Power from the Pulpit: Keeping Church as Sabbath Space

There is a fine line between exercising power from the pulpit in the direction of truth and love, and exercising power from the pulpit such as to rob the congregation of its Sabbath Heart. Knowing when, how, and when and how not to proclaim is essential to maintaining healthy ministry relationships.

            Power and Vulnerability 

Ministry is a sacred trust. Congregants put unquestioning stock in what their minister says, how their minister acts, and how their minister models the Gospel teachings of Jesus. Clergy have inherent power which is like fire: it can be used to light up the church with a healthy glow and empowerment—the priesthood of all believers, or it can be used destructively to burn down the spirit of a church, to constrain it and to bully it. Whether you think you have this power or not is irrelevant; parishioners think you do. What you say and what you do, matters.

Example:  In some religious traditions the spiritual leader tells the congregants how they should vote or who they should vote for. IRS Guidelines and 503(c) nonprofit restrictions are easy to get around. It can be made very plain who the pastor thinks their congregants should vote for by coming out publicly on issues such as abortion, immigration, nationalism, racism, and white supremacy. Some clerics are quite bold in their urging; others are subtle, but are just as powerful in their recommendations and stated expectations.

Example:  Harold Camping was an American Christian radio broadcaster, author and evangelist. He was notorious for issuing a succession of failed predictions for the End Times, which gained him a global following and millions of dollars in donations to his ministry.  Camping first predicted the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world for September 6, 1994. When this date came and went, he revised the date. When those dates passed, he predicted a new date for May 21, 2011. Billboard advertising was purchased all over America and again he solicited and received millions of dollars in donations.

Again, the date passed and again he advanced the date for the End Times, this time to October 2011. Camping suffered a stroke in June 2011, and the predicted date passed, at which time he was labeled a false prophet and shunned from the evangelical community. He once more advanced the date for the Second Coming and the world’s destruction, but he died before the date came and went.  

Camping used and abused the power of the pulpit. While there can be little doubt that he believed in his message, he promoted himself at the expense of the general public, taking millions and millions of dollars from people he scared into “buying their salvation,” using heavy-handed and poor theology to advance his own ego, and failing to protect vulnerable persons who were prone to billboard theology and end times predictions.

The Purple Church

 I serve a purple church, meaning that my congregants are a mix of both Democrat and Republican. Our covenant as a church is to welcome all people, regardless of demographic categories, the only caveats being that congregants welcome all people as well as commit to profess and spread the WHY of the church:

            “We exist as a church because we believe the Good News of Jesus Christ: that the unconditional love of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, gives meaning and purpose to our lives.”

To create and maintain healthy ministry systems, purple churches have to find balance and protect it so that congregants feel safe to worship the God of Their Understanding and to be in community with other faithful seekers. The reality is we do not all see God’s will in the same way; we do not hear God’s call with the same ears. Persons of differing political parties think the other ones are all wet. And we get no help from our conventional sources of understanding

Television ads are vicious; radio ads are short and misleading, often resorting to unsubstantiated claims and female actors who are deemed “more trustworthy” than their male counterparts. Social media is unreliable; Twitter has become as divided as the rest of the country. And some national news channels are so blatantly partisan that one does not know what to believe from them.

The church, in my view, should stay out of politics. This is not the same as saying that the church and its message should not be political. These are differing concepts. Jesus as a political person, but he was very clear that he would not engage in politics. In Matthew 22, when challenged by the Pharisees as to whether he would pay taxes to Caesar, he asked to see a coin. Pointing out that Caesar’s image was on the coin, he replied, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”

There are opportunities to be political from the pulpit, or what I prefer to call as socio-political, using rhetorical questioning to get the congregation involved in the conversation about justice issues. Jesus asked 306 questions and answered only 3. His main teaching tool were two: he told stories that were relatable to his audience in their everyday experience, and he asked questions to get people to engage in self-reflection. By leading them to the waters of life, he invited them to drink of it. By telling parables that posed deep spiritual longings and lessons, he caused people to pause, think, react, and commit to change.

In our purple church, I do not tell people how to vote. I do not tell them how to see any particular political issue or candidate, except insofar as an issue or candidate holds a mirror up to our society and I might comment on what I see in the reflection. Mostly, I bring questions to my parishioners and allow them to answer the questions faithfully on their own. I am available for conversation, but I will only state my preference for a candidate or issue privately, if directly asked—never publicly from the pulpit and never, ever, never, ever on social media.

Sabbath Space Church

We have declared our church as Sabbath Space.  We don’t talk politics. It is the one place in all of society that a person can go and not be on guard that their political affiliation will be questioned or attacked. It is a place for community, prayer, worship, study, and social connection. The elephant is indeed always in the room, but she is quietly in the corner munching away on tasty grasses and treats fed her by anyone who will treat her kindly.

People are assaulted with politics and politicking on television, radio, social media, at our dinner tables, and on our telephone calls. Church is one place where we can wrestle with socio-political issues, but not wander into the troubling waters of politics. Freed from labels placed on us by ourselves or others, in a Sabbath Space church we can be labeled only as children of God, respected for our different experiences, concerns, and sticking points, grateful that there is one place we can all come to that is diverse and yet not oppositional. Allowing people the freedom to live out their faith differently also provides space for each individual to work out his or her own theology.

            What does Sabbath Space Church look like?

            We have covenantal understandings:

1.     We leave our campaign slogans, T shirts, hats and flags at home. Of course, now that we are all coming to church on Zoom from our homes, we don’t run the risk of cars in the parking lot sporting antagonistic bumper stickers and obnoxious flags waiving from the back.

2.     We speak respectfully and check ourselves when we are getting into the realm of political comment. Sometimes, a gentle reminder from the pastor or church lay leader is needed to bring the conversation back into covenant.

3.     We speak in “I feel…”, “For me…”, “I think…”, “I want /need…” statements and when someone crosses the line and gets insulting (and it does happen, as in any human system), a healthy response leads with these words: “When you say…I feel…”

4.     For me as pastor, when I am writing my sermons, prayers, Children’s Time and liturgy, I am checking myself for internal biases that will get in the way of the Word, that tend to defeat our church WHY, that cannot be understood as respectful, open, and welcoming of all people. I also check myself that I am proclaiming, not insisting on my own way or my own interpretation of the text, the situation, or the way forward. I ask myself, “Are you inviting the hearer to examine their own relationship with God or others or are you telling them what it ought to be?” And, “Are you allowing room in here for the work of the Holy Spirit, or are you attempting to saddle up and ride Her for your own purposes or ego?”

Example: The senior pastor feels strongly that the US should not back out of the Paris Agreement. She thinks climate change is THE most important issue facing the world. Many parishioners agree with her, but others do not, believing that the world is just doing what it does; weather patterns ebb and flow with the years and there are more serious issues facing our country like immigration, the pandemic, and rioting in the cities. She plans her Earth Day sermon with an “ask” at the end that congregants vote and advocate support of the Paris Agreement and US participation in it. Some members of the church are highly offended by her sermon and feel bullied by their pastor. The pastor responds that she needs to preach as she feels called, that God has been very clear with her on this matter and that those who feel otherwise need to “pray hard and examine their own biases on this issue.”

Available Resources:

I teach a basic workshop on Healthy Ministry Relationships, one of the components of which is Power and Vulnerability and Power from the Pulpit. See my RESOURCES page for more information.

 I am also available for hourly consultation with pastors, lay leaders, and churches on this and other HMR (healthy ministry relationships) issues.

(c) Tracey Dawson, 2020