Creative Speech or Coercive Act?
The way we pursue our convictions is just as essential as the convictions themselves
It was probably 2018 or so when I first noticed the stream of tweets and posts, usually from a certain brand of progressive influencer, saying something to the effect of If this Sunday your pastor doesn’t explicitly mention _____ (fill in the blank with that week’s current political firestorm), you need to find another church. To be sure, we must grapple with where and when and how to speak a plain word — and it’s fair for those in our care to want to hear how the Scriptures bear witness to our real evils and turmoils. If all we ever offer are generic platitudes, we’ve surely lost the fire in the text. Worship and prayer provides no escape from the world’s pain, but rather thrusts us into the wounds, into the chaos. As we bend toward God, we also bend toward God’s world.
However, the broadsides irked me because pastoral work is intimate, relational, on the ground. When a pastor has given herself to a particular place and to loving a specific community of people — dealing …
