Political Disciple's: The Shape of Your Politics

Welcome to an audio teaching from Windsor Park Baptist Church in Auckland, New Zealand.

If you would like to look at the message notes or see some questions for reflection that take their lead from today's teaching, head to our website windsapark.org.nz and head to the online tab where you'll see services and series and you can download different resources from there.

Thanks for joining us and we hope you're encouraged by today's teaching.

Kiora everybody, it's great to be with you again after a few weeks of leave.

Before my leave, I was actually over at our Wahiki Island campus, Hi Wahiki Island, which, if you've never passed an island, comes with its own unique challenges, mostly involving fairy timetables.

I was speaking out of Acts chapter 11, and near the end of that chapter there's a throwaway line that's huge.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

Up to that point, they'd just been called disciples.

Now they've got a new label: people who follow Christ in public, in the marketplace, at work, not tucked away in a back room somewhere.

Christians are people who have decided that Jesus gets to shape every area of their lives.

But do we?

It would be largely true to say that most of us are comfortable with Jesus shaping our prayer life.

Most of us are perhaps comfortable with Jesus shaping our marriages or our worship or our relationships and our money, well, some of the time.

But when it comes to politics, the conversation can get a little tricky.

Whether we like it or not, our lives are full of politics.

Because politics is simply about how we organize our common life together.

So we're political as a nation because we have a parliament and a system that surrounds that.

We're political in the marketplace because we have structures and boards.

We're political in our schools because we have boards of trustees.

We're political in the church because we make decisions together, appoint leaders, steward resources, and organize ourselves for mission.

At the end of July, I spent a week completing the company directors course with the New Zealand Institute of Directors.

The course was 24 leaders from a broad range of New Zealand society, but I was the only pastor, which intrigued most of the participants.

The common question I was asked was, why are you here?

Or words to that effect.

In a nice way, I was able to say that, well, I'm involved in a bunch of Christian organizations, and they are very political, so I need all the skills I can get.

The reality is that wherever human beings organize themselves, politics appears.

So the deeper question is not whether we have politics, the deeper question is what shapes our politics.

Because somebody is shaping us.

Some of us are being shaped by Mike Hosking or by TVNZ or by the comment section in New Zealand Herald articles.

Some are being shaped by podcasts or social media or by our favorite Substack or blogger or TikToker.

The issue isn't whether we're being shaped, the issue is who is shaping us.

And that's why we're beginning a new series called Political Disciples Following Jesus in Public Life.

Not because we're going to tell you how to vote, not because we're launching the Windsor Park Party, not because we're trying to turn the church into a political movement, but because we're asking a discipleship question that is political.

If Jesus is Lord and we are Christians, what does it mean for Jesus to shape our public lives as well as our private lives?

Before anybody gets nervous, this series isn't about telling you who to vote for on November the 7th.

If that's what you're hoping for, you're going to be disappointed.

If that's what you're worried about, you can relax.

And we're not going to be handing out Windsor Park voting guides or posting things online.

But we are going to be repeatedly talking about how Jesus might shape our politics.

For the last year, we've been traveling through Luke's gospel in our series King and Kingdom Come.

Week after week, we've heard Jesus announcing the same message.

And Jesus is the ultimate example of faithful presence.

He didn't withdraw from the world and he didn't become like the world.

He entered it, loved it, served it, and transformed it.

He healed the sick, forgave sinners, welcomed outsiders, challenged the powerful, confronted greed, elevated the poor, and called people into a completely different way of life.

Jesus didn't simply offer people a ticket to heaven, he announced a kingdom, that God's reign is breaking into the world and that there is a new king in town.

Through Luke, we've discovered that the kingdom of God is not merely something we wait for to arrive, it's something that is already here.

Jesus says in Luke 17, 21 that the kingdom of God is among us.

And that raises an important question.

If Jesus is king, what difference should that make to the way we live together?

Not just personally, not just spiritually, not just on Sunday mornings, but publicly.

Because the kingdom of God isn't just a private experience, it's a public reality that affects families and neighborhoods, schools and businesses, communities and cities.

It shapes the way people use money, power, and influence.

It shapes how we treat people who are different from us.

It shapes what we do with people who are vulnerable.

It shapes the kind of society we want to help build.

In many ways, that's why our vision here at Windsor is to build stronger communities by putting our faith into action.

This is a shalom vision that I'll talk about a bit later.

And eventually, every church that takes the kingdom seriously must wrestle with what that means for public life.

Which is why we're doing this series.

Not because politics is the ultimate, but because Jesus is.

Now I know that the word politics can make people uncomfortable.

Some of you will hear it and say, finally it's about time.

Others will hear it and think, you know, politics has nothing to do with the church.

And some of you will hear it and think, I managed to avoid a political conversation all week, and now Grant has brought it to church.

Politics is one of those subjects that can be difficult to talk about because it touches things that matter deeply to us: our values, our identity, our hopes, our fears, and our vision for the future.

And today we're seeing again on a global scale what happens when political disagreement becomes personal.

We sometimes talk about politics as though there are only two sides, left and right.

But we New Zealanders, we have MMP.

We don't do two sides very well.

We do factions, we do minor parties, we do coalition agreements, we do parties negotiating with parties that spend the election campaign explaining why they absolutely will not be negotiating with them.

But beneath that is something serious.

Political tribalism can become incredibly powerful.

It can try to tell us who the good people are and who they aren't, who deserves our trust and who doesn't, and who we should fear, who we should blame, what should make us angry and what should make us hopeful.

And we've seen churches get this wrong.

We've seen churches take sides and we've seen Christians treat political opinions as though they were doctrines of salvation.

We've seen relationships damaged because people discovered that someone sitting beside them in church voted differently from them.

In the COVID season, particularly the vaccine mandate period, showed us how quickly politics can cloud discipleship when Christians confuse the kingdom of God with a political ideology.

As a pastor during those years, I watched people I love deeply reach completely different conclusions.

Some felt government had gone too far, others felt restrictions hadn't gone far enough, some left the church, some stopped speaking to friends.

I remember thinking at times, Lord, how do we stay united when we see things so differently?

Looking back, I'm more convinced than ever that our deepest challenge wasn't political, it was discipleship.

And a lot of the time, our response is simply to avoid the subject altogether.

But avoiding politics doesn't stop politics shaping us.

Michael Rhodes puts it brilliantly in his book that we're using as the foundation for this series, the book Reimagining Biblical Politics.

He writes, if Christians don't allow Jesus to disciple their politics, something else will.

That's really what this series is about.

Not politics, discipleship.

Well, next week we'll be joined by Michael Rhodes himself.

You might want to get hold of a copy of his book that are available online.

You can just Google it, you'll see ways to be able to get hold of it.

So let's kick this series off in the Bible, and more particularly in Jeremiah chapter 29.

Jeremiah 29 · chapter mention

This is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible.

Many Christians can quote Jeremiah 29:11, for I know the plans I have for you, etc.

Jeremiah 29:11

etc.

It's on coffee mugs, graduation cards, wall art, bookmarks, and it's the most common scripture to be spoken at baptisms.

But we often forget who those words were originally written to.

They weren't written to people moving into their dream home.

They weren't written to someone receiving a promotion or heading off on their OE.

They were written to people whose lives had fallen apart.

Jerusalem had been conquered.

The temple had been looted.

The king had been removed, families had been separated, homes had been lost, thousands of God's people had been taken hundreds of kilometers away to exile in Babylon.

And nobody was posting inspirational updates from Babylon.

Nobody was taking a selfie and on Instagram with the caption, new city, new opportunities, new me.

It was traumatic.

They were filled with grief.

They were displaced.

These people were wondering whether God had abandoned them.

They were wondering what faithfulness looked like now that everything that they had known had been taken away.

And into that uncertainty, Jeremiah writes a letter.

The first thing that Jeremiah says, the words of God in verse 4, is this this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Hang on.

Notice who takes responsibility for their location.

God says, I carried you.

It wasn't King Nebuchadnezzar, and it wasn't military conquest, it was God Himself.

Now that doesn't mean that God approved of Babylon's violence or that Babylon was righteous.

The book of Jeremiah is very clear about Babylon's arrogance and brutality.

But it does mean that even in the middle of political upheaval and national disaster, God had not lost control.

The exiles felt abandoned.

God said they weren't.

The exiles felt forgotten.

God said they weren't.

The exiles felt displaced.

God says they were still within his purposes.

Sometimes we imagine that God is only present when life is going well.

But Jeremiah reminds us that God is also present in exile and in uncertainty.

And that God is present when life looks nothing like we expected.

Perhaps some of us need to remember that today.

Because we can become very anxious about the state of the world.

We worry about the economy, wars, elections, governments, housing, immigration, climate, social change, and a whole range of things we cannot control.

And Jeremiah reminds us that before we worry about who was in control in Wellington, we need to remember who is still on the throne.

And then comes an instruction that nobody expected.

God says in verse five.

Marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters.

Increase in number there, do not decrease.

You can imagine that this would have been quite confronting.

If God was texting this to his people, they might have thought that this was a scam and just deleted it before clicking on the link for more instructions.

The people in exile wanted a rescue plan, but God tells them to unpack.

The people in exile wanted an escape route, but God tells them to plant gardens.

The people in exile wanted immediate change, but God tells them to build homes.

In other words, God told them to stop living as though they're leaving tomorrow and to start living faithfully exactly where they are.

It's so important to notice this because God's people were not told either to withdraw from society or to assimilate into it.

They weren't told to build a fortress around themselves and wait for Babylon to collapse.

But neither are they told to become Babylonians and to forget who they are.

They were called to faithful presence, live in the city, work in the city, raise families in the city, plant gardens in the city, contribute to the city, bless the city, but remain God's people.

And that's an important challenge for the people of the church in our world today.

Sometimes our temptation is to withdraw from the world because we don't like what is happening around us.

There are Christian communities that do that.

Other times our temptation is to become so comfortable in the culture that we lose any distinctive Christian identity.

And that can become very natural to us.

Jeremiah offers another way.

Faithful presence.

Live distinctly, but don't withdraw.

Engage deeply without losing our allegiance to God.

And then we arrive at the heart of the passage.

Verse 7 at the beginning says, Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.

The Hebrew word translated peace and prosperity is the word shalom that I used earlier.

It's one of the richest words in the entire Bible.

It means peace, but it means much more than simply the absence of conflict.

It speaks of flourishing, wholeness, justice, harmony, well-being, life as God intended it to be.

And God tells his people to seek the shalom of Babylon.

Again, this is extraordinary because Babylon was not Jerusalem.

Babylon didn't share Israel's values.

Babylon was not a godly society.

Babylon was the empire that conquered them.

Yet God says, seek its good, work for its flourishing, contribute to its well-being.

The command is active.

Don't merely tolerate the city.

Don't simply survive the city.

Seek it, pursue its good, invest yourself in it.

God's people are not called merely to survive in Babylon, they are called to bless, thrive in Babylon.

I mean, our city in Auckland isn't Babylon.

But like Babylon, it is a place where followers of Jesus live among competing visions of what makes life good.

So perhaps the Bible isn't quite as culturally distant as we sometimes imagine.

But here's the uncomfortable part.

The exiles had no vote, no citizenship, no seat at the decision-making table.

They were captives living inside an empire that had conquered them.

Yet God still called them to seek its shalom.

Most of us have considerably more influence than they did.

We can vote.

Many of us lead organizations, sit on boards, run businesses, teach students, employ staff, serve communities, and help shape institutions.

If exiles with almost no influence were called to seek the flourishing of the city, how much more should we?

The greater the influence God entrusts to us, the greater the opportunity we have to seek the flourishing of others.

The challenge for us is that when we think about politics, we often begin with the question, what political outcome do I want?

Jeremiah begins somewhere else.

What would make the city flourish?

That's a very different question that takes me out of the question and directs my attention to others that changes the question to what would make our communities safer?

What would make our families flourish?

What would help children grow up well?

What would help people trapped in poverty?

What would help our elderly?

What would make our streets better?

What would make our public institutions more trustworthy?

What would make Auckland a better place for everyone who lives here, not just me?

I kind of think that's what we see here at Windsor during our week on our campus.

When our care ministries support a struggling family, when Haven Pregnancy Support walks alongside a young mother, when one of our youth workers turns up at Rangatoto College, when someone receives counseling, when someone receives food support at Kiwi Harvest.

We are seeking the shalom of our city.

Ironically, it's often on a Sunday morning when we ask the I question, what did I get out of worship?

That's an awkward statement, isn't it?

Then Jeremiah adds another instruction to verse 7 in the middle of verse 7.

Pray to the Lord for it.

Pray for Babylon?

Pray for the people who conquered us?

Pray for the Empire whose values we disagree with?

Yes.

Because prayer changes our posture.

It's difficult to hate people that you're regularly praying for.

It's difficult to demonize people you're bringing before God, and it's difficult to write people off when you've been asking God to bless them.

The exiles aren't told to curse Babylon, they're told to pray for Babylon.

And that sounds remarkably like Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5, verse 44, when he says, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Matthew 5:44

The church's political life begins not with outrage, but with prayer.

Not because prayer is a substitute for action, but because prayer reminds us who really rules.

Not Babylon, not Wellington, not Washington, not any political party.

The Lord reigns.

Perhaps this is one of the most practical things we can do as Christians.

Before we complain about a politician, we should pray for them.

Before we post about a policy, we should pray about it.

Before we assume the worst motives of someone who disagrees with us, we should pray for them.

It's amazing how difficult it is to maintain righteous indignation about someone once you've spent ten minutes asking God to bless them.

Verse 7 concludes, Because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

This may be the most surprising line in this passage.

God ties the well-being of his people to the well-being of the wider community.

God's people are not called to seek their own prosperity at the expense of others, nor are they called to isolate themselves from society.

Their flourishing is connected to the flourishing of the city.

This means that when families are stronger, communities become healthier.

When poverty is reduced, everyone benefits.

When justice increases, society becomes stronger.

Stronger.

God's people are not called to pursue their own prosperity in isolation.

Our flourishing is tied to the flourishing of those around us.

This is why Christians throughout history have built schools and hospitals or food banks, charities, community ministries.

Not because they were trying to take over society, but because they were seeking its shalom.

They were seeking the flourishing of the city.

And that's a very different approach to politics.

It's not first asking how can we get our way, it's asking, how can we seek the good of the people around us?

But seeking Babylon's shalom was never the whole letter.

In verse 10, Jeremiah tells the exiles something more.

When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.

Seventy years.

And then the one we all know.

For I know the plans I have for you, God says right after telling them to seek the city's peace.

Plans to give you hope and a future.

The exiles weren't told to make their peace with Babylon forever.

They were given a horizon.

And that's the pattern for us too.

We seek the shalom of Ayatia wholeheartedly for the long haul, but we do it holding a bigger hope than if we get the policy settings right.

Our final hope isn't a better government, it's the return of the king who puts everything right.

We work for Shalom now, but we wait for Shalom in full when Christ comes back.

And this brings us back to Luke and to the words of Jesus I mentioned earlier.

The kingdom of God is among you.

What does that kingdom look like?

It looks like people living under the reign of King Jesus.

It isn't first a place, it's a people living under a king.

People who use power differently, people who handle money differently, people who treat strangers differently, people who care for the vulnerable differently, people who forgive differently, people who love differently.

The kingdom is not merely believed, it's embodied.

And whenever the kingdom is embodied, it has public implications because Jesus isn't merely Lord of our private lives, he's Lord of all of life.

And perhaps this is where we need to be very clear about what we're hoping this series will accomplish.

We're not trying to produce Christians who all vote the same way.

We're not trying to convince everyone that one political party is the Christian party.

We're not trying to make Windsor politically uniform.

What I hope is that we can become better at something much more difficult.

I hope we can become people who can disagree politically without becoming enemies.

I hope we can become people who can listen well.

I hope we can become people who develop a framework to think more clearly.

I hope we can become people who are humble enough to change our minds.

And I hope we can become people who can hold convictions without treating everyone who disagrees with us as stupid, evil, or beyond redemption.

This series is about helping Christians think Christianly because our political culture desperately needs people who know how to disagree without despising one another.

And perhaps the church has a unique opportunity here.

We may sit beside somebody who votes completely differently from us.

We may disagree about taxes, immigration, housing, climate policy, and the role of government itself.

But then we stand beside each other and we sing the same songs, we pray to the same father, we come to the same table, we follow the same king, and if we can do that, we demonstrate something that our political culture desperately needs to see.

That our unity is deeper than our politics, that our allegiance is higher than our party, that our king is greater than our government, and that our hope is ultimately not in whoever occupies the beehive.

Thank God for that.

Because if your hope depends on the beehive, you're gonna need a lot of prayer.

Throughout Luke, we've seen King Jesus teach, heal, forgive, serve, challenge, die, rise, and reign.

Over the next seven weeks, we're gonna ask, what does it look like to live as citizens of his kingdom as we explore what it means to continue to seek the shalom of our cities?

Not just in church and not just in private, but in the public life we share together.

Because the kingdom of God is among us.

And wherever the kingdom is among us, it changes the way we live, it changes the way we love, it changes the way we use power, it changes the way we seek justice, it changes the way we engage our city and our nation, and it changes the way we pursue the flourishing of those around us.

So to repeat the key question, are our politics being shaped by King Jesus?

Because if Jesus is King, then he doesn't simply get our Sunday mornings, he gets Monday afternoon.

Jesus gets our worship and our work, he gets our prayer life and our public life, he gets our private convictions and our public engagement.

He gets our social media feed and our voting booth.

Because if Jesus is king, then there is no part of life where he is merely an advisor.

And if the kingdom of God is among us, then our calling is not simply to complain about the world around us, it is to seek its shalom, to pray for it, to serve it, to bless it, and to work for its flourishing.

Imagine what it would look like if Christians became known not for outrage, but for peace.

Imagine if we became known not for winning arguments, but for seeking the flourishing of our neighbors.

Imagine if people looked at Windsor and at the church in general and said, I don't know how all those people vote, but I know they love their cities.

That sounds a little bit like seeking the shalom of the city.

And I'll be honest.

I'd love to see more spirit-filled people at every level of our decision-making tables, wearing every color of rosette.

Not a Christian party, just Christians everywhere in public life, seeking the good of everyone in the room.

Here in Ayataroa, organizations such as the Christian Public Policy ThinkTech Maxim Institute play a part alongside the local church in encouraging this.

Each summer they run a 12-week residential program for intellectually curious university students and recent graduates who are passionate about contributing to public life.

Last summer, one of our young adults, Hannah Charlton, participated in this program.

Let's hear from Hannah about how this shaped her.

Last summer I spent three months living, learning, and debating with seven other Christian young adults.

It is one of the most formative things I've done, and you might be interested in doing this too.

Hi, I'm Hannah, and from November to February, I took part in the Maxim Leadership Fellowship, run by the Maxim Institute, which is a Christian think tank.

It's an immersive residential program for a small group of Christian young adults designed to equip future leaders for whatever sphere of society they enter.

The program is pretty intense, but it's unique in that it focuses on investing in you as opposed to you having to produce work for them.

And there are two sides to the fellowship.

The first is the residential side, which is living together with the other fellows, cooking meals and hosting friends.

The second, more substantial part is the learning side, where we had seminar-style classes covering everything from theology, politics and economics to media, philosophy and art.

We also did practical activities such as debates, leadership workshops, and formal dinners with public figures.

What drew me to the fellowship was a curiosity about how Christianity connects with public life, things like law, politics, economics and culture, and what it actually looks like to think and act as a follower of Jesus in those spaces.

After spending a lot of time learning in secular university settings, I was interested in seeing what a distinctly Christian approach to these topics could look like.

I was also excited about the opportunity to meet other Christians who shared a similar curiosity.

And it definitely stretched me.

Intellectually, I learnt about a whole range of things I'd never really encountered before.

But honestly, some of the most significant learnings happened outside the classroom.

Over breakfast, on the way to class, or in late-night kitchen conversations.

Living and learning alongside seven other young adults meant there were constant opportunities to reflect on what I believed, where those beliefs came from, and whether I could actually articulate and defend them well.

I also learned a lot about disagreement, especially about how to disagree thoughtfully and respectfully.

Even with Christians, which I naively assumed would be a rare occurrence.

One of the biggest things that I took away from the fellowship was a reminder that Christians are needed in every sphere of society, including the public sector.

It is so important that there are Christians at every table, especially in places where it might seem more difficult to live out your faith openly.

Because if we're absent from those spaces, someone else will shake them instead.

And as followers of Jesus, we bring different ways of seeing people, community, dignity, and justice that genuinely matters.

So if you're someone who's curious, open to being challenged, and willing to be deeply formed over a few months, I'd really encourage you to look into the fellowship.

The Maxim Institute website has all the information regarding applications, and if you have any questions, I'd love to chat more.

And for those who are already working in these spaces, whether that be law, education, government, business, healthcare, or elsewhere, the fellowship also reminded me how much younger Christians need people ahead of them who are faithfully living out their convictions in public life.

Seeing examples of thoughtful, grounded Christian leadership makes a bigger difference than you probably realize.

Thank you.

I love that Hannah had the courage to allow her life to be shaped by the Maxim Leadership Academy.

I had the privilege of spending time with Hannah on our first Philippines exposure trip a few years ago.

And I'm excited to watch her journey as a Christian in the public space as she has recently shifted to Christchurch to begin her law career.

This week, before we listen to Talkback Radio, before we watch the news, before we scroll social media, before we roll our eyes at a politician we disagree with, perhaps we could start each day by writing this question on a post-it note and placing it on our bathroom mirror.

Jesus, what would it look like for me to seek the shalom of my community, my city, my nation, my world today?

Perhaps we could literally do that, write it on a post-it note.

Because perhaps that's where political discipleship begins.

Not with an election, but with a prayer.

Let's pray.

Father, wrestling with what our lives look like in the public domain, how we contribute to it, how our understanding of the world affects our politics is all very challenging stuff.

And here in AATRO in New Zealand, we're deliberately talking about this as we face a general election in our nation on November the 7th.

We know amongst Christians there is a huge range of different opinions.

Father, each one of us takes responsibility for being shaped.

And I simply pray that in this series, perhaps even today, we would allow ourselves to be shaped by your spirit, not by the external influences of our world that seek to lead us into a view of the world that is different from the kingdom of God.

Thank you for our Luke series that lays the platform for this.

The repeated line that the kingdom of God is among us, God's kingdom here in this world.

And about how we might bless, pray for, and seek the flourishing of the communities or the cities that we live in.

Father, help us as a church community to engage with politics in a way that glorifies you, that we would be united in our worship of you.

We would start at that place and finish at that place, accepting that we might have different views on things, but that we trust that you are the King of the universe.

So, Father, there is much to think about in this series and much to talk about.

Might we have open hearts and open ears, and might we allow ourselves to be changed by you, shaped only by you and your word by your spirit.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for joining our audio teaching today.

If there are ways that we can continue to support you or help you in your journey, please reach out to us.

Head to our website, windsap.org.nz, and you'll find various ways to contact us.

God bless.