Lafayette Ave. Presbyterian Church

Jim Wallis is a pastor and activist. He is the founder and president of sojourners.

What follows are notes from his message.

What kind of movement do we need right now?

We need some good news.

A lot of religion is happy talk that avoids the bad news.

But revival happens when bad news is answered by good news.

The church is, according to surveys, divisive, judgemental, and hypocritical.

But people think that Jesus is loving, caring, and compassionate. Pro-poor. Pro-peace.

The good news? A new generation is addressing their faith, like a laser beam, to the biggest issues that impact their lives and the world.

Something is happening, but we are not yet the movement that we need.

You can’t start a movement, but you can prepare for one.

The idea that God is on one side of the aisle or the other is ridiculous.

Dr. King never endorsed a candidate–he spoke to issues.

Politics is broken. When politics fail, movement rise up. And the best movements always have spiritual foundations:

• abolition
• sufferage
• labor reform
• civil rights

Religious movements don’t get called “revival” until they change something in society.

Charles Finney pioneered the altar call to sign up converts to the anti-slavery campaign. He would call people to Christ and then call them to action.

Dr. King needed personal faith to carry on.

Do we take our faith seriously enough to believe that if our faith broke out it would change the big things we confront?

Faith is for the big stuff, for the hard stuff. That’s the whole idea.

We face some wicked issues

• 3 billion living on less than 2/day
• human trafficking–more slavery than ever
• climate change
• global pandemics

They feel like mountains, but Jesus says with faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains.

The great movements were in the mountain moving buisness.

It’s time to decide: what are you going to do?

It is going to require three levels of commitment.

Personal commitment. What is your vocation? How do you spend time/money? What is your lifestyle? What do you teach your kids–with your actions?

Communal commitment

Why are there flourishing churches and failing neighborhoods?

Are you a carbon friendly church?

Is there crime on your steps? Do you spend time in the neighborhood?

A radical lifestyle can turn into just pietism.

We also need public policy commitment.

Fishing out bodies is not enough without asking why they are in the river.

A five percent budget cut in feeding programs will end every church feeding program.

It was not enough for Christians to not own slaves, we had to end the slave trade.

The people in government don’t change the world–movements do. LBJ wasn’t a civil rights leader until Dr. King and Rosa Parks made him one.

Politicians will always have their finger in the wind–we have to change the wind. No candidate will be able to change the big things unless and until social movements are pushing–even if they want to.

Regardless of who wins, it is time for US to perform.

We won’t get to social justice without a revival of faith.

The most important thing that people of faith bring to movements is “the big choice.” We used to say it was between “belief” and “secularism.” It’s between “hope” and “cynicism.”

When you are a cynic, you are still against the bad stuff, but you are buffered against taking action.

Hope is more than a feeling. It’s a choice, because of this thing we call faith. It’s believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.

Bad religions pulls out the worst of us.  We have seen it.  But good religion brings out the best.

It’s time to answer bad religion with good religion, because pulpits can change the world.