No Time for Neutrality: A Call for Christian Engagement in Politics

July 9, 2024

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Bunni Pounds

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/08/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer:         While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well welcome again friends to another Stand in the Gap. Today I am your host, Jamie Mitchell, the director of church culture at the American Pastor’s Network. In the letter to the church in Philippi, Paul assigned to those of us who know Christ, an interesting title, he called us citizens of Heaven. He did the same thing in Ephesians two, and through redemption Earth is really no longer our true home heaven is we await that glorious day when we will be with the Lord forever. Interestingly, there are some who use that title and that truth to basically say, well, since we’re citizens of heaven not of Earth, we should not be entangling ourselves with earthly matters such as politics or elections, affairs of government. There are many days I wish that is true, but the truth is that while on earth we’re ambassadors, we’re to occupy and influence the world, were to be salt and light in all corners of life while we wait for our heavenly reward.

Jamie Mitchell:  And that includes politics and elections. Listen, we hold a dual citizenship with rights, responsibility, burdens and blessings from both. We need to be engaged in matters here on earth and most certainly politics. And our guest today believes that with all her heart, so much so she launched a ministry called Christians Engaged. She’s written a book which I’m holding in my hand, Jesus and Politics. Bunni Pounds served those in government, ran for office, and it was that experience that she sadly learned millions of Christians have abdicate their responsibility to vote and be engaged in the political process. Today she’s going to help us think through this very important topic, today’s program, no time for neutrality, A call for Christian engagement in politics. Bunni, welcome to Stand in the Gap. It’s a joy to have you with us.

Bunni Pounds:    Well, Dr. Mitchell’s honored to be with you all and thank you for engaging American pastors to engage in the culture. It’s so important.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, Bunni, you’ve heard my opening. Many Christians do either avoid or check out of engaging in the political process. Some claim they are rising above earthly things and focused on heaven. And I know that you’ve heard probably more excuses than even these. Why is it that Christians are hesitant to engage in politics? What have you personally seen in that regard and why should we be concerned about being engaged?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, it’s an important question. A lot of Christians still have this divide in their hearts and minds that there’s things that are sacred and some things that are secular. And though we say we don’t believe that, there’s still this dichotomy that we think we’re going to get into some sort of mudslinging world and we’re going to get contaminated. And I like to tell Christians, is your God not big enough to sustain you to hold you? If he’s a holy God, can he not hold you and make you holy? It really is about Christlikeness and is God big enough to walk with us in those places in our culture, a lot of Christians just don’t think they can really make a difference. They see the numbers, they see what’s happening in the culture, and they feel hopeless. They’re not seeing that they can be a true light and make a difference.

Bunni Pounds:    But what did Jesus say in Matthew 28? He said, go into all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them, teaching them and low. I’m with you always, even to the end of the age, his spirit going with us is a powerful force. And I love to tell Christians, when you walk in the room, everything should change. That means your city council, your school board, your office of your elected official, your member of Congress, when you get in their life, something should change. And a lot of Christians, frankly, they are afraid of making the wrong choices too. They’re afraid that they’re not going to have the right discernment or wisdom. But man, when we pray and we seek God, he can give us discernment and he can show us how to pray, vote and engage regularly. And that’s what we do at Christians engages. We help Christians to pray for our nation to vote in every election and to start engaging in their communities and really being the leaders god’s called them to be.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, Bunni, you had some personal experience. You were both in the political consulting end of things and then you ran for office. Just take a couple of minutes or so and from your personal experience, what did you learn about Christian engagement in the political process?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, I learned that people of influence, whether they’re people in power like elected officials or they’re people in our community that have a lot of resources, they are all people that need discipleship. And we frankly put people in boxes. And I had the great opportunity to walk with members of Congress for years. My former boss of 10 years, Congressman Jeff Erling, was conference chairman in the house, fourth in leadership, and then went on to be the chairman of financial services. So here’s a man who is in charge of everything, banking, housing, insurance in this country. And he needed somebody to pray for him and pray for his family and to help him counsel him and give him wisdom on different votes or different things that the staff has such an incredible impact on their bosses. And we need a whole generation of young people that will rise up and see these places as mission fields.

Bunni Pounds:    And frankly, that’s one of the reasons why I wrote my book that just came out in February, Jesus in Politics because I wanted to kind of implant a vision in young people’s hearts. You can make a difference in politics and government. You can go disciple a nation, one elected official at a time. You can go change the culture one person of influence at a time, and don’t limit yourself to just the people within the walls of the church or your kids’ ministry or whatever you’re doing. Think about those people of influence that you can impact and truly disciple the nation.

Jamie Mitchell:  Funny, just last week I was speaking at a pastor’s conference and one of the workshops that I do is I challenge pastors on how they can minister to elected officials. And as pastors come to this seminar, we talk about this, that if we will reach out, if we will start to engage, if we’ll be able as leaders in the church to elected officials, they will listen to us. They may not agree with us, but they will listen to us. And if we don’t and don’t do anything, we leave it into the hands of the people who are influencing them. Isn’t that really the message that we need to get across to Christians today? You have less than a minute.

Bunni Pounds:    Yeah, no. We need to be leaders in our community and that means we have to get really deep into the mundane things of our city like events and library commissions and park and recreation and zoning issues. All these things are holy unto the Lord and we can really make an impact in our cities and in our communities and with our elected officials by loving them and walking with them one heart at a time.

Jamie Mitchell:  Listen, friends, as I said at the beginning, we are both citizens of earth and heaven. We need to live out this dual blessing and thus be Christians who are engaged When we return, Bunni and I are going to discuss what is at stake if we don’t get involved. We’re talking about Christians engaged today on Stand in the Gap. Well, welcome back. Bunni Pounds is my guest. Bunni is the founder and president of Christians engaged and she has given herself to motivate believers to get involved with the political process. Her appeal is very simple, pray, vote, engage. Bunni, I know you have spent time considering this. What if Christians stay home? What if we just refuse to be engaged not to get involved not to vote? What is at stake?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, what’s at stake, Jamie is our children, our children and grandchildren in this country. We have so many issues that Christians should be weighing in on our ministry. Christians engaged, just merged with Family Policy Alliance Foundation started by Dr. James Dobson over 25 years ago that’s been advocating for pro-family, pro-life and pro religious liberty for years and years. Christians need to be speaking into issues like should parents or should people be able to modify the gender of their children before they’re age 18? Are those children not going to have a right to make those choices or be protected until they’re adults to make that decision? Should we be protecting the unborn? Where is religious liberty in this nation? Are we advocating for that? Are we pushing for all people to have religious freedom in this nation? So it’s really, really important that we engage and if Christians stay home, we are electing wicked leaders. I mean, to be frank, we have an opportunity to elect righteous leaders to at least choose between imperfect people, those that hold more of a biblical worldview than others. But if we just sit back and do nothing, then we’re just allocating our children and our grandchildren and their futures to people that don’t esteem the things that we esteem

Jamie Mitchell:  From what you have learned. And as I’ve read through your book, you have seen both the side of Christians that could influence and then lost opportunities if we were actually to flex our collective muscles. Let’s say at the ballot box. I know voting is part of what you talk about, engagement is actually equally important, but let’s say we flexed our collective muscles. If we saw that happen, do you have actual stories of seeing that happen and seeing influence occur because Christians got involved?

Bunni Pounds:    Absolutely. I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. We have a small community here called Royal at Texas. We had four or five pastors in that city have become strategic ministry partners with us where they’re actively getting Christians activated through voter registration, mobilizing them through our Pledge to Pray, vote and engage and using our classes to raise up leaders. And they’ve put Christians in that city on different commissions and different zoning commissions, library commissions, et cetera. And there’s a young man named Jonathan Reeves who went to Washington DC with us with his family last summer. He came back and was recruited by those pastors to run for city council. The city council, again, this is a very conservative suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth, but that city was being controlled by liberal progressives who wanted to esteem and celebrate everything that we do not hold as sacred.

Bunni Pounds:    And Jonathan won a runoff and he got on the city council and now it was four to three conservative versus liberal on the city council. And they decided to take on the diversity, equity and inclusion program in the city and make sure that they understood that no one was more prioritized than others, that all people are equal before God and have human dignity in every area. And so they got rid of that diversity equity inclusion program and it went off the city website the next day after that city council vote in February. So Christians can make a huge, huge impact and can literally shift the power in their cities and their school boards and their communities.

Jamie Mitchell:  Funny, what an encouraging thing to hear, especially hearing that pastors got together and said, you know what? We want to make a difference. But sadly, I have talked to pastors who have said something like this to me. They’ve said, well look, God is in control. He’s going to allow people to win elections, that he wants to win elections. Therefore I don’t have to be involved. I don’t have to worry about getting that forth vote on the city council. What do you say to both Christians and Christian leaders who have that kind of sanctified fatalism I call it when it comes to engagement?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, I like to tell them, Hey, how do people hear the gospel in your community? They only hear it through open mouths of the believers that you’re training up in your churches. The same thing. How can they go without a preacher? How can they be sent unless they’re sent? So I mean we have, yes, God is in control, but he limits his sovereignty to us. He says, you take the gospel, you be the leaders, you be the ones that heal the sick, you be the one that gives to the poor. He uses human beings, he uses us. And so we’re not going to see leaders raised up in our communities. We’re not going to love our neighbors. Well by electing righteous leaders, if we sit at home and we do nothing, and as American Christian leaders, we are losing massive opportunities to disciple a whole generation, to be involved in public schools, to be involved in the homeless ministry and community, to be at the Chamber of Commerce and raise up leaders, we are losing so many opportunities by not walking outside the walls of the church and being the light and salt that called to be and to actually bring the gospel into those places.

Jamie Mitchell:  Amen. Funny, one of the things I’m so impressed by what you’ve done and what your organization is doing is education, education, education, education. I speak it. We do hear loudly and often that we need people to be educated both in the election process, in government process, all of that. What are you guys doing in regards to educating Christians about engagement?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, Jamie, we’ve spent over $200,000 on on-demand video curriculum. Our signature classes are on-ramp to civic engagement. Any Christian who doesn’t know about anything can take that class for $29 and in six and a half hours be ready to be a leader in their community. That’s an incredible class. Everybody should check it out. Also, salt and light, how to impact your local communities. We did a class on the leadership of Nehemiah and now we’re getting into classes like biblical worldview, biblical justice, biblical economics and biblical conduct. Full Bible studies on what the Bible has to say about economics from a societal level, what the Bible has to say about justice. So we need to be understanding civics and we need to understand the Bible. We need to understand both those things and within our classes and what we’re able to bring to churches. That’s how we train up Christians to be the leaders God’s called them to be.

Jamie Mitchell:  How is now your partnership with family policy, how is that going to exponentially impact the Christian community?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, we had the voter mobilization tools. We have Christians all over the country take our pledge to pray, vote, engage, and we push ’em out to vote in every election. So we track every election in the country and we push people out to pray and to vote and to start engaging. But we only talk about Bible and civics and we do that so that pastors will invite us in and we will not. They understand we’re not going to split their church. We’re only going to talk about pray, vote, and engage. But when Christians start getting involved, they become leaders. We need to have a partnership to push them to more advocacy. And what we’re seeing with Christians is they’re curing burdens and they want to start engaging. Now they can start engaging through the family policy councils around the country. We can actually use Christians engage as the church outreach program for 40 state policy organizations in the country. It’s a huge partnership to scale what we’re doing, but also for us to be able to raise up leaders and push them into advocating on the federal and the state level all over the country.

Jamie Mitchell:  When you say advocating, define that, make we understand clearly why that is so important? Because we need advocates.

Bunni Pounds:    We do. And we need Christians to get in their car and drive to their state legislature and testify in front of bills when there’s bad bills coming up that are going to hurt our families and hurt our children. We need to be testifying against those when there’s good bills happening that we’re trying to push for morality and godly values, we need Christians showing up in those places in a respectful way, talking to the committees, talking to the legislators, and building relationships. So yeah, this is grassroots 1 0 1 of building elected official relationships and pushing for the values that we hold pro-life and pro religious liberty and Christians have been doing this for decades, but we have to even do it more so in the days ahead.

Jamie Mitchell:  It’s fantastic. Well, I hope as you’re listening today, you do not get the opinion from this program that we believe the spiritual direction of our nation will be changed by the ballot box using the Apostle Paul’s words. May it never be. We don’t believe that. We’ve never believed that, nor do we advocate of it. However we believe a true return to God, getting God’s people on their face influencing for righteousness, a godly wisdom in the government, all of these things are important and to make that happen, as Christians, we must be engaged when we return. Bunni’s going to help us understand terms of engagement. How should the leavers get involved with the political process? Return back with us here and stand in the gap. Welcome. Bunni Pounds is our guest today. I want you to get a copy of her book, Jesus and Politics. You can order it on Amazon, your Christian bookstore. You can go to their website, Christians engaged.org. Bunni. I want to tap into your experience and really your expertise on how to practically get Christians to engage. So what are some of the terms of engagements for believers to fulfill their earthly citizenship in regards to some responsibilities and practically, how do they launch out into this world of getting involved with the political process?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, we’ve established the fact, Jamie, that Christians need to get involved, that complacency is not an option, but at the same time, we need to be Christ followers in this space. When we get involved, we need to continue to follow Jesus. We need to continue to watch our soul and our heart and to be active Christ followers. So that means we’ve got to deal with anger, fear, pride, offenses, bitterness, unforgiveness. We’re going to experience pushback when we get involved in politics and government. So first all, I like to help Christians identify what is in their heart, what are the burdens that are in their heart? What are some of the things that they pray about? What are the things that they are concerned about? Well, that means you probably should get involved in that area. Maybe you should adopt a candidate. Maybe you should volunteer and actively help them raise money to get Godly people elected.

Bunni Pounds:    Like we talked about before, our partnership with Family Policy Alliance. Maybe you should get involved advocating for a specific issue or specific legislation, but when you do that, you’ve got to deal with things that are going to attack you. I share many stories in my book, my book Jesus. And Politics is not just a boring, it’s not a boring how to book. It’s really lots of stories from my life walking with members of Congress, running for Congress, myself. I share a story in there, Jamie, about how I had a million dollar race for Congress. It was me and Congressman Lance Gooden were in a race he now serves since 2018 in that seat. But if you could imagine $1.3 million spent against me and my family, and I found out after our runoff that was a head-to-head. Brutal, brutal battle between the two of us. He was a sitting state representative and I was the campaign manager for the incumbent, but I found out that his consultants had floated all of his invoices, meaning he didn’t have to pay for the whole runoff.

Bunni Pounds:    And I had paid for everything. I had paid my staff, I’d paid for my tv, radio mail, but his consultants had floated all of his invoices. And I found out after that and I couldn’t get over it. And a year later, the Lord told me the only way you’re going to get free is to help him pay off that debt. And so we held a big fundraiser for him and we helped to pay off the last $50,000 of his debt. And my heart got free. And what the Lord showed me through that is that we have to be of a different spirit. Yes, we have to engage in the world the way the world does. We have to run races, we have to do advertising. We have to tell people the differences between us as candidates, but at the end of the day, we are Christ followers. And my responsibility to him on the backend was to love him, encourage him, hold him accountable and to believe God that our district was going to be represented well. And that meant me laying down my bitterness and unforgiveness and even how the process worked for me.

Jamie Mitchell:  Funny, you mentioned your book. I said to you before, I haven’t finished it from cover to cover, but I’ve been reading through it, picking up and exactly, so I’m just enthralled by some of your stories. But there’s a story tucked in this book and I want you to just relate it. And it has to do with terms of engagement that we’re talking about. And that is you went and met with Beto O’Rourke. If people don’t understand, Beto O’Rourke was a former congressman in Texas. Democrat has many, many policies that would be opposite of what a Christian would. But you detail in the book going and engaging with him. Why was that important? I mean, many times, as you mentioned there, the concern of going to a Beto O’Rourke rally and maybe on TV people seeing you as a Christian conservative attending a rally. But it’s important for us to even go in uncomfortable places, isn’t it?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, God had to prepare me for that moment. I’m very close with Ted Cruz and his family, his father, Raphael Cruz serves on our advisory board for Christians, engage his cousin Bebe is one of my best friends and she’s on the board of Family Policy Alliance Foundation now as we just got through this merger, so we’re very close, but I had a dream about Beto and I’m standing in front of him in this dream telling him that God loves him and loves his family and sees his servant heart for people. Now in my flesh I’m thinking, well, that doesn’t make any sense. A lot of the policies he believes is destroying our country in my viewpoint. But a few months later, I had an opportunity and I detailed it out in the book, just a divine appointment to meet with Beto and to pray over him.

Bunni Pounds:    And I told him that I had a dream about him and I told him exactly what the Lord had told me to tell him. And what God did was he opened up his heart to be able to receive that message. And for me, what the Lord did was totally change my heart and my life in that I was able to see Beto Congressman O’Rourke, the way God sees him. And we have an opportunity as believers to walk into places and with people that we disagree with and to advocate for what we believe or to push the issues that we believe in or to, in a sense argue with people about the reality and the truth. But ultimately we’re called to speak the truth in love and work to take on a policy, not a person. Ultimately, God loved that person. He worked in their lives. And so what that encounter with Beto really taught me, and really both of us laid down our arms for a while to try to see each other’s sides of the issue, but is that God people and he wants to see our leader redeemed and even the people that we fight fight against long times. He is after their heart and after their lives and wants the best for our nation.

Jamie Mitchell:  And Bonnie, that doesn’t mean we compromise our convictions, our beliefs, our values, what we hold true, but certainly how we have those conversations with people, with your neighbor, with your coworker, with family members. I’m going to be having on next month a man who has a ministry to grandparents because he has these godly conservative grandparents who are finding it difficult to talk to their very liberal radical grandchildren. But as Christians, we need to be able to have these conversations. One of the things that Christians engaged us on your website have seen, but you’ve given us some products and some tools to leverage our knowledge. And I guess that’s the key thing, isn’t it? We really do have to have a handle on issues and understand what we believe if we’re going to be engaging with people, especially on the other side of the political conversation.

Bunni Pounds:    Well, and frankly Jamie, we’ve been lazy. We’re trying to depend on 62nd soundbites and little reels on our social media feeds on what? And we’re not really understanding the processes of civics or how to engage as leaders, but we’re also not understanding the Bible and we need to have an answer for the hope that we have. Right? The word of God is it will not return void. But if we don’t have the word hidden in our hearts, how are we to speak that and to be people of influence that can actually see God’s word impact people’s hearts and lives? So we’re trying to pull people to education several ways. We have a weekly show, conversations with Christians engaged where we could do detailed series. This month we’re doing a series on curing our nation in prayer. We did one on biblical worldview on the life issues.

Bunni Pounds:    So we dive into issues or leadership qualities through that, but also our classes that we talked about before every Christian should get in our on-ramp to civic engagement seminar, we’re going to teach you issues from a biblical perspective. What is a political party? How do we advocate? How do we get to know our elected officials? How do we share the gospel? How do we love our neighbor? And how do we walk free as Christ followers in politics and government so we can all do something, but we have to set our heart before the Lord and go, God, please use me for your glory and I will take the responsibility of training myself and to get into your word and to understand the systems. We wouldn’t go start a business without understanding how to start the business. How do we think we’re going to engage with politics or government or ministry without understanding or training ourselves on what we need to know? So that’s our challenge to Christians. Jamie,

Jamie Mitchell:  And you know what Bunni, I’m sad to say as Christians, sometimes we speak out of both sides of our mouths. We say that we want to influence the world, and then when we’re challenged to get ourselves educated, get our nose into the information that will help us, we then say things like this, well, God will help me, God will give me the right words. And then we go on the other side and it most times is an excuse for not engaging well Friends, the first step in the journey that we must do as Christians is register to vote that you’re ready to vote, to pray, to get the materials training that you need. When we wrap up with Bunni, we’re less than four months from big election day. What must we do today when we return for our final segment here on Stand in the Gap, understanding how Christians are to engage?

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, it has been our joy to have Bunni Pounds from Christians engaged Bunni. I noticed our good friend Michelle Bachman serves on your advisory council. She wrote the afterward of your book. Michelle’s been a long time friend of a PN and was our anniversary speaker just last year. And I think that if we kept talking, we would probably find a lot of mutual friends and colleagues because your heart is our heart in many, many ways. Funny, we have about 17 weeks away from November the fifth and election day. And we know that some states there’s going to be early voting with less than 90 days really away. And so as Christians, we can’t delay. Believers need to get in the game to understand what’s happening, know how to flex their influence and to make a difference this year. What would you suggest as we do face this election coming up, what can Christians be doing right now to start making their beliefs and values and their heart known in the election process?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, we’ve set a process up where we help you never forget an election. Again, if you want to remember when early voting starts or when your ballot’s ready for every election, not just the financial election that that’s important, but your primaries, your local elections as well, you can go to christians engage.org and take the pledge to vote and engage, and we will make sure you get four checks and four emails with a simple five step guide to vote in every election in the nation. But Jamie, we all have a responsibility to research our ballot to get to the polls absolutely every time. It’s almost like get to the church every time the door’s open. Same thing, get to the polls every time they’re open. But I want to encourage Christians, find a candidate in your community that you can support. Look your ballot now. Look at who’s running and see if there’s somebody you can adopt a candidate.

Bunni Pounds:    Give them money. If they’re a strong Christian with a biblical worldview, they need resources to get them across the finish line, volunteer, get in their life. If they’re already in office and you love what they do and how they serve you, well tell them, support them. They need encouragement to keep holding and doing what’s right. If you feel like somebody needs to take the place of the incumbent, get in there and help that challenger. But we don’t have a responsibility as believers to see righteous leaders be elected. And this is our time. This is an important season. And so I encourage Christians to be praying for our nation to be voting and participating and to engage in the process.

Jamie Mitchell:  Funny, you may or may not know this number, and if you don’t, don’t worry about it. But I was just sitting here thinking, do we have an idea of how many evangelical Christians did vote in the past and really maybe how many of them stayed home during elections? Because I’ve heard different things, and I hear that the number is pretty staggering of how many don’t engage in the voting process.

Bunni Pounds:    Well, we know nationally, Jamie, that we’re really not any better than the national public. We saw in 2016 a bump of three to 4% of people that called themselves evangelical Christians, go to the polls. It made a difference for former President Donald Trump as they chose him during that election as our presidential candidate. But when we look at the statistics of registration and voting, especially when it comes to primaries and local elections, we’re not seeing any different than the general public. So this should not be, we can actually, one church in the community could take election Christians and getting involved in a primary can shift who our nominees are for the general election. So if we get involved earlier, we can make a huge impact. And especially in our communities for these school boards and city council spots, we’ve got to actively get involved.

Jamie Mitchell:  We are the American Pastors Network. There’s a whole plethora of pastors who listen to this program. What would you say, what word of encouragement to a pastor who may say, I don’t like to get involved in the election or political process, what word of encouragement do you have to the pastor today and can they make a difference?

Bunni Pounds:    Well, we have an incredible strategic ministry partnership program where we help pastors. I believe every pastor in this country, Jamie can talk about pray, vote, and engage without splitting their church. They don’t have to endorse a political candidate. They don’t have to endorse a political party, but they need to stand up and start talking about the issues. Our friend David Barton always talks about the Colonial America and how the pastors used to preach off what was in the news, and they would bring the gospel into that. We’re doing the exact opposite today. We’re avoiding everything in the news and we’re preaching on a purpose-driven life. It’s time for us to start talking about what’s happening in our country or in the world, and that will actually bring more young people into the church because they want answers. They want answers. And we better should they get it from the pulpit. So pastor or ministry leader out there, check out our strategic ministry partnership program. We are now helping pastors to engage with voter registration, voter mobilization and education. And all the curriculum that we’ve talked about on this program is free to those local churches for them to engage with their people. But it’s time for us to speak up and to speak up boldly.

Jamie Mitchell:  Funny, I haven’t really talked a lot about this, but the political party that I’m involved in, I don’t get involved so much in the political melee, but I do try to influence. I try to help, but I help with the vetting of candidates and those kinds of things, just helping where I can. But this year, interesting enough, some Christians came to me and said, we really should pray for the election. And so I ended up hosting a weekly prayer call on Zoom. We don’t get into a lot of political stuff, but we pray for candidates. We pray for election integrity. We pray for the direction of our country. We pray for truth to be seen and that God will have his way and that righteousness will come back to our nation. And those opportunities are out there, aren’t they? If we go looking for them?

Bunni Pounds:    Absolutely. Our friends at Intercessors for America have prayer calls on all the time. Our friend Jenny Donnelley has prayer hubs popping up all over the country with Christians engaged. We do a video and a scripture and help you pray for our nation every Monday. So we have an opportunity as Christians to gather. And frankly, the art of a prayer meeting in a local church is kind of dissolved, but it can’t be. I mean, this is the main reason that the church exists is to be a house of prayer for all nations. So I want to encourage you to encourage your pastor, encourage your elders. Let’s get in prayer. Let’s meet in the church, in the synagogue, from house to house, crying out to God. As we pray for marath and for him to come back, we’re also praying for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And that is through us and through the place of prayer.

Jamie Mitchell:  Bunni, thank you. Thank you for today. I wish we had more time and to hear more stories of getting engaged. Friends, it’s an unacceptable thing for us to sit on our hands, to check out, to use some spiritualized excuse for avoiding political community involvement. We need to be involved in, especially right now, the current climate. It will take courage. And so at the end of every program, I say the same thing, live and lead with courage. Make sure you check out Money’s website and be engaged. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for another stand at the Gap today.