Have you ever done a sermon on poverty? It was a question Todd Hudson, Senior Pastor of Southeast Christian Church, in Parker, Colo., hadn't pondered before.

"Never," he said finally. "I had sermons that had illustrations about poverty and what God says about it. But a whole sermon on poverty, I had never done it before. Hmm. That's kind of embarrassing."

If pastors don't use their sermons to give a voice to the voiceless, how can the Church fulfill God's mandate to help the poor? It was a question Pastor Hudson pondered after a series of events this summer led him to "study more" on God's heart for the poor. That biblical introspection and a trip to Ecuador inspired him to host a Compassion Sunday event that would change his congregation forever.

Sermons Focus on Life Issues

Pastor Hudson says his sermons usually dealt with the issues of his flock, not poverty.

"You focus many times on the life issues of the people that are in your church," Pastor Hudson says. "I don't think we have a lot of poverty in our local community, so it's kind of 'out of sight, out of mind.'"

But events that happened in the summer of 2007 brought poverty to the forefront of Pastor Hudson's mind. That summer he attended another pastor's church and the sermon was about poverty. A few weeks later his oldest son mentioned going into downtown Denver to minister to the homeless. Then, while reading his Bible, scriptures about God's heart for the poor seemed to resonate.

"I felt like God was calling me to pay a little bit more attention to this topic," Pastor Hudson says.

Sermon Comes Alive

In 2007, Pastor Hudson traveled with Compassion on a five-day sojourn to Ecuador.

"Going down there, seeing and hearing what Compassion was doing, hearing about their distinctives, sold me 100 percent on that ministry," Pastor Hudson says. "Compassion is distinctly Christian. It's distinctly not just feeding kids but feeding kids in the name of Jesus. The fact that they work through the local church, that was huge to me."

Pastor Hudson saw a sermon come to life in a three-room, wooden home with newspapers for wallpaper and rain seeping in through cracks in the walls. There he met a Compassion Child Sponsorship Program graduate.

"The young man pulled out all the letters he'd gotten all these years from his sponsors," Pastor Hudson recalled. "Tears started streaming down his face as he was talking about this family he had never met before. It was extremely touching to know that one family somewhere had made such a difference in this kid's life."

Not long after returning from Ecuador, Pastor Hudson called a Compassion representative and said, "I've changed my schedule around. We're going to do this. I'm going to preach on poverty this weekend."

Sermon Leads to Transformation

Just one Sunday sermon made a world of difference. Pastor Hudson preached what God was teaching him about poverty. He challenged his congregation to forget about their life issues for a moment and to think about the plight of the poor. He also mentioned Compassion sponsorship.

"I had a goal by the end of the year we would have 500 children sponsored," Pastor Hudson said. "We had half of that in one day."

For Southeast Christian Church, Compassion Sunday wasn't just another event — it was a transformation. More than 200 Compassion children were sponsored. But the change went beyond Compassion and into the church's local community. After the event, more people in his congregation began serving at the Denver Rescue Mission, and others became involved with the city's homeless ministry. Poverty, once a stranger to the members of this church, is now known and has become an enemy. The experience, Pastor Hudson says, has brought his congregation closer to God.

"I think we define spiritual maturity and growth by how many Bible studies we attend and how much knowledge we have," he says." But unless we learn to give our lives away to others … to [the poor], we're going to feel stuck and we're not going to grow spiritually, no matter how much knowledge we have."