On Cultural Challenges Facing Pastors Today
Note: The following is a slightly expanded version of remarks given at the American Reformer event held the week of the Presbyterian Church in America’s 2025 General Assembly in Chattanooga.
When I go to church, the last thing I want to hear from the pulpit is the pastor’s opinion about the Israel-Iran conflict, or tariff policy, or any other political opinion he might have about current events. He is certainly free to have strong opinions about those things, but the purpose of preaching is to equip the saints with the whole counsel of God’s word (Acts 20:27). The apostle Paul can go so far as to say in 1 Cor 2:2 (my translation; emphasis added): “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him as crucified.” Paul, of course, taught on many things, but always his focus was on the saving work of God in the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1–4), how that salvation is grounded in God’s eternal counsel (Eph 1:3–14), how we first experience it when we are united to Christ by faith (Rom 3:21–26), how we are currently being transformed more and more to reflect the image of God (2 Cor 3:18), and how God brings our salvation to completion on the last day (Rom 13:11).
In the most fundamental sense, then, preaching should not be political. Narrowly considered, even important and true political views don’t belong in the pulpit: “[P]reach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). God’s people need to be fed on God’s word from the pulpit. Christians should certainly be encouraged to seek the good of their nations through legitimate political means, but the day-to-day affairs of politics should not be the subject of the sermon.
Nonetheless, a challenge increasingly faces pastors. Simply preaching the whole counsel of God’s word today will be said by many to be political. This is not an entirely new phenomenon, but many pastors have felt this pressure building since the turbulent events of 2020. They will be called political simply for preaching and teaching basic Christian ethics, whether on faithful sexuality, the evil of transgender ideology, abortion, law and order, how one should submit to the governing authorities, or issues regarding CRT and wokeness.
Those, however, who are the most vehement in their claim that faithful pastors are “getting political” do so by employing a sleight-of-hand. They simply baptize their leftward teaching as “gospel-centeredness”: care for the sojourner is “gospel-centered;” thus, you must support open borders. Loving your neighbor is “gospel-centered,” so you must get the COVID jab, and so on. They also have the unfortunate fact against them of badly misunderstanding the Bible’s ethical teaching, and therefore turn out to be political in the worst possible sense, substituting leftist partisan policy prescriptions for God’s word. “That’s the worst of facts,” C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter to his father, “they do cramp a fellow’s style.”
The resulting temptation that pastors often feel in this fraught environment is to seek a “third way” that will ostensibly avoid politics in the pulpit. But the problem should already be evident. Only one side is deemed political. The third way can end up making pastors timid to proclaim the whole counsel of God’s word, lest some on the political spectrum find it offensive.
What is a pastor to do in these difficult times? The same thing he has always been called to do: preach the good news that the kingdom of God has come near in the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt 4:17), a kingdom encompassing the whole of the Christian life. Preach the whole counsel of God and let things fall out as they may. Pastors must not allow the fear that preaching the outworking of salvation in obedience to God’s commandments will be called political stop them from fulfilling their calling. There is no “third way” to soften the hard edges of faithfulness to God’s word, especially in a world inventing new ways to be evil as fast as it can (Rom 1:30). However, God’s word, by God’s Spirit, is mighty to save even those who might seem unreachable today: “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem” (Isa 50:2)? That, ultimately, should give the pastor boldness and hope in the proclamation of the gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom 1:16).
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