Leadership Journal

In the faith community of my boyhood, our defining hymn could have been "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through." We were relatively disinterested in any public issues except those that had something to do with family or matters of private morality. Everything else was "of the world." Result? I was quite naïve about how to sort out the kind of public issues with which a pastor should identify.

Figuring all of that out began during my seminary days. On weekends I pastored a tiny, rural church in northwestern Kansas. As I was preaching my first sermons Lyndon Johnson was running against Barry Goldwater for the Presidency. I determined to break from my Republican roots and associate with the Democrats. I pasted a Johnson sticker on the back of my Volkswagen. I did this in a Kansas county that would eventually vote overwhelmingly for Goldwater! Was I brave or stupid?

My father (full disclosure: he was a Goldwater man), always candid, saw my Johnson sticker and said, "Are you prepared to take a political position that will cause some people to stop listening to you when you preach the gospel?"

Now there was a showstopper of a question, and not a bad one. It challenged me to rise to a new level of consciousness in determining when I should go to the wall for an issue and when it might be prudent to avoid the wall. In truth, I had not moved to Cheyenne County in Kansas to stump for Lyndon Johnson; I was there, presumably, to represent the interests of Jesus.

In that case I removed the sticker. My political preferences would not be a deal-breaker when it came to engaging people in my congregation. And the moment birthed a new insight: In matters political, I needed to discern the difference between a preference and a conviction.

On another occasion two years later, it was a conviction that caused me, as a young pastor, to take a stand for civil rights. After a racial disturbance in our southern Illinois town, I encouraged the leaders of churches, both African-American and white, to meet and discuss the matter. I held one of the meetings in our home. That was daring in 1966. It resulted in a confrontation at the next deacons meeting and the forced resignation of one of our leaders.

In both of these cases, I was free to assert my rights. But while I asserted that right in the second event because of conviction, I chose not to in the earlier account because it involved preference.

As the years passed, I came to see that the practicalities of a Christ-following faith almost always have political, social, and economic implications. But when and how to use my pulpit privileges or the influence of my pastoral position to bring attention to these issues was a serious challenge. I did not enjoy the job security of a tenured professor, and, to be frank, I did not possess the bravado of a zealot. By nature I wanted to get along, to be a priestly presence for people, to build a strong church.

So when should I take the plunge and declare myself or act upon controversial issues and when should I stay away? The answers that came to me over time are what I call soft answers … or judgment calls.

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