Pastor, Whose Kingdom Are You Preaching?

Before Israel's first battle in the Promised Land, Joshua met a man with a drawn sword and asked, “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” The answer was, “Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come” (Joshua 5:13–14).

Heaven's commander did not take a side. He came to take command. That moment holds a word for every pastor today.

One of our greatest temptations is to read ministry, culture, and even Scripture through conservative or liberal ideology. But our calling is not to produce conservatives or liberals. It is to make disciples of Jesus Christ and proclaim the Kingdom of God.

Jesus did not preach the kingdom of the right or the left. He declared, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He called Matthew, a tax collector working for Rome, and Simon the Zealot, whose movement wanted Rome overthrown, to the same table. Their politics were not the center of the story. The King was.

Each tradition sees something real. Conservatives often emphasize personal responsibility, family, morality, and religious liberty. Liberals often emphasize justice, care for the poor, and compassion for the marginalized. Pastors can recognize biblical concerns in both. But neither may become the authority by which we interpret Scripture.

The problem begins when our political identity becomes stronger than our Kingdom identity. A Kingdom mindset does not ask, “What does my side believe?” It asks, “What does the King require?” Sometimes Scripture affirms what conservatives value, and sometimes it confronts them. The same is true for liberals. The Kingdom of God stands above every human ideology.

So, fellow pastors, let us refuse to become political operatives wearing clergy collars. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), and an ambassador speaks for the one who sent him.

That does not mean silence. Faithful preaching will address life, marriage and family, poverty, justice, racial reconciliation, immigration, integrity, and government wherever Scripture speaks to them. But we must speak as shepherds guided by the Word, not as spokesmen for a political tribe.

Look out at your congregation on Sunday. You will see people who vote differently and carry different convictions. Our assignment is bigger than getting them to vote alike. We are called to teach them “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).

When the Church becomes predictable along party lines, it loses its prophetic voice. The world already knows what the parties will say. It needs to hear what the King says.

Pastors must recover the courage to say: “If the Bible confronts the left, I will preach it. If it confronts the right, I will preach it. And if it confronts me, I will submit to it.”

We do not belong first to conservatism or liberalism.

We belong to the Kingdom. And Jesus is King.