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They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share…
1 Timothy 6:18
Reflect
It was like nothing I had ever seen — that anyone had ever seen. More than 50 of music’s greatest artists united in a concert that lasted an entire day and spanned two continents. More than 160,000 lucky concertgoers paid only $35 to see the event in either Philadelphia or London and millions more tuned in on TV to watch what is still regarded by many as the greatest concert of all time.
It was Live Aid, an event dreamed up by Bob Geldof, the front-man of The Boomtown Rats, a band unknown to most in the United States but who had some decent success in England. Geldof had previously helped organize Band Aid, a collection of British performers who recorded the single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise money for and awareness of the famine in Ethiopia. The single brought in £8 million for famine relief, but Geldof envisioned more. So he used his connections to pull together Live Aid, set for July 13, 1985. I remember being transfixed as one band after another took the stage at either JFK Stadium in Philadelphia or Wembley Stadium in London. Phil Collins even played both, going on stage in London in the morning, and then crossing the Atlantic to play in Philadelphia that night.
The event eventually brought in more than £150 million (which is at least $200 million) in the hopes of feeding the hungry in Ethiopia. It was a laudable effort, but today more people remember the concert than the cause. If you’ve watched TV after 11 p.m., you’ve undoubtedly seen countless commercials asking for help feeding hungry children in far-off countries. Live Aid was an amazing event assembled for a great cause, so why didn’t it make more of a difference?
The answer is a difficult one, and it’s fairly damning to the Church. If you look back to the origins of the early Church, you’ll see that it thrived in part because it was meeting the needs of the less fortunate. According to Professor Rodney Stark of Baylor, the Church experienced exponential growth, especially between 250 and 350 AD, largely because of the godly behavior of its people and because those people cared for people other than themselves.
| Christian Growth Projected at Forty Percent per Decade | ||
| Year | Number of Christians | Percent of Population |
| 40 | 1,000 | 0.0017 |
| 50 | 1,400 | 0.0023 |
| 100 | 7,530 | 0.0126 |
| 150 | 40,490 | 0.07 |
| 200 | 217,795 | 0.36 |
| 250 | 1,171,356 | 1.9 |
| 300 | 6,299,832 | 10.5 |
| 350 | 33,882,008 | 56.5 |
While the Church made an enormous difference in those years, it is making a much lesser difference today. If you look at who is reaching out to the poor and needy the most, it is government agencies and private, non-Christian organizations. And while they may provide some food, money and a little education, they miss the mark of why the Church made such a big difference — they don’t touch people’s hearts. And that’s really what people are looking for when they try to make a connection through acts of kindness.
The world may not love God, but it does crave goodness, and you can see unchurched, non-Christian people reaching out to help others almost every day. There are a lot of reasons people do this. Perhaps they’re trying to fill the god-shaped hole, or maybe they’re trying to build up points to try and reach heaven. But as much as they respond, they will also recognize when Christians respond to the Gospel mandate to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
At the same time, we see Christians striving to build the Church through tracts, revivals and street preaching. But the greatest evangelism has always been tied to meeting the needs of people who need us. Note the difference Jesus made through feeding thousands, healing the sick and raising the dead. Yes, those were miracles, but they met the needs of hungry and desperate people.
More than Live Aid, we need ongoing efforts like Servolution, which encourages people to change lives just by committing acts of kindness. If you’re already doing something like this, God bless you and keep up the good work. But if you’re looking for a way to get involved, find a place where you can serve the needy. Jesus believed in it, the early Church grew because of it, and the need is and will continue to be there.
Reflection copyright © 2024 Doug DeBolt.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
