Containment? No...

America has many trenchant problems. Is there any chance that one of our woes could include pastors who consider merely preaching from a pulpit to be more Christ-like than lovingly traveling the wider community, as Jesus did, compassion in hand and a message of holiness on the tongue?

Three years ago I led an altar call at the prison where I preach. With no actual altar to work with, I asked the men who came forward to put their noses, belt buckles, and knee caps on the concrete and admit to being "dirty, rotten sinners" before the Lord. Michael was there that evening and responded, face flat on the floor. At a later date and out of prison on bond, he said that those words weren't nearly as formative as the word "surrender."

There in that prison cell -- A3 of the Hinds County Detention Center -- he heard a word that made immense sense in that divine moment and surrendered fully to the Lordship of Christ.

He was released on bond, reconciled with his wife, became a member of our church, and began discipling his four kids and paying child support for two others. He provided a holy example to his children and solidified that model by leading them in two devotional periods each day -- times that included praise and intercession and reading two chapters of Scripture.

On the work front, his longtime employer declared Michael the most godly man he knew, since his jailhouse experience, and the best employee he'd had in the last 25 years.

So, three years after he got out on bond, he went back to trial in a system anything but speedy and was found guilty (this pastor thinks him likely innocent, by the way). I had the honor of testifying at his sentencing. Among other things, I said he wasn't just a good man but a great one, and that his life "had been thoroughly redeemed by Jesus Christ." Michael could have received up to 30 years in prison. The judge ruled that he would serve four more (he has already served one).

A local television station, tipped off through the D.A.'s office that the judge might be lenient in this case, ran the story as part of an ongoing "Broken Justice" series. The segment which was aired in this case portrayed Michael, this pastor, and the church as being grossly on the side of injustice. As might be imagined, the phone lines of the station filled with outraged viewers and the next day talk radio in our community was buzzing with the subject.

One on-air comment suggested that the pastor should stick to the pulpit, and stop getting involved in affairs outside the church.

In seminary, I studied under a professor named Dr. Robert Coleman. He wrote the famous "Master Plan of Evangelism" which could alternatively be named "The Master Plan of Getting out of the Synagogue and Getting Into the Highways and Byways of Life With Disciples in Tow to Change the World." I wasn't one of Coleman's better students, but even so, if I am to be accused of many bad things, I trust it will never be said that I minded my own business and that of my congregants by merely keeping to a pulpit. Or, that I just didn't have the time or inclination to get involved at the abortion clinics, the prisons, the strip clubs, and the nursing homes. Or, that I didn't care for or stand up for the less fortunate, the downtrodden, the poor. Or, that I cared little about the unevangelized and refused to stand for the people God has entrusted to me with a good word when they were in trouble.

America has many trenchant problems. It might be proposed that all problems are, in the final analysis, spiritual ones. Is there any chance that one of our woes could include pastors who consider merely preaching from a pulpit to be more Christ-like than lovingly traveling the wider community, as Jesus did, compassion in hand and a message of holiness on the tongue?

The greatest, men like John Wesley, would have had nothing to do with a message of containment or simply taking care of the already well-mannered:

"Let us be employed, not in the highest, but in the meanest, and not in the easiest but the hottest, service -- ease and plenty we leave to those that want them. Let us go on in toil, in weariness, in painfulness, in cold or hunger, so we may but testify the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24) The rich, the honourable, the great, we are thoroughly willing (if it be the will of our Lord) to leave to you. Only let us alone with the poor, the vulgar, the base, the outcasts of men. Take also to yourselves 'the saints of the world': but suffer us 'to call sinners to repentance"; even the most vile, the most ignorant, the most abandoned, the most fierce and savage of whom we can hear. To these we will go forth in the name of our Lord, desiring nothing, receiving nothing of any man (save the bread we eat while we are under his roof), and let it be seen whether God has sent us." (John Wesley, "A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion")

Let it be seen, indeed.