Creativity Quote by Michael W. Smith

It lands like a hymn with the lights turned on: comforting moral language, paired with an accusation that refuses to stay abstract. Michael W. Smith isn’t talking about policy first; he’s talking about institutional betrayal. The line’s power comes from its implied contract. “The church” isn’t framed as a vibe, a Sunday service, or a personal faith journey. It’s a named civic actor with a job description. And “supposed to” does heavy lifting: it assumes the audience already knows the assignment (care for the poor, shelter the vulnerable) and invites a quiet shame for how routinely that assignment gets outsourced.

The subtext is a rebuke of performative Christianity, especially in a culture where churches can be influential, well-funded, and politically engaged while homelessness remains visible, literal, and unignorable. By going straight to “sleeping on the streets,” he chooses the most concrete image of social failure. It’s not a metaphor for spiritual emptiness; it’s bodies on pavement. That specificity keeps the statement from drifting into generic compassion-talk.

There’s also a strategic simplification at work. Saying “we wouldn’t have anyone” is aspirational to the point of implausible, but that’s the rhetorical move: exaggerate the church’s responsibility to match the scale of its proclaimed mission. Coming from a prominent Christian musician, it functions as in-group critique, not outsider scolding. It asks believers to stop treating charity as branding and start treating it as infrastructure.