How Does a Hospitable Culture Apply to an Election Season?
We’re in an ongoing series called Hospitable Culture. The big question is this: What if hospitality isn’t something we do, it’s simply who we are? In other words, what if we could bump hospitality beyond the borders of an official team, and work it into every crevice of the church?
If there’s anything church leaders love more than a normal year of division, conflicts, squabbles, and fires to put out, it’s an election year of division, conflicts, squabbles, and fires to put out.
The last few election cycles haven’t been the healthiest for evangelical culture. Folks much smarter than yours truly have spilled a lot of ink and said a lot of words for why this is true, but regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, anyone with a red, white, or blue brain cell left can tell you that it absolutely is true.
So I thought it would be super-easy to throw together a quick post on how a hospitable culture applies to an election year, with no possible repercussions or disagreement whatsoever, amirite?
But first, some ground rules that I’m holding myself to:
- I’m tackling this post strictly from a hospitality / guest services / first impressions standpoint. There are a ton of other necessary conversations about politics and the Church. This one is probably none of those. But it is about how we lead our guest services teams to lead and serve during this season.
- I’m not telling you to vote one way or another, or even how to think about voting. You should vote. Who you vote for is not in the scope or purpose of this post. (I do have some helpful links at the bottom of the post that point you to smarter people who talk about this in a smarter way.)
- “Fun sized” Snickers Bars are not nearly the fun they ought to be. You want them to be fun, Mars Candy Company? Make them 10x that size. (Finally: something we can all agree on.)
Ground rules settled? Everyone happy? Kevlar vests buckled? Great. Let’s talk about how a hospitable culture applies to an election season:
1. Keep people above politics.
Nothing bring out the relational strife quite like politics. Over the last few years, I’ve even found myself getting feisty with people I actually agree with on most things politically.
But while we may be very, very wrong about a candidate or a platform, we don’t have to be wrong about the fact that people are our mission. That individual-with-a-soul is of more importance than who they want to be the head honcho in Washington. That first time guest matters more than your opinion of their bumper sticker. Your grace towards that small group member is more crucial than his grousing towards your guy.
Ten years from now, we may not remember how that other person voted. But they’ll certainly remember how we treated them even if we disagreed politically.
2. Keep affiliations out of the weekend.
Get ready for an unpopular hot take in 3 … 2…
I don’t think your Guest Services Team (or any other volunteers or staff) should passively or actively campaign on Sunday via t-shirts, buttons, stickers, whatever.
[pardon me while I duck]
It’s not that I don’t think people are allowed to have an opinion on who to vote for. I simply think that a staff member or volunteer who is in effect representing the church should be as vanilla as possible to those first-time guests who are experiencing church for the first time. One FTG meeting one volunteer sporting Candidate X’s shirt, and suddenly that FTG assumes they know who the entire church is backing. That might be true…but it probably isn’t.
I also know that this is not necessarily applicable to all other spheres of life. For example, our church is located in the Triangle region of North Carolina, home to Duke University, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and some other school that I think has red in their logo. I can never remember. And you can’t throw a basketball on a Sunday without hitting a ton of our volunteers sporting their school affiliation. The point is, at least a third of our church is always gloating, another third is always grumbling, and the other third is always hoping that 1983 will return or that people start caring about college baseball.
[ducks again]
You see? I just hurt someone’s feelings, just by promoting an affiliation. Maybe not worth it. Hilarious, but not worth it.
3. Keep the “one anothers” top of mind.
Fifty or so times throughout the New Testament, we’re admonished to do or say or feel something towards other believers. We should note that churches in New Testament days were no less divided politically than we are today. There were Jews and Gentiles, Zealots and Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees in local townships, so certainly there were people with that background or those leanings in local churches.
And while the background may have taken some time to completely disappear (if ever), it was the gospel of Jesus that brought unity even among political diversity. Paul and John and Peter and Mark and James almost certainly wrote the “one anothers” with that diversity in mind. And according to their admonitions, we don’t get a pass on caring for one another just because we don’t vote like one another.
Listen, I don’t believe for a second that the upcoming political season is going to be easy. We’re going to get lots of things wrong, but let’s get hospitality right. Let’s proclaim the gospel, pray for our leaders, and love our neighbors. Even … and maybe especially … those who don’t vote like us.
Other resources
I’ve assembled a few sermons, podcasts, and articles that have been very helpful to me over the last few months. Perhaps they’ll be helpful to you as well.
- Citizens of Another Kingdom: A Political Gospel. I’m biased, but this was one of the strongest and fairest sermons I’ve ever heard my pastor preach. Pull your toes back, because they’re going to get stepped on.
- Politics and Spiritual Formation. My friends at the REimagine podcast had a couple of great conversations in recent months about this political year. I thought this one was particularly good.
- Political Flag-Waving Isn’t Enough. John Piper on speaking truth to political power.
- How Should Christians Vote in the 2024 Election? Another by my pastor.
