Some pastors wear their hearts on their sleeves. What they feel is obvious to all around them. Other pastors keep their personal feelings under wraps. No one is quite sure what they feel or what motivates them. Pastor Mitchell kept his personal ideas to himself. We knew his politics at election time, but not in an odious way. I wonder how pastor Mitchell would have handled the current political landscape and the man currently serving in Washington DC.
My thought is, if you can control your feelings and emotions, then good for you. If you can't then maybe you ought not to let your personal feelings drive your inspiration in preaching. If you are reading or watching or listening to media that inflames your ideology, maybe you ought to stop, especially when you have to preach.
The real test of a local church is can we make followers of Jesus Christ, or are we trying to make political activists? Can we minister to people who vote different than we do? Can we minister to people who hold opposing ideologies?
I had a friend in Prescott who was a moderate Democrat in a church full of conservative Republicans. I would ask him how that made him feel. He told me it goes in one ear and out the other. Pastors could learn a lesson and let radical politics go in one ear and out the other. Or not let it go in one ear at all maybe?
Pray for your pastor.
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