When preaching through an election season, be careful your church doesn’t become an echo chamber. If we mimic that, we are saying that we don’t really have a better story with a better ending. Of course, they will place their hope in the world right now. This fervor comes from people with no hope outside of the world they don’t have God or the kingdom of God or Christ. We can become as idolatrous as the world around us and need to avoid getting caught up in the fervor. Jesus was political, but he wasn’t partisan. The Jews incited Romans, which led to His crucifixion. Make no mistake, Jesus was political, saying things like, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The kingdom was political. If you wait until all of the angry ads and social media posts are out, then it looks like you are just another person getting caught in the waves, and your voice will be drowned out by louder voices people hear seven days a week, not just on Sundays. Before anyone really thinks about it, talk about how you will approach the election as a church. Otherwise, we will find ourselves responding to the cultural energy. If the election is in November, we need to be talking about it in January or February. You can make a point, or you can make a difference. We are shepherding our flock to be a different type of people as the church and as followers of Jesus. As pastors, we are not political pundits but shepherds. There are things we need to think through in advance to be able to pastor through an election season. The art of preaching through an election season full of adversity, disagreement, and disharmony will require a lot of preparation (that’s the bad news, but depending on how you look at it, it might not be all that bad). Jesus is God, and we are not (that’s still good news). He found himself in these opposed scenarios and threaded the needle perfectly. Jesus preached grace and truth, go and sin no more. When He encountered the woman in adultery, He said, whoever is without sin cast the first stone. Jesus found Himself in similar scenarios where opposing forces were trying to find the truth. The scenario you find yourself in is not unique. Instead of breathing between election seasons, it feels as if we are always in one. The political temperature is hotter than it has ever been. It seems as if politics is increasingly filling that gap. In our culture, belief in God and the centrality of God has declined, and with that, people inevitably look for replacement gods and idolatry. The thought of preaching through an election season is enough to make most pastors break out into a cold sweat.
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