems of the cities are greater than those in the outlying white areas. We raise money to feed the poor in Bangladesh, so long as the campaigns do not cramp our own materialistic pursuits. But we do nothing to feed the poor on our doorsteps. We need to repent of such wickedness.” James Montgomery BoiceHT: Chris Barksdale