What comes up for you when you hear the word “stewardship?” It’s budgets and capital campaigns for me. Our current election cycle is drawing to a close, even as the next one is gathering momentum. In the midst of that, I’d like to invite you to take a look at the opportunity to vote as a resource under your stewardship.

Many of us are disillusioned and exhausted when we think about the political turmoil in our country. In that disillusionment and exhaustion, it’s easy to believe the story that voting doesn’t matter and that the systems in motion will remain in motion, carried along by the momentum of manipulation going on in the halls of wealth and power.

I’m not about to suggest that your one vote in this one election will change the outcome of the election. I’m also not saying that won’t be the case. It might!

What I want to suggest is that we reframe the rationale. Instead of viewing our votes as a way to win something, what if we viewed our participation in elections as a spiritual discipline? What if we made it the practice of using our voice to express something important to us? What if we used even the process of deciding how to cast our ballot an exercise in asking Jesus how our vote might bring good news to the poor? release captives? heal the sick, set free the oppressed? proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the provision that comes with it?

What if we treat voting as stewardship with the same level of consideration and attention we give to financial resources? That’s my invitation to you in this election season: vote not as “civic duty” or as simply the means to elect your favored candidate. Rather, vote as a spiritual discipline:

• a practice of inner reflection about the Reign of God and how it brings life to humans,
• a practice of filtering each choice through the lens of God’s relentless, infinite love for all of creation, especially for people,
• a practice of using what you have, your voice and your vote, in ways that lead us all into the answer of Jesus’ prayer that we would live life on earth as it is in Heaven.

My hope for you, and my request of you, is that you’ll join me in this practice of stewarding the opportunity we have to influence the world for love. Does everything hinge on whether or not you vote? Maybe. And the point of spiritual discipline (things like prayer, fasting, community, worship, observing the seasons of the church year) is to change the world by changing ourselves or, perhaps more accurately, by working with God that we might be conformed to the Image of Christ.

With hope and resolve,

Todd Porter
NT-NL Public Witness Team Coordinator