It’s been a great week. Iver Martin (Free Church minister in Stornoway) was in Dundee at the communions, his preaching was warm, biblical and contemporary – a real treat. We had a visitor at our prayer meeting who is a converted Muslim and whom the Lord has used to bring the Gospel to many thousands of Muslims. Again by his simple application of the Gospel he challenged and humbled each one of us. It is a long time since I have been so encouraged by the Word. And the week was not over. On Thursday we had Tony Campolo speaking at the Caird Hall in Dundee on behalf of Signposts International. Signposts is a Christian charity which does an excellent work amongst the poor throughout the world, and Campolo is a superb communicator who has a biblical passion for the poor. It looked the perfect way to end a feast of bible teaching and spiritual encouraging. Alas, it was not to be. I left the meeting feeling disappointed, frustrated and let down. It could have been so much better.

The hall was about a third full (it can take 2,000). There was a lack of young people - I suspect that Campolo is well known in my generation but the younger generation have no idea – I also suspect that there are no Christian Superstars who can manage to draw a crowd from a largely secular society. The worship was what I have come to expect at these things - best described as the tyranny of the Praise Band! Why is it that at evangelical ecumenical events there is only ever one style of worship - a largely performance orientated concert? It is not that I have anything against loud music or some of the songs that were sung – but it is just so narrow – limited only to one tradition and one style. Could we not have a little more freedom and liberty for the Holy Spirit to work? Or is he limited only to the jar of Praise Band Performance Worship?

The information from the Signposts leader and the team leaders from Rwanda and the Philippines was excellent and stimulating – once again reminding us of the power of the Gospel to change lives and the necessity of Christians to be involved in action for the poor. All in all it was set up beautifully for Campolo to bring us the Word of God. Earlier in the day he had spoken at a meeting where he was passionate, reasoned and challenging. I was eagerly waiting to hear the Word of the Lord. I am still waiting.

Tony Campolo is an excellent communicator. He is witty, speaks clearly and has a gift which enables him to connect with people. There are many things about him and that he teaches which I resonate with. Last night however I felt he was manipulative and largely bypassed the mind on his way to get to the emotions. But the greater trouble was not so much with how he communicated but what he communicated. Again it would be wrong to say that it was all wrong. There was some wonderful stuff in what he said – not least the main message of the importance of the poor in the eyes of God. It is not that there was not a great deal of truth in what he said – there was. But truth mixed with error can be very dangerous. Put poison into the meat and it still remains poison. So what was wrong?

Firstly on the Holy Spirit. To my mind he spoke about the Holy Spirit in a blasphemous way. The language was irreverent and the notion was given that the Spirit was a force rather than a person. This was reinforced by a story he told about sitting next to a man on a plane and rather than speaking to him the word he just leaned against him and ‘communicated the Spirit’ through physical touch. This notion of the transference of the Spirit through Physical touch has some semblance of Biblical justification (Jesus being touched by the woman with an issue of blood, the laying on of hands etc) but to build a whole theology of the Spirit on such a thin and superficial understanding is absurd. To tell Christians here that we can communicate the Spirit to people just by touch (even when they do not want him) is to encourage every eccentric to think that they ‘have the Force’ within them and that if only they go round touching people they will be evangelizing. I can see that going down well the next time I am on the no 33 bus and lean against the beautiful young lady sitting beside me – ‘please don’t be alarmed, I am only communicating the Spirit!’.

Secondly his notion of the person of Christ and human beings is quite simply pantheistic. He argued that we should be helping the poor because it was a way for us to connect with Jesus. Jesus was in the poor waiting to be loved. What struck me first of all about that teaching was just how conservative it is – in terms of the values of our society. It is once again all about me. Why should I help the poor? Because it will help ME in MY spirituality. I do not accept that my motive for helping the poor is to connect with Jesus. ‘Please excuse me, I would like to help you so that I can have a better spiritual life’. No. Surely our motive for helping the poor is because they are human beings, made in the image of God. Compassion not self centred spirituality is to be our motive. I personally thought that what he said came across as patronizing and paternalistic (although I accept that Campolo would be horrified at that). But where does the charge of pantheism come from? Campolo would have been right to assert that each human being is made in the image of God – but he is surely wrong to state that Jesus is in everyone. This is not just what he said last night – it is what he has written - In his book, A Reasonable Faith, this is what he says - “What I am trying to say is that Jesus who incarnated God 2,000 years ago is mystically present and waiting to be discovered in EVERY person you and I encounter” (A Reasonable Faith p. 171) “I mean that Jesus actually is present in each other person” (p.192). Jesus is not present in every human being, just waiting to be discovered. There is no question that Jesus is in believers (Christ in you, the Hope of Glory) but he is not present in those who do not accept him and believe and trust in him. The Gospel is not believe that Jesus is already in you but rather that once we repent and believe we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Campolo was also very wooly on his idea of salvation. I am sure he accepts the idea of salvation by faith but he did not communicate that last night. And for someone who is an excellent communicator that is a worry. He came very close to stating that salvation was by works. You don’t love Jesus unless you love the poor is correct. But the implication that if you love the poor then you must be loving Jesus is incorrect.

And his notion of communication with God was nonsensical. He endorsed completely Mother Teresa’s view that you don’t speak to God and he does not speak to you. This mystical silence, this wordless communication is apparently the key to knowing God. Campolo got round the obvious objections to this in the same way that Mother Teresa did – ‘if you don’t understand this then I cannot explain it to you’. Thus putting himself above any form of questioning or reasonable analysis.

Doubtless there are people who will read this and who will disagree. “We were there and we thought he was excellent. You are just doing some theological nit picking – you are only upset because he had a go at White Scottish Male Preachers”. Well, he did have a go. He suggested that what was wrong with the Church in Scotland is that people were always fighting about what was theologically correct and that WSMP’s were boring people who always wanted to exegete verses rather than being able to go through the whole bible in five minutes. In these latter remarks he betrayed an ignorance of the Scottish Church – would that we were concerned about doctrine and theology – then heresies such as Tony Campolo propounded would not be so readily accepted! He also again undermined the Word of God. That is not what our people need to hear. I am upset with Campolo – not because he criticized WSMP’s (although I belong to this group, I would agree with much of his criticism) but because he was not radical enough and he lost a golden opportunity to advance the Gospel to the Poor. He was the entertainer who played to the audience. He was the salesman who manipulated our emotions in order to sell his wares. He was not the Prophet who brought us the Word of God. This me-centred wordless super spiritual New Age version of Christianity is not what the Christians in Dundee needed to hear. We needed to hear a Real Radical.

A Real Radical would have done more than challenge people to give £15 per month to sponsor a child in order to get close to Jesus. A Real Radical would have faced us with the challenges of Scripture to our daily materialistic lifestyles in such a godless secular society. A Real Radical would have faced head on the question of how a speaker who was traveling across the Atlantic to speak at a conference on helping the poor could stay at one of the most expensive hotels in the city (I am not saying that that was wrong – indeed I think I could justify it – although I do have doubts about whether it was something Jesus would do – but I do think it is a question that a cynic would have asked and it is a question that should have been faced and answered). And a Real Radical would have stuck to the Word of God – no matter how unpopular or unentertaining it might be. I honestly believed that Tony Campolo was a Real Radical. I came to that meeting prejudiced in favour of him. It is difficult to describe how disappointed I feel.

I mentioned at the beginning that I was also frustrated and angry. Frustrated because it could have been so much better and angry because Campolo has played right into the hands of the Right wing. I have read websites and articles which lambaste Campolo for his environmentalism, or his desire to change the world. These right wingers use a red neck theology which enables them to declare proudly that ‘since the world is going to be burned anyway, then there is no harm in us helping it along its way’. To them salvation is all about personal salvation and has nothing to do with changing the world. (Of course they are inconsistent in the application of this theology – they don’t want to change the world but they sure want to make sure that their part of it is as comfortable as possible). Campolo rightly challenges this selfish individualism but by doing so with such teachings as outlined above he ultimately acts as a support for that theology. The right wing can now say – “see these environmentalists and ‘change agents’ (the new right wing abuse term – now that socialism has lost its meaning) – they are nothing but New Age heretics who come in the veneer of Christianity”. Campolo last night provided the justification for that charge. I hope it was an aberration. I fear that a good man with an important message will self-destruct and negate that message.

Meanwhile those who believe in the teachings of the Bible – both in its social and personal consequences, those who hold to the traditional Reformed understanding that every word of the Bible is true and every part of life is subject to the Lordship of Christ, will carry on. We do not need Superstar Evangelical Speakers to speak for us – but it would be nice if they could. Last night a golden opportunity was missed. In one of the beset parts of his talk,Tony Campolo challenged us about whether we would go to heaven with ‘Titles’ or ‘Testimonies’. Last night the testimony was weak.

Let us strengthen what remains and is about to die. Enough - I’m back off to the Real World – a children’s school concert, a meeting with a young man who wants to be a preacher, sermons to prepare, a TEAR Fund lunch on Sunday and all the wonder of being able to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. The thrill goes on.

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