Tomorrow the United States will hold elections for various political positions. The campaigning and name calling have went from brutal to abusive. All sides are angry, upset, and accusatory. Nothing is off limits. Normal citizens are becoming incensed and like never before are becoming as equally belligerent, intolerant and abusive towards each other. Lying and blaspheming is seen as acceptable. Physical violence is deemed necessary. There has been less and less concern about a person’s life. The United States is finding itself hallway down a funnel that they never thought we would find ourselves in. I believe many people are sitting on the outside waiting for someone to stand up and do the right thing, to say stop it! Quit acting like 5 year olds and go to your room and think about what you did! No one is stopping it. No one is standing up and doing the right thing.
As church leaders in America we must pay attention. The people we are trying to reach are being influenced by this culture. Worse yet, the people we have put in leadership in our churches are acting out in this way. Adults and the next generation are observing and learning the way to get what you want is to yell, scream, twist truth, lie, defame, accuse. They are seeing that this type of childish behavior is the way to get what they want and that it is ok to treat people like this. Church leaders, we must begin addressing this in our churches, in our leadership teams, in our gatherings. If we do not we hang precariously on the edge of becoming irrelevant and the perpetrator to a hurting world. We can not afford any longer to wait for someone to step in and say enough is enough or politicians go to your room and don’t come out until you are sorry (ok that never works anyway, but I think you know what I mean). I believe we must do something. We must pray for humility. We must pray for wisdom from God. We must do something about reconciling our congregations. We must teach Biblical leadership to our leaders. We must teach our people to love one another, not to hate one another. We must realize that the non-Christian world is increasingly seeing Christians as narrow minded haters, political activists, and unwelcoming. Our task of reaching our country got a little bit more complicated and we must be willing to humble ourselves as we consider our ministries and our outreach. We must lead the conversation. We can not wait. Our mission to reach people can not afford us to wait.