As a Pastor I want to see people have an encounter with Jesus and see their lives change. As a product of Baltimore I want that life change to lead to an end of Generational Poverty as well. I've been blessed to see this sweeping change in my lifetime and it is my desire to take part in seeing thousands of other people encounter Jesus and have their lives changed by Him.
I have friends both in and out of the ministry who see no reason for Pastors to pay attention to what is done in other sectors of our world (government, business, health, etc.) and to be honest it saddens me.
Tonight I came across yet another example of a policy that could ultimately hurt the lives of the very people I want to Pastor. This example however is not an issue normally associated with 'the church'. It's a policy issue. In order to fix this issue the political process would need to be engaged.
Many of my peers however are becoming more and more accustomed to sitting out of the governing process in our country. That's terrible. Most of my friends point to Jesus and say that he wasn't involved in politics. I disagree on two levels. One, his very death and being passed around from leader to leader was certainly politics. Secondly he was not in a democracy. Government was not anything close to our form of participatory democracy.
From where I sit I believe it's up to the Church to have a voice on issues that concern the welfare of its people. Much of our city is in tough shape. They need all the help they can get. As the entire Christian influence walks out of the room it's up to those who don't know God to decide how to rule over both those who we call brothers and those who we're called to reach. Either way I believe we should speak up and add our voices to the key causes of harm to our people. If we're leaders we must lead.
Just a thought I wanted to get out there.
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