our Lord said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), which is to say those who are poor in will.

But the emphasis is not on the growth of the congregation as a structure — in numbers, finances and success — but on the growth of the gospel, as it is spoken and re-spoken under the power of the Spirit.

Religion is the opium of the poor

I pity those who can find no good at church. But how should they if prejudice come between, an effectual bar to the grace of God?

Times have changed since Christ's day. A rich man to-day who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no discussion. Society has spoken.

It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed — this, despite the gospel.

My God, rich people have the time to praise You if they want to, but the poor people are so busy, accept their work as praise because, my God, they don’t have time for everything.

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.

Passing one of our big churches today I ran across this significant slogan, calculated to impress the passing wayfarer: 'We Will Go Out of Business. When? When Every Man in Detroit Has Been Won to Christ.' Of course it is just a slogan and not to be taken too seriously, but the whole weakness of Protestantism is in it. Here we are living in a complex world in which thousands who have been 'won to Christ' haven't the slightest notion how to live a happy life or how to live together with other people without making each other miserable [1928].

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

Our God is a God who has a bias for the weak, and we who worship this God, who have to reflect the character of this God, have no option but to have a like special concern for those who are pushed to the edges of society, for those who because they are different seem to be without a voice. We must speak up on their behalf, on behalf of the drug addicts and the down-and-outs, on behalf of the poor, the hungry, the marginalized ones, on behalf of those who because they are different dress differently, on behalf of those who because they have different sexual orientations from our own tend to be pushed away to the periphery. We must be where Jesus would be, this one who was vilified for being the friend of sinners.

What! Just because a rascal boldly duped you With pompous show of false austerity, Must you needs have it everybody's like him, And no one's truly pious nowadays?

But it’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about ‘gospel growth’ or the increase of the ‘word’.

Strikingly, only once does Jesus speak about judgment, and when he does, it’s about how we treat the poor: And they too will reply, “Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?” Then the King will answer, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.” And yet for some reason even now people of faith think that what’s going on in their — or other people’s — pants is more important to God than, say, what’s happening to the homeless. The lives of the poorest people are at the heart of Christianity, but sometimes religion seems to be what happens when Jesus, like Elvis, has left the building. It becomes a bless me club for the Holy Rollers and navel gazers.