Tony Campolo at RTS part 1a: the Church as a Prophetic Voice

Dr. Anthony Campolo is a guest speaker at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, for what is known as the “Kistemaker Lecture Series.”  I am aware of the controversy that seems to surround Dr. Campolo, and I don’t really know what to make of it.  More importantly, I don’t really care.  He’s not my Pastor and he’s not even in my denomination, so I intent on listening and critiquing what I hear, not what everyone else hears.

 

With that in mind, I intend on attending the entire 4 part lecture series, and offering my notes here.  Bear in mind that these are his words, filtered through my mind and my hand onto paper, then again from my paper, back into my mind, and into the keyboard.  None of what follows is a direct quote, but ” ” indicates that I’m pretty close.  Through my notes I have tried to convey the sense of what Dr. Campolo has put forth, but don’t quote Tony Campolo off of this, it has not been approved by Dr. Campolo and would be fairly unfair to him, lest I put words in the man’s mouth..  I’ll offer my own thoughts after I’ve put all my notes in here.  Anything I add will be in [brackets].

 

[Steve Brown introduced Dr. Campolo], saying that Tony Campolo (TC) lectures everywhere and to all sorts of people.  “We don’t agree on much except Jesus.”  SB goes on to say that TC is controversial, but that he (SB) doesn’t know anyone more faithful to Jesus, or anyone who embraces his calling more than TC does.

 

TC:

Campolo references “The End of History,” an essay written by Francis Fukuyama. 

FF said that history is a succession of societies living out great ideas, and that we are at the end of history, because we have found the model idea, the idea around which all future societies will be organized: DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM.  (TC notes, “That’s it?”)  The last 2 challenges to Democratic Capitalism (facism and communism) collapsed.  3rd world nations want to enter into it.  China is slowly getting there. 

 

Why is this?  Why has this occured?  Has democratic capitalism been ordained by God as the final, greatest structure of society?  The reason it’s so popular and effective is because it is the most efficent at creating consumer goods at the lowest possible price.

 

We invented a system that makes…”stuff.”  Eastern Europe didn’t have as much stuff as the West, so the West won.  The wall fell for the sake of stuff.  We are so efficent at making stuff, when we have everything we need.  And if you are sitting here [at RTS], trust me, you have everything you need.  Your problem at the holidays will not be a problem of finding money to buy gifts… it will be how to buy stuff for people who have everything already?  You’re not courageous enough to just say, ‘That’s it, family, no gifts this year!’ [Laughter].  It takes a lot of energy to get people stuff they don’t need.

 

Why are our houses so big?  Look at the size of houses being built here in Orlando.  Is it because our families are bigger?  Our families are actually smaller these days.  We’re working longer hours, outside the home, with two incomes to buy stuff we don’t need.

 

[He commented here with high praise for his wife, about how she raised their children, and about how being a stay-at-home-mom is one of the most important and difficult jobs one could have.]

 

… Raising children is the ultimate task, but we’re neglecting it, having to earn more and more $ to buy more and more stuff.

 

The average married couple talks for 11 minutes every day.  The average father talks to his children 4 minutes per day, and we’re exhausted, trying to buy all the stuff we don’t really need.  We don’t have time for marriage or family… how do they get us to exhaust ourselves?  We don’t even know how to stop working when we go on vacation.

 

We are marketing genuises.  Marketing is one of the most popular majors at the University of Central Florida.  We can get people to buy stuff they don’t need in a heartbeat.  But we market by faith, not by product.  We sell the context: love for one another.  Faith.  Hope.  But in the end, all you have purchased is a can of beer.  What is the one thing that has brought perfect harmony to the whole world?  Black and white, Catholic and Protestant, all together?  Coca-Cola.  You remember the ad.  It was just like Pentacost – everyone singing together, singing the same song.

 

But Jesus said you can’t have it both ways: God and Mammon.

 

Your biggest problem, as young pastors, going out to teach and lead, is not going to be secular humanism… it’s going to be consumerism.  We are willing to neglect God and His Kingdom for stuff we don’t actually need.

 

A modern prophet, if we had a new one, would see what we’re facing and he would:

[1] weep.  Prophets weep before they shout.  A lot of us think that prophets are here to shout but they’re not.  They’re here to weep first.  Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.  Amos.  Isaiah.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem.  We should weep because we have all been duped into the consumerism, and just like the prophet, we know that as our people go into captivity, we go into captivity as well.  So we weep.

 

Sin isn’t what’s going to kill us, a lack of passion will kill us.

 

I was in an elevator the other day, with a young man with pants hanging down way too low.  When we got to the bottom, the door didn’t open.  I started banging on the door, and hollering, “the elevator’s stuck! Let us out!”  Well, it was one of those elevators with two doors, and I was looking at the wrong door.  It had opened up behind us.  And that kid just stood there, and so I grabbed him and shook him and said, “Laugh already!  That’s funny stuff!”  But young people don’t have any passion today. 

Many of you are going to be youth pastors as you’re in seminary.  The big problem isn’t that your kids are bad kids, they’re not sinning… they’re dead.  They don’t have any life in them, they don’t have any passion.  I understand why people become pentacostals, why Rock music is ridiculously loud . . .

 

[to be continued]

 

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