For the first time in a long time, I was relatively heartened by reading the newspapers over recent days. Not all of it was good news. There are wars going on, after all. But I was heartened mainly by the kind of story that was being covered.

The wars being covered are wars that have a particular impact on life here in the UK. Minimally, gas prices and cost of living crises are immediately affected by what is going on in Ukraine and even the most rudimentary grasp of modern history tells us wars elsewhere in Europe have a habit of pulling in the rest of the continent. These things have meaningful and specific impact on us here.

I have seen headline stories about the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s spending plans. I make no comment on the good sense or otherwise of them. I just note these are the kind of issues that impact the daily lives of British people. How the government plans to spend our money necessarily impact how our lives will be impacted (for the better or the worse) by the government we have elected.

Further to that, I see some significant news in the main headlines about investment in nuclear energy that will impact us regarding jobs, energy security and a few other things. I have also noted a number of significant stories concerning transport. The potential investment in new ‘very light rail’ that is also battery powered and therefore more cost effective to run and makes the possibility of new tram systems and creating new working tram lines a distinct possibility. I have seen stories about investment from central government being given to the regions to spend specifically on transport.

Many of these stories may seem a little (if you’ll pardon the pun) pedestrian. But I think they matter because they mark a shift (which I accept may not last) to speaking about things that actually impact people. Most people want peace/security, access to healthcare, access to housing, the ability to get around using transport all at a cost that is manageable. There are all sorts of ways these things might be achieved and all manner or trade-offs we have to consider. But the point here is, these are the things that affect everybody and they are the matters which are within the power of local and national government to address. Most people want those in a position to effect these things to primarily speak about them.

This is something the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, seemed to catch onto early on. Nobody really cares about his views on a whole load of cultural matters, quite especially those cultural and world matters which he has exactly zero power to effect. He got elected speaking almost exclusively about the need for better transport and a specific plan to improve it (the benefits of which we have already seen). He has also spoken about local housing issues (which we are yet to see any great change). However, the point is, he spoke about the things that impact all the people of Greater Manchester rather than speaking into side issues and cultural matters that impact very few and he spoke about what was within his gift to actually change. He addressed things that matter to people that he had the power to do anything about.

I think there is a good lesson for church leaders here too. The church is at its best when it speaks into the issues that it has the power to effect and addresses what actually concerns most people. When the church becomes a political campaigning organisation, it is generally stepping outside the bounds of what it has been given by God to do, what it actually has the power to effect and what it can uniquely do to help people. When the church focuses on the gospel, proclaiming the good new of Jesus Christ to the world, it speaks to what it is able to do, what it has been given to do by Jesus, what it can uniquely offer the world and begins to speak (with some actual plan of addressing matters) into issues that effect everybody.

Everyone in the world suffers from the effects of sin. Everyone in the world wishes the consequences of sin were not writ large. The church has both an answer to that problem and the God-given authority to speak about it and effect some change. The bible is pretty clear, it is not our God-given task to change the sinful nature of man through appeals to worldly powers and authorities. It is not our God-given task to change people’s outward sinful behaviour by compelling through law to stop. It is the God-given task of the church to proclaim the Lord Jesus, to speak about his excellencies, and to point people to him as the source of life and the solution to their sin-problem. We don’t wield the sword; we wield only the sword of the Spirit through the proclamation of the Word.

When we do that, we do speak to issues that we can effect – because God has given us the authority to effect them – and we do speak to issues that impact everyone and for which we have a solution. Not only that, we speak about issues that people really do care about. I have spoken in recent about the so-called quiet revival. People are giving the church a second look because the church appears to be addressing the questions that they care about; the church appears to have been historically good at stopping the excesses and problems that people currently see in a society that threw off the supposed shackles of religion long ago. When we stand up and parrot the political lines of whatever group we have decided best, we offer nothing unique. When we stand up and proclaim the gospel, we address the issues of concern for many people and point them to what the church can uniquely offer; the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We do well by not getting drawn away from that task. We do well to focus on what Jesus has given us to do. We do well to speak into what concerns people, what affects their daily lives, and offer them what we can uniquely offer them. Our task is to give them the gospel and hold out the Lord Jesus to them. Anything else is shorting changing them.