Pastor Furtick,
Much has been made about the recent revelations of the lavish house you are building for yourself in North Carolina. Such a move and such a price tag, $1.7 million, is easy to sensationalize and has drawn the ire of many in our part of the country, both Christian and non-Christian. I can only imagine that many are scratching their head as to how a church leader could build for himself such an extravagant home while claiming to follow Jesus who said, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” I imagine this news is all the more difficult to handle when paired with the staggering reality of the many who are hurting, who do not have homes, who do not even have food to eat tonight.
I do not write to sensationalize. Nor do I wish to seem as if I, or any of the other Christians disturbed by these actions, have this Gospel thing more figured out than you. We are no more holy and we are just as human – prone to error, conflicted between the call of the Gospel and the desire to live fully. We are all hoping to hold up the Gospel of Jesus Christ as our way of seeking God.
Instead, I write to you as a fellow minister and as a person who is convicted by the Gospel revealed to us in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I write to you out of concern for a world in need of Good News and for more authentic expression of it in our time. We look to faith leaders, pastors, teachers, thinkers, mission workers and the everyday saints we encounter to show us the way to Jesus, and we hope we are not disappointed by them.
We hope they live up to the Gospel that they preach.
I also write to you to share experiences of Jesus and of other Christians following in his footsteps, experiences that have shaken me to the core. They lead me to the undeniable conclusion that Jesus Christ was a man of, among and for the poor of this world. He did not just spout out the Good News of liberation to the outcast; he lived it by inviting them into his table fellowship, by touching them and by sharing life with them – even if it cost him a place to lay his head.
Jesus’ migrant and radical life cost him the comfort of a settled home. So instead, he stayed with friends and was dependent on the hospitality of others. Jesus’ house wasn’t that great either, you see. But in living this way, Jesus showed us God’s more perfect way – a way of humility, simplicity and interdependence. And in this way, Jesus lived out God’s liberation of us.
Finally, I write you to urge you to consider the seriousness of the call of this Gospel – the plain words of Jesus who taught us to sell everything and give it to the poor, and to take up a cross of suffering and follow him. How well do these teachings hold up in light of your decision?
I recently met with Dr. Glenn Hinson, church historian and former professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you did some of your theological training, and he shared with me the impact of Thomas Merton on his own vocation. Thomas Merton committed himself to a life of poverty and prayer, shaking the foundations of Christian thinking in the 20th Century. Hinson said meeting with Merton always left him with a lingering question in his mind: “What do we [the Church] have to offer the world that the world doesn’t already have more of than it needs?”
The question should be posed to every church, every minister, at every moment: What do we have to offer the world that the world doesn’t already have more of than it needs?
We have more than we need of extravagance. We have more than we need of public figures saying that they care for the poor and they work to make the world and better and more equitable place for all; meanwhile they reap the rewards of popularity and influence, distancing themselves from the hurting and brokenness of the world and sheltering themselves from the scrutiny of such actions.
Yes, the world has more than it needs of ones who claim to show us the way but instead leave us disappointed.
Yet what of those who follow Jesus, “who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:6-8)?
Jesus had a major impact, showing that we can offer the world simplicity when it has more than enough extravagance, humility when it has more than enough pride, equality and justice when the scales of the world have skewed so far towards the rich and powerful. He showed us above all, Good News to the poor is not just something to be preached; it is something to be lived.
And Christians throughout history have followed his words, marking our memories because of the radical nature of their lives in the face of wealthy and affluent cultures.
I am thinking of those first Christians, gathered on the margins of empire, in secret, in the living rooms of friends, sharing all things in common even though there was not much to give.
I am thinking of the words of St. Paul, describing the church community at Corinth this way: “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all…we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. We are fools for the sake of Christ…To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands…We have become like rubbish of the world, the scum of the earth, to this very day” (1 Corinthians 4:9-12).
The ministry of Jesus Christ was not a ministry of distance but of proximity to the poor. Many ancient Christians followed as closely as they could, birthing generations of those who choose solidarity, advocacy and proximity with the poor. These fools for the sake of Christ chose a different way – they are the ones who in a world of riches chose poverty, who in a desensitized world chose pain and suffering, and who in an apathetic world clung to hope that God would turn the scales of this world towards the poor.
Fools for the sake of Christ – people like St. Francis of Assisi, who saw the face of Jesus in a peasant on the street and immediately stripped off his clothes and sold all he had to live for the poor; fools like Dorothy Day, who began the Catholic Worker Movement, saying that she held onto these simple teachings of Christ: “feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the harborless”; fools like Mother Teresa, who gave all she had to a leper colony in India; fools who mark our memories because of their radical commitment to the plain words of Jesus and kept close to the poor.
These fools dare you and they dare me: to consider ourselves the last, the scum of the earth, to live for the poor, to share all we have, to give to something much bigger than ourselves, to follow as closely as we can to Jesus and allow the poor to show us the way to the Kingdom of God.
They dare us to offer the world what it doesn’t have – to be more foolish, to live in contentment and fulfillment even though we have little, to be liberated and free in the world just as we live in service to it, to dance and sing for joy in crowds of the sick and the despised, the poor and the outcast. We need fools who proclaim that resurrection happens, not because we drive a BMW or get a promotion or build mansions, but because more and more of us start to recognize the face of Jesus in the people who do not own anything at all.
I ask you to consider how your actions line up with the lives of these great and ordinary saints of Christian faith – ones just like you and me who sought to follow Jesus and lived out the call in a radical way. It may seem like foolishness for so many to make so much of the house you are building. In the eyes of the world, it makes sense – it is good for someone who is successful to have good things. However, Jesus demands we rethink what is actually good and what it is that will help us live fully into the Kingdom of God.
The reality is that taking Jesus at his word and following in the footsteps of these saints will not make us more holy, but it will make us more free: free to love the world right as we live in the thick of it; free to give and love and serve those who live life on the margins; free to simplify our lives and draw just a little bit closer to the life Jesus is calling us to live.
I pray for you and your church that you may strive to be free also.
In Christ,
Chris Hughes
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