It was 1998 when Richard Stearns, a guy who basically had it all as the CEO of Lenox—the fine china company—found himself sitting in a mud hut in Rakai, Uganda. He wasn't there for a board meeting. He was sitting across from an orphan named Richard, whose parents had died of AIDS. Stearns was a successful Christian, a "good" guy by every metric the American church uses. But in that moment, looking at a kid who had nothing while he had everything, he realized something was broken. Not just in the world, but in his own faith. This realization eventually became a book called The Hole in Our Gospel, and honestly, it’s just as convicting today as it was when it first hit the shelves.
We talk about the "Good News" all the time. But if you look at the state of the world—the crushing poverty, the 700 million people living on less than $2 a day, the lack of clean water—you have to ask: Is it actually good news for them? Or is it just a personal insurance policy for us?
What exactly is the hole in our gospel anyway?
Stearns argues that the American version of Christianity has become dangerously individualistic. We’ve turned the Gospel into a private transaction between us and God. Get saved, go to church, don't cuss too much, and wait for heaven. But that's a half-truth. It’s a gospel with a giant, gaping hole in the middle where the "other" should be.
The "hole" is the absence of a social conscience. It’s the gap between our profession of faith and our actual practice of compassion. If you claim to follow a Middle Eastern carpenter who spent his entire ministry hanging out with lepers, prostitutes, and the "least of these," but your life is mostly about personal comfort and retirement accounts, there’s a massive disconnect. Stearns calls it a "socially responsible" faith, but really, it's just the original faith that got lost in translation somewhere between the first century and the suburbs.
I remember reading about a study done by the Barna Group around the time this book was gaining steam. They found that while most Christians said they cared about the poor, only a tiny fraction actually did anything about it on a regular basis. It's easy to post a verse on Instagram. It’s a lot harder to drive to a part of town you’re afraid of and help someone with their rent.
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The numbers that should keep us up at night
Let’s get real about the statistics because they aren't just numbers; they’re people. When Stearns wrote the book, he pointed out that Americans spend more on pet food and trash bags than the church spends on global poverty. Think about that for a second. We spend more on things we literally throw away than on the survival of other human beings made in the image of God.
- Over 15,000 children die every single day from preventable causes like diarrhea, malaria, and malnutrition.
- Clean water is still a luxury for roughly 1 in 4 people globally.
- The total wealth of Christians globally is estimated in the trillions, yet the amount needed to solve basic global crises is a rounding error in that budget.
It's uncomfortable. It should be. We’ve built a version of Christianity that fits perfectly into a consumerist lifestyle, where Jesus is a life coach rather than a revolutionary who demands we sell what we have and give to the poor. The hole in our gospel is the part where we stop being the "salt of the earth" and start being the "salt of the country club."
It’s not about guilt, it’s about vocation
Nobody likes being yelled at. If this was just about guilt-tripping people into writing checks, it wouldn't have resonated the way it did. Stearns isn't saying you’re a bad person because you have a nice house. He’s saying you’re missing out.
There is a specific kind of joy that only comes from being used by God to fix something that’s broken. When you lean into the "whole" gospel—the one that includes justice, mercy, and humility—your life starts to make sense in a way it never did before. It moves from being about me to being about we.
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I’ve seen this play out in small ways. I know a family that decided to skip their big vacation one year to fund a well in a village in Cambodia. They didn't do it because they felt like they had to. They did it because they realized their "need" for a beach trip was nothing compared to a village's need for water that wouldn't kill their kids. They said it was the best year of their lives. That’s the "whole" gospel in action.
Why we struggle to see the hole
Part of the problem is our optics. We live in bubbles. We see the world through our screens, filtered and curated. We see poverty as a "problem to be solved" by governments or massive NGOs, not as a personal mandate for the follower of Jesus.
Also, we’re terrified of "social gospel" labels. For decades, there’s been this weird tension in the church. Some people focus only on the soul (evangelism), and some focus only on the body (social justice). But you can't split a person in half. If a man is hungry, you don't just tell him Jesus loves him; you feed him. And then you tell him Jesus loves him. If you do one without the other, you’ve either got a hollow word or a temporary fix.
Real-world evidence of the shift
Since the book's release, we’ve seen some shifts. Organizations like World Vision (which Stearns led for years) and Compassion International have seen millions of people step up to sponsor children. We’ve seen the rise of "missional" communities that prioritize local justice. But the hole is still there. It’s a constant struggle because our culture is a vacuum that tries to suck the sacrifice out of faith.
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Look at the response to the refugee crises in the last few years. You see some churches opening their doors, providing legal aid, and literally "welcoming the stranger." That’s the gospel. Then you see other groups fighting to keep people out because of fear. Fear is the great expander of the hole. When we’re afraid for our own safety or our own status, we lose the ability to love our neighbor.
How to actually fill the hole
You can't fix global poverty tomorrow. You just can't. And if you try to take the weight of the world on your shoulders, you’ll burn out in a week. But you can do something.
Start by looking at your calendar and your bank statement. That’s where your real gospel is written. If there’s no room there for the marginalized, you’ve got a hole. It might mean sponsoring a child. It might mean volunteering at a local refugee resettlement agency. It might mean changing how you vote or how you shop.
The point isn't to be perfect. The point is to be headed in the right direction. We’re all works in progress, but we can’t keep ignoring the parts of the Bible that make us sweat. James 1:27 says that "pure and undefiled religion" is to look after orphans and widows in their distress. It doesn't say it's a nice suggestion for the "social justice" wing of the church. It says it's the core of the thing.
Practical Steps to Bridge the Gap
- Audit your empathy. Spend some time reading about issues outside your zip code. Get to know the names of people who don't look like you or live like you.
- Choose one "thing." You can't care about every single cause. Pick one—human trafficking, clean water, local homelessness—and go deep. Learn the nuances.
- Connect with a local non-profit. Giving money is great, but giving your time changes you. Find a place where you can serve people face-to-face.
- Adjust your lifestyle. Small shifts in your budget can have massive impacts elsewhere. Could you live on 90% of your income so you can give 10% away to those in extreme need?
- Speak up. Use whatever platform you have to advocate for those who are being ignored. Sometimes the hole is filled by a voice, not just a dollar.
The hole in our gospel isn't a permanent condition, but it is a recurring one. Every generation has to decide if they want a comfortable religion or a transformative faith. One is easy; the other is worth it. Stearns’ journey from a boardroom to a mud hut reminds us that the best version of our lives is usually found when we finally stop looking in the mirror and start looking out the window.