[SuperJon]

I know we all get tired of Liberty pushing certain candidates and political agendas. With that being said, what is the Church's part in the political realm?

The only reason I ask is because I've spent quite a bit of time the last couple of weeks getting ready for what we are doing leading up to the election. We've called for a week long prayer and fast from our church. We're not asking for a complete fast, just a fast of something. We made cards up that had prayer points and information on them and gave them out this past weekend. We're kicking things off tonight at our weekly prayer/worship gathering. We're also getting a video each day starting tomorrow with our different pastors with prayer points and encouragements for how to pray.

Personally, I like the way we're doing things. We're not pushing an agenda other than that we need to be praying for the election and that Christians have a responsibility to vote.

What have you seen done?

What is your church doing?

[vastrightwinger]

At my church, our pastor is in the middle of a 3 week sermon series called "Jesus for President". Basically what he has done is each week spoken about different set of issues (Social, Economic and Foreign Policy). He has presented the Democrats and Republican platforms for each and then pulled from scripture to show where each of them are right and wrong. I have enjoyed it mainly because he has not been partisan or pushing an agenda other than the fact that we need to cover these issues in prayer and vote for those who we feel line up scripturally. My church is very diverse in political thought and it has been well received.

[Purple Haize]

We are replay old Jeremiah Wright sermons........

[NotAJerry]

Both of those sound great. My church is in the heart of DC and is intentionally non political. The last few weeks there have been sermons with titles that sound political but that point towards biblical concepts that trump much on the "Christian" political positioning that many churches focus on. My church community group currently includes a leader at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, 2 former Bush staffers, a top aide to DC mayor Vincent Gray, and a top staff member for Sojourners (not Jim Wallis). We're intentionally that diverse as an attempt to offset much of the partisanship that is inherent in our city.

[bballfan84]

Our pastor has done a 6 weeks series title "Home". He discusses where the Bible aligns itself among the current issues of today e.g. homosexuality, abortion etc etc...it has been awesome. I doubt anyone would be interested but here is a link to his recent sermons. Very powerful

http://www.cloverhillag.org/index.php?/media/messages

[SuperJon]

If we're sharing stuff, here's what we've done:

Postcard front:



Postcard back:



We uploaded extra prayer points and fasting tips to TwoRiversChurch.org/Election.

The goal was to have a prayer point video for every day until the election but I got sick and couldn't film them. A couple guys did them on their own but we'll have one for every day but Saturday. Three of them are done so far:

Thursday's point
Friday's point
Sunday's point

[jbock13]

We talk politics at our church. No church has ever lost tax exemption status. Go to any black church in the inner city, and they certainly talk politics there. As well they should be free to.

We don't require anyone be ideologically or party aligned. But if you're a liberal, you're not going to like our church. That's just the way it is. And while only God can judge a person individually, the essence of liberalism conflicts with Christianity.

I know this will start an argument so fan the flames

Here's my point: if a pastor says "I believe that Mitt Romney represents my values", then fine. But if a pastor says, "Republicans are Gods party", then yeah that's a little odd. But, both are protected under free speech and liberty of conscience.

I should add, I've worked with the Church of the Brethren, most of which are very Democratic and Liberal. I don't doubt they love God, I just don't believe they've got it right when it comes to social issues.

As far as my church goes, my pastor goes through the Republican platforms and Democrat platforms and leaves it at that. But needless to say all of us agree. We also do prayers for the election. We would do an all night prayer but my church is the local voting precinct.

[SuperJon]

Yeah, that's not the point of this thread. Take your junk to one of the other threads.

[jbock13]

Yeah, that's not the point of this thread. Take your junk to one of the other threads.

Yeah, I'll do what I want. Thanks.

[Sly Fox]

We have a churchwide prayer service for the election on Monday night.

Incidentally our a building at our facility has been the primary early voting site for a large quadrant of Houston. I'm not sure what becomes of having tens of thousands of folks waiting in line on our campus. But I don't see a down side.

[jbock13]

Where I live, we really don't have a school around, and the closest one around is for another precinct. So really there's no other building around where voting can occur except for my church. I know in far northwest Botetourt County (Oriskany), they vote in someones house. Seriously, because the area is so isolated and no large infrastructure is available.

But then again, this is the same place where there are no bridges, they have to buy a truck to literally drive across the James River to get to their house.

It is interesting to think about how the Freedom from Religion wackjobs haven't gone after churches being precincts. But in many rural areas, there's just no other options.

[TDDance234]

We walked through a series called being "A Good Citizen in a Great Nation" and that of course included an urge to vote. We probably could have, and should have, done more... but election day snuck up in the middle of two series that will shape the future of our church. In the end, that won out.

I love the prayer emphasis, though, SJ.

[phoenix]

I haven't done anything. Partially because I've only been pastor for a month, and had some things I felt needed to be preached on first, and partially because the congregation is pretty politically savvy and pretty conservative already, and everyone has already been talking about how important it is to vote, so there really wasn't a need to address it from the pulpit.

I don't like the whole "Voter's Guide" mentality that a lot of churches have. Most of the ones I've seen haven't been very well done at all, and are really biased in favor of one candidate over another while claiming to be nonpartisan. For example, I don't think that Obama is going to eliminate freedom of religion, but many voters guides make it sound that way because of the contraception thing. And unfortunately, many people in many churches simply accept the voters guides as fact.

We've been praying for the election, and for both candidates. We've been praying for wisdom and discernment as we go to the polls tomorrow. Beyond that, I encourage people to vote their conscience, and not to vilify those who are on the other side.