Dear Watermark Family,
At Watermark, everything we do should be about calling people closer to Jesus. That is the center the whole church orbits. When Jesus commissioned the Church, he did not tell us to build a voting bloc. He told us to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe everything he commanded (Matthew 28:19). Paul understood the politics of Rome as well as anyone alive, and yet he said he had determined to know nothing among the people except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). If the cross was a wide enough subject to hold Paul’s whole attention, it is wide enough to hold ours.
So here is a line we have chosen to keep, and we keep it gladly. We will not lend our name, our room, or our reputation to a partisan contest. The building is not a campaign stop. The sanctuary is not a debate stage. The pulpit is not a precinct. We do not want to hand any party or candidate the platform God gave us for the gospel, and we hope no election season, however loud it gets, ever talks us into it.
Please hear what this is and what it is not. It is not cowardice, and it is not silence. Where Scripture speaks plainly, we will speak plainly, and we will do it without apology. Every person in the room bears the image of God, and that settles the question of human dignity long before any election season begins (Genesis 1:27). We will keep teaching what God says about life, about the body, about justice and mercy, and about the poor and the stranger, because all of that is discipleship rather than partisanship. This is exactly why we gladly urge every member to pray, to study the candidates and the issues with care, and to vote according to their conscience before the Lord. Our aim is to come alongside you with biblical teaching that helps you discern God’s truth, so that truth settles into conviction, and conviction shapes how you live and how you vote. Handing you the truth Christ entrusted to us is our job. Telling you which lever to pull is not.
Here is the difference, and it really does matter. A believer weighing a vote in good conscience is a disciple working something out before the Lord, and we are glad to walk alongside them. A church that hands a party its blessing has become something else. When you wed the institution to a platform, it takes on that platform’s failures along with its promises, and it slowly loses the one thing the church cannot afford to lose: the freedom to call every side to biblical repentance with a clear conscience. It is hard to speak the truth to a party you have already joined on the campaign trail.
There is one more thing worth saying gently. The ground at the foot of the cross is level (Galatians 3:28). Politics tend to draw lines between people, and the gospel exists to take one particular line away. If we let this place become an arena, we will end up dividing the body of Christ over matters he did not die for, and we may quietly signal to a newcomer that one must get voting right before they can come near Jesus. That would be a kinder-sounding gospel, but it is not the gospel at all. The brother or sister who votes the opposite of you is still family here, and this house will treat them that way.
Jesus was clear about all of this. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17). Caesar is welcome to the ballot box, but he does not get the sanctuary. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we are waiting on a Savior rather than a nominee (Philippians 3:20).
So we will hold this line, and we will hold it on purpose and with open hands. Watermark will stay pointed at one thing. You will not find a party here. You will find the person of Jesus Christ, offered freely to anyone who walks through the door, with no political toll to pay on the way in. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good (Romans 12:9). By God’s grace, we intend to.
In Christ,
The Watermark Elders