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Thinking About Our Witness During the Election
At the Great Commission Collective, we want to see churches equipped to bring the Bible to bear on all of life. Many of our churches are about to enter election seasons—U.S. churches in 2024 and U.K., Canadian, and other churches in 2025.
We gathered a few resources which we think are helpful as you prepare your people to be a witness in the upcoming election cycles. Here are some unifying themes in each of the articles:
- Our love for one another within our local congregations is the single greatest witness to a watching world.
- Our best hopes for the world are located in the seats of our church buildings on any given Sunday. We should not underestimate the potential for spiritual formation.
- We have to resist the temptation to lose sight of God's commission to His church.
Jonathan Leeman
Bottom Line: “Inside the local church is where a Christian politics becomes complicated, authentic, credible, not ideologically enslaved, real. It’s in these real-life situations where you’re forced to think about what righteousness truly is, what justice truly requires, what obligations you possess toward your fellow God-imagers, and what you yourself are made of.”
Jonathan Leeman reminds us that our political activity is most deeply and truly shown in how we live our daily lives — especially when it comes to our fellowship with the church.
Mark Dever
Bottom Line: “The Great Commission is not about less than personal evangelism and missions, but it is about more. It is about planting churches where people commit to Christ and to one another as members through baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”
In stormy weather we must be especially careful 1) not to lose our mooring (to God’s Word), and 2) not to lose our bearing (towards evangelization of all nations). Mark Dever reorients us around the latter focus, especially reminding us of the local church’s role in fulfilling this calling. Read 20 quotes here.
Kevin DeYoung
Bottom Line: “The most needed renewal in our world and in our land is the restoration of true doctrine, the reformation of our lives, and the revival of that divine and supernatural light shining in our hearts to show us God’s glory in the face of Christ.”
Kevin DeYoung review’s Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. DeYoung is careful to show how Stephen Wolfe’s vision of Christian Nationalism entails dangerous shifts in mission. If you don’t have time for the whole review, skip to DeYoung’s section six: “Better Strategy: Confidence, Courage, Christlikeness.”
Sam Emadi
Bottom Line: “[Church members] must guard the gospel by overseeing one another’s membership in the kingdom of God. They do that by overseeing a person’s life and their confession to ensure that it’s consistent with the gospel. Each church member must guard the gospel both in their life and in the lives of fellow church members.”
We are commissioned to be “ordinary people” with “an extraordinary task.” As we seek to center our preaching and leadership around the Great Commission, we need to envision our laypeople for their “regular” participation in this work.
Jonathan Dodson
Bottom Line: “When the church takes up the weapons of God, not the weaponry of the world, we will weave shalom back into society. We will reflect our future hope — the Rider on a white horse who will, one day, secure never-ending shalom.”
When you read this article, you’ll see in the first two paragraphs that the author dates himself (all the way back to 2021!). But the culture we inhabit today is more “unraveled” than yesterday — not less. Dodson reminds us that, as we face the obstacles of safetyism, and presentism, and bitter division, our battle is a spiritual one. We need to take up arms and fight — but not like the world does.
Further Reading: