Tony Campolo Challenge

I’m a huge Tony Campolo fan. For most you love him or hate him. I don’t always agree with his theology, hey but thats ok, there is a lot of people who don’t buy mine. But you can say one thing about Tony… he’s always challenging; and I do like that. Here are some comments he made recently, as reported in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and Monday

“What should you buy for someone who has everything? Nothing!” Dr. Campolo said in the keynote address at St. Andrew Presbytery’s “Tapestry” training event. “But we just came through Christmas, and you didn’t have the guts to pull it off, did you?”

“A whole generation is being seduced by consumerism into a lifestyle diametrically opposed to Christian values,” he said, lamenting that even education is sold as a way to make more money to buy more consumer goods.

“No!” he thundered, invoking Paul’s admonition to Timothy. “An education is ‘to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Campolo challenged audience members to aim for doing the most good, not having the most comfortable life. He recalled a former student of his who announced she had won a teaching position in a rich suburban school system over 200 other applicants.

“That’s too bad,” he told her, noting thousands of students in Philadelphia would fail because their inner-city schools were 600 teachers short. “Why would you spend your life where you aren’t needed?”

Comfortable religion joins consumerism in killing the passion of youths, Campolo said. He told the largely Presbyterian audience that their denomination “is dying – losing its young people – not because we’ve made Christianity too hard for them, but because we’ve made it too easy.

“Youth was made for heroism, not pleasure,” he said. “Jesus calls people to die to self.”

One of the ways he challenged those present to “die to self” was by not attacking worship music that appealed to others. A change from traditional to contemporary praise, Campolo said, had mushroomed attendance at Eastern University’s chapel services.

“I don’t understand praise music. I don’t get it,” he said. “But those kids get it. Don’t criticize what you don’t understand. We’ve been singing your stuff for a thousand years.”

Campolo said some critics have labeled the Christianity he preaches – that eschews war and supports the poor and demands a life sacrificed to the service of others – “dangerous.”

“When did Christianity cease being dangerous?” he asked. “That’s when it ceased being Christianity.”

Any thoughts?