Professor And Speaker Tony Campolo Writes These ...

Professor and speaker Tony Campolo writes these challenging words:

In December of 1987, I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking at the great Urbana missionary conference sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In the course of my address to the more than eighteen thousand collegians who had gathered for that historic conclave, I asked a rather rhetorical question, "Can a Christian own a BMW?"

I had prefaced my question by telling those young people that Christians are people who do what Jesus would do if Jesus were in their place and facing their choices and options. I had gone on to point out that if Jesus lived in our contemporary world, like each of us He probably would buy a car. But I argued that if He had an extra thirty-five thousand dollars in His hand, I did not think He would spend it all on a luxury car, knowing that people in some Third World countries were starving to death. I contended that Jesus would probably buy a reliable but reasonably priced car and find some way to use the rest of the money to help those needy people.

Tony Campolo, 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch (Dallas: Word Pub., 1988), 96.