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In the summer of 1972 I received my license to preach in the United Methodist Church. I am currently in my 50^th year of active ministry. During those years I have experienced vital mission movements that Jesus followers have participated in, with committed leaders marching and fighting for civil rights and working together to alleviate poverty. Great evangelical leaders were full participants in the movement. Civil rights leader John Perkins from Jackson, Mississippi, author of Let Justice Roll Down; Tony Campolo, Wake Up America!; Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger; Phyllis Tickle; Maxie Dunham, to name but a few, were demonstrating how to be the church in the world – loving God with heart and mind, making others more important than self.

Advent is the ideal time for Jesus followers of all political persuasions and partisan alliances after this difficult election cycle and in the midst of the lingering pandemic to set aside our differences, coming together in unity to reflect the mind and heart of Christ. To experience the new this Advent season, to find our “next,” we must let go of the old. Old habits and ways of thinking must be replaced with new. The “mindset” and “attitude” of Christ Jesus that the Apostle Paul described to the Philippians must supersede our own prejudices, presumptions and partisan ideologies.

In another one of Paul’s letters, he reminded the Christians in Ephesus about the necessity of renewed thinking: You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24). What is remarkable about this admonition is that it may have been written from a Roman prison cell. Paul knew how to practice what he preached.

The pandemic of 2020 has awakened the world to a new reality. Life and church practice will never return to the way things used to be. The wave of global nationalism, rise in cultish conspiracy theories and emboldened white supremacist movements will call followers out of traditional weekend worship practices to become workers for kingdom justice.

Numbers in worship will no longer be the litmus test for success. The consumer-centered spectator model that grew out of the church growth movement is a brittle wineskin. Church practice must move from presentation to dialog and from spectator to participant to reach young disenchanted generations.

Yes, I was one of the many this year who voted early by absentee ballot. My wife Carolyn and I waited in a car line almost a mile long to make sure we could drop our ballots in an official ballot box. As a pastor for more than 48 years I have never endorsed a candidate, and I will continue that practice. I won’t tell you who I voted for, but I will share the basis by which I make my voting decisions.

I appreciate the advantages of living in this country. Yet, as a follower of Jesus and his redemptive kingdom movement, my allegiance to the kingdom of God supersedes my allegiance to the United States of America.  On that basis, I seek the wisdom of biblical authority as it addresses both government and personal responsibility.

When I was a young pastor, I used to bemoan how evangelical Christians, and I considered myself one, were portrayed in the press and popular culture. Evangelicals were described as morally rigid, stiff and unyielding, firmly placing people, events and cultural phenomena into right or wrong, black or white columns in our Christian ledgers. Dana Carvey’s hilarious portrayal of The Church Lady on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s provides the perfect visual.

Many Christians today have confused the gospel of the kingdom with the politics of the nation-state and have embraced worldly political leaders as ultimate heralds of truth. One influential Christian voice, who until recently led the largest Christian university in the U.S., stated “there is nothing that the President could do that would cause him to lose his support.”

The word of God reminds us to restrain ourselves from idolizing worldly leaders. “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day, their plans come to nothing” (Psalm 146:3-4).

In 2013, the controversial Black Lives Matter movement had its genesis as a hashtag after George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing 13-year-old Trayvon Martin the year before. The movement was further fueled in 2014, when two more stories of African-American men dying through police action made the national news—Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. Soon it seemed as if each new day’s headline featured a black man dying a violent death, and new protests. This year, 2020, has certainly been no exception, with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and others. Black women, like Breonna Taylor, have also not been exempt.

• I have been contacting pastors from around the country who have returned to onsite worship. The percentage of post-COVID attendance is astoundingly the same. Uniformly the pastors report around 30% of post vs. pre-virus attendance with the noticeable absence of young families with children and those adults in the most at risk groups. The virus is not going away any time soon.

It was Father’s Day 2007. I woke up in a NGO compound in Ed Daein, Darfur, that was surrounded by nine foot walls that were topped with embedded broken glass and barbed wire. My son, 25 years old at the time, lay in a cot covered with mosquito netting just a few feet away. In less than an hour we would be undertaking a risky three hour journey into the rebel held territory of Adilla in the area of Southern Darfur. We met with the Muslim leaders in a clay brick structure that housed the local official’s offices. Ginghamsburg’s outreach had been working in this area through the building of schools and sustainable water yards for over two years, along with our partner the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). The leaders thanked us and assured us that we could continue our work unharmed because we were bringing much needed resources to their people. One Muslim Sheikh even asked me why we as Christians were helping Muslim people. That was the first opportunity, after two years of productive work in the area, that opened the door for me to tell about Jesus, who came to tear down the walls that divide all people.