Remember that the church’s primary mission is spiritual.2 As much as you love them and as hard as it is to admit, not all your concerns are spiritual. Many are cultural. Learn discernment and wisdom about when to speak and when to be quiet. The words you might spend on your favorite candidate can quickly be redirected to explaining the Bible. You need not defend your politics as a pastor. Vote like you want. Support causes to which you are committed. But dispense with announcing it publicly. You are a herald of the king, not your own PR rep.

In many ways, the pastor lives his life in front of his people. Apart from mega-church pastors who might choose to isolate themselves from the people they shepherd (which notably does not apply across the board to every pastor of a large church),1 pastors are constantly in contact with the people of their church. This means that a pastor not only has a lot of space to influence people but also a major platform to speak about the concerns on his heart. This article essentially reflects upon the words of Spider-Man’s uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility,” in application to the pastor’s public life.
My aim is not to lay out lots of prescriptive practices but to outline the ways that I have thought through this issue for myself in hopes that it might help other pastors do likewise. The reason that I think I might have a useful perspective on this issue is because of the nature of my pastoral call. I am an American, ordained in the PCA, serving overseas in London in a Scottish denomination. London being one of the world’s great cities—I am biased—it is as cosmopolitan in the literal sense as can be, filtering people from every part of the world right to our church’s doorstep. 
There is a beautiful complexity, full of blessings and immense challenges, to pastoring a congregation that often has members from every inhabited continent. This complexity is owed to how every cultural assumption, every church background, and every personal opinion comes loaded with extremely different and at times opposing expectations from the church. In typical congregations, a pastor can never satisfy everyone. In our congregation, I spend immense amounts of time praying that people will be gracious and understanding as we try to keep everyone together while remaining faithful to the truth and our confessional practices. I am thankful for prayer, God’s sovereignty, and the ways that the Lord has been so deeply good to us in this respect, all the while not taking the continuation of this grace for granted.
One of the things this complexity has helped me realize, despite my failures along the way, is that the pastoral task is in no way about me. Every pastor must acknowledge this point. Yet there is a real sense in which sometimes we may need to learn the principle for our practice. John the Baptist’s words regarding the difference between himself and Christ remain the abiding guidance for every pastor after him: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (Jn. 3:30) What does this mean in practice though?
Pastor, there are countless things that matter deeply to you. God has wonderfully made you to be who you are in all your skills and interests. We cannot discount that. Still, not every passion of our heart belongs to the public sphere, depending on how that affects the way we serve and minister to God’s people. We at times must filter even the things that matter deeply to us from our public persona in order to best serve the church.
Perhaps an example would help. As an American, I hold specific values according not only to my culture but also my political positioning within that culture.
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If same-sex marriage were simply about allowing people to live their lives as they see fit, then once Obergefell ruled the United States Constitution required states to license same-sex marriages, that others had a different opinion and maintained their understanding of marriage as the joining of man and woman wouldn’t have mattered. But, of course, that wasn’t and isn’t the case. This is because same-sex marriage is about what people say, what they think, what they believe. It is about eliminating from public acceptance those who don’t endorse it, even simply as a matter of conviction.

Towards the end of 2022, with passage of the federal law named, “The Respect For Marriage Act,” the subject of same-sex marriage reemerged as a prominent public issue.
“How does two people getting married affect you?” supporters of same-sex marriage say. There have also been Christians effectively saying, “What’s the big deal? Why should we expect the government to pass laws requiring non-Christians to live as though they’re Christians?”
While, in general, there can be truth to be heeded in these and similar statements – “mind your own business” has its rightful place after all! – the Christian’s participation in civil society, which includes the command to love our neighbor, does not limit our evaluation to what’s in our self-interest, i.e., what affects us. Furthermore, in this case, these and similar sentiments are missing the essence of the case that has been advanced in favor of same-sex marriage. Contrary to many arguments advanced in its favor, same-sex marriage as a public and legal issue is not about regulating conduct or controlling people’s lives.
David French, one of the more prominent evangelical defenders of civil same-sex marriage, wrote: “I don’t want my gay friends and neighbors to live in fear that the law might tear their families apart.” 
However, this concern is not well-founded. The contemporary secular state does not require marriage for any type of family arrangement. As a matter of fact, as it unfolded, the same-sex marriage debate was not about how people order their lives, or the choices and decisions they are free to make or not make.
The same-sex marriage discussion was about the meaning of the word, “marriage.” In particular, it was and is about whether the male-female union’s unique characteristics, uniting the two sexes in the only life-generating relationship, could be recognized by virtue of having the appellation “marriage” only applied to it. Inseparably, it was and is about the distinction between male and female.
It was this assignment of the word “marriage” to the male-female union alone, absent any restriction or regulation of conduct or life-decisions pertaining to other relationships, that the United States Supreme Court in 2015, in declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, determined was “demeaning,” “hurtful,” “imposes stigma and injury,” “deprives dignity,” “diminishes personhood,” and “works a grave and continuing harm to gays and lesbians.” Correspondingly, a core conviction underlying same-sex marriage and Obergefell is that there is no meaningful difference between male-female and same-sex relationships. The sex of one’s marital partner is simply a matter of personal choice, incidental to the meaning and significance of the marriage itself. Such decision is no different than a woman deciding who she will marry between James and John. Vital to same-sex marriage is the insistence that man-woman and same-sex unions are themselves “the same.” Any other perspective, acknowledging the different character of the joining of the two sexes, is “demeaning, hurtful, etc.”
The attribution of such dehumanizing harms to the understanding of marriage as a uniquely male-female union was at the essence of Obergefell and, arguably, its most significant effect.
In that regard, Obergefell functioned as a theological and moral treatise, referring to transcendence, meaning, love, sacrifice, devotion, freedom, intimacy, and spirituality. It was practically a religious declaration, rooted in particular views of life and purpose and human well-being.
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Rising enrollments in choice schools, particularly in private schools, not only provide evidence of a continuing school-choice wave sweeping the country, but also demonstrate how these learning environments will continue to be an important part of the United States’ educational fabric.

Public schools in the United States have lost over a million students in the past three years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Where these students went, and why they left, says a great deal about the future of American schooling.
Private Christian schools have absorbed many of these students. In the 2022–23 academic year, schools in the Association of Christian Schools International recorded 35 percent higher enrollment than at the start of the pandemic, according to a new ACSI study. Similar kinds of schools have also seen dramatic increases. For the 2021–22 school year, the National Catholic Educational Association reported a 3.8 percent nationwide enrollment increase, the largest in NCEA’s history. Charter-school enrollment increased by 7 percent during the first year of the pandemic and has held steady since, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While homeschool “enrollment” doubled during the pandemic, no other form of education saw significant increases — especially not public schools.
Enrollment growth in Christian schools over the past three years reverses the trend in declining enrollment from the preceding years. And it was not just a pandemic-era trend. Attendance at private Christian schools continues to increase even as district public schools have reopened for in-person instruction, while the number of charter-school students and homeschooled students declined in 2022.
Why have private Christian schools benefited in this environment? One explanation is how they responded to students’ learning needs during the pandemic. Public schools that remained the most remote for the longest experienced the greatest enrollment losses, according to an American Enterprise Institute study. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Christian schools returned to in-person instruction “much sooner” than local district schools, according to the ACSI report. Christian schools that reopened earlier have added an average of around 80 students since the start of the pandemic.
Motivated by a desire to serve their families, Christian schools sought creative solutions for getting students back on campus. “Early on, it was clear from seeing our kids struggle emotionally, socially, and academically through distance learning that getting kids back on campus was critical,” said Brian Bell, head of school at Redlands Christian School in southern California. “It required us to be creative and brave with our solutions to get back in person.” Redlands Christian School now educates over 1,400 students, the highest level in its century-long existence.
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