a congressman, sexual affairs and our church

Something really crazy happened last week. I was contacted personally by an assistant of a now famous Congressman in our area. His assistant asked if the Congressman could visit our church services and address the congregation. Thankfully, I told her that he was most certainly welcome to attend our services but that we would not recognize him or allow him to address our people.

Here is an excerpt from my response:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Congressman’s interest in attending one of our services on Sunday. While everyone is more than welcome to visit with us for the purposes of worshipping God, we are not interested in any type of public recognition of any politician. Our mission is “changing lives by connecting people with Jesus Christ”. A focus upon any individual seeking political office does not comply with our commitment to fulfill our God-given vision. If Congressman ­­_________attends a service at Maranatha Church, he will be treated with respect as would any guest, but we do not give public recognition to individual guests, especially those of public notoriety. We believe that this is consistent with the spirit of the scripture found in James 2:1-4.

Honestly, I had no idea of the firestorm that was about to break out around this guy. Four days after the request came, national headlines are talking about how this guy has possibly been involved in sexual affairs.

The request did not sit well with me. I felt as though he was trying to use God’s time to get votes. I disagree with his politics but even if we were on the same page, I could not allow worship time to be spent politicizing.

Man, am I ever glad that I know better than to allow a politician to use our worship time for personal gain. If I had allowed him to speak…wow, I don’t even want to think about it.