During the 1990s, I worked for a parachurch nonprofit called Evangelicals for Social Action. We tried to get American evangelicals to share with and to advocate for the poor and the powerless.<\/p>\n
As you may guess, that wasn\u2019t easy. Our message was often met with suspicion or even with outright hostility. Some people and some churches could almost grasp the value of \u201csocial action\u201d to meet the needs of the needy, but only if it were explicitly a tool for subsequent evangelism \u2014 \u201cSoap, Soup and Salvation\u201d or \u201crice-bowl\u201d Christianity. Others just objected to the idea entirely as a worldly distraction from the calling to evangelize.<\/p>\n
I had what I thought then was a terrific response to such suspicions and objections. \u201cYour church is already doing all this,\u201d I would say. \u201cYou\u2019re just doing it overseas, but not here at home.\u201d<\/p>\n