WACO, Texas (ABP) — God identifies with the poor and the powerless, and Christians encounter Christ when they serve the weakest of the world's citizens, Daniel Vestal recently told a group of social-work students at Baylor University.
“Concern for the poor and the powerless is not partisan politics. It is central and integral to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” stressed Vestal, executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, at an April 24 dinner.
Baptists haven't always realized that truth, Vestal said, acknowledging he did not comprehend the connection between Christ and the poor when he was a young person growing up in a Texas Baptist church.
“The gospel used to be more about pie-in-the-sky than the here-and-now,” he recalled.
Vestal said his own “social conscience” was awakened almost exactly 40 years ago, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.
Vestal was a graduate student at Baylor in the spring of 1968. “I realized I bore responsibility for social and economic justice,” he remembered.
But many Baptists still have been “wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years,” while the gap widens between rich and poor Americans and between rich and poor nations, he said.
Social workers trained at Baylor are “wonderful examples of practitioners of the gospel,” as they serve the poor and powerless, Vestal said. Unfortunately, they do not represent a dominant position among Christians, he added, lamenting, “The wind of the Spirit [regarding compassion for the poor] is getting more of a hearing in the world than in the church.”
Still, Vestal noted, throughout the Gospels Jesus continually expressed love and concern for the poor. He even went so far as to tell his followers the criterion for their own divine judgment will be how well they cared for the poor and powerless.
Since Pentecost — not long after Jesus' ascension to heaven, when the Holy Spirit descended on the young church — “Christ is no longer limited to time and place,” and the church's task is to minister on behalf of Christ to the poor, for whom he cared so deeply, Vestal said.
Christian social work is distinctive, because it is centered upon Christ, who is “hidden among the poor,” he said, adding Christ also is “served among the poor” when the needs of the weak and powerless are tended.
“If you want to see the face of Christ, go to the poor, the powerless, the suffering,” he advised. “As you take Christ to them, you will find he already is there.”
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