Speaking as a Citizen

What I did to endorse Adam Hamilton and how we put together a meet and greet

In more than twenty years of ministry I had never endorsed anyone for office. This summer I endorsed Adam Hamilton for the U.S. Senate, and a few weeks later Nicole and I hosted a meet and greet for him here in McPherson.

A few people have asked how I handled it. If you want to do something, here’s what I did. It’s one person’s account rather than a playbook, so take what’s useful. I hope some of it helps.

What I did to endorse

The form. It’s public, at hamiltonforkansas.com/endorse, so you don’t have to wait for anybody to send it to you. The first real decision is how to list yourself. I put “pastor” and left the church name off. Then I checked what they posted, because what you write on the form and what shows up on the site aren’t always the same.

I told people first, starting with whoever had the most at stake. Nobody who might have to answer for me was going to find out on Facebook.

Nicole first. Then my board chair, on their own and before the rest of the board, so they had room to tell me not to. Then my District Superintendent, from my personal email, in my own words. I wasn’t asking permission, but I wasn’t only informing them either. If my DS had told me this was a mistake, I would have taken that seriously. Do that one yourself and do it early. If somebody calls the district office about you, your DS should already know what you’d say. Then the whole Leadership Board. Ours is one board, so if your church runs a church council with separate committees, sort out who needs to hear it first. Then my associate pastor. Then the rest of the staff, and I said plainly that I wasn’t asking a single one of them for anything. Then public.

I wrote two emails, one to the board and one to the staff. Three things I’d keep.

Put the boundary in one plain sentence. Mine was: as a private citizen, on my own name and my own time, not as the church and not from the pulpit, no church name and no church resources. Four ways of saying the same thing in a row, so nobody has to infer it.

Release them out loud and take the pushback yourself. Not asking you to agree, not asking you to do anything, not asking you to defend me, and if somebody comes at you about it, send them to me. That let people back me without signing up for anything.

The staff email has to do something the board email doesn’t. I almost sent staff a copy of the board note before it hit me that I’m their supervisor. Somebody who reports to you is quietly wondering whether agreeing is now part of the job, and that’s not a question they can ask you. So answer it before they have to.

Here’s the paragraph I’d hand you to start from, with your own details dropped in:

I’m not asking you to do anything or take any position. I just didn’t want any of you caught off guard if someone in the congregation mentions it. Our church includes people who’ll vote every direction, and every one of them stays welcome here. My preaching and my pastoral care don’t change. If pushback comes to any of you, feel free to send it my way.

Where I put it. My Substack list is 46 people, almost all local, and most of them signed up for a daily devotional. A Senate endorsement in those inboxes is the church mailing list with extra steps. So I posted it without emailing it and shared it from my own Facebook page instead. The post got 184 views. The Facebook share got 14,051 and reached about 8,000 people. Nearly all of it came through the public side, which means you can leave your church list alone and still be heard.

The Sunday after, I preached the sermon I’d already written, from the text I’d already picked. No hints, no winks. Then I stood in the narthex and made sure I was easy to find. Almost nobody brought it up, and the few who did were kind about it.

What I did to organize the event

Three rules, and they cover most of it. Not at the church. Not the congregation, which means more than just not using the directory. Pick a place where people buy their own food.

Start with the campaign. This is the step I’d put first, because it sets everything else. They worked out the date and time around when Adam could be here, and they made the graphic. Don’t book a room until they’ve told you what’s possible.

The room. The community room at the back of Pizza Ranch, booked in my own name about ten days ahead. The campaign said it would help to be somewhere with food available, and they were right.

The invitations. I posted the graphic publicly on my own Facebook page, then texted an invitation to everybody in my own contacts who lives in McPherson.

I was most careful with that second part. Not working from the church directory is the obvious line. Not working the congregation from my own phone is the stricter one, and it’s the one that matters. Only a handful of church members got a text from me, and those are people I’d know if I’d never been their pastor. Everybody else on that list I knew some other way, as a neighbor, through a board I serve on, or from somewhere else around town, rather than as somebody I pastor.

An open event means your members will see it, and some will ask you about it beforehand. Several did. I had braced for a hard conversation and what they wanted was the time and the place. That’s worth knowing if you’re nervous about this part.

The food, which turned out to be the easy part. It’s a buffet, so everybody paid for themselves. Some people ate and some just came for the event, and that was fine either way. Nobody hosted a meal and nobody settled a tab, which took the one genuinely awkward question off the table before it came up.

The buffet also solved something I hadn’t thought about, which is how much food to get. We wanted an open event, and only a handful of people had told me they were coming, so I had no idea whether I’d see eight or eighty. An open event means you can’t predict the headcount, and a buffet means you don’t have to. Those two decisions fit together.

Who came. The room was full. Somewhere around fifty people, well past what I expected from the few who’d said yes ahead of time. Early quiet isn’t necessarily a bad sign.

What I’d do differently

I’d start earlier. The whole thing compressed into a few days when it should have had a couple of weeks.

And I’d have had more of those conversations face to face. My board chair got an email instead of a sit-down because I was leaving on vacation and the turnaround was quick, and a few other people got the same treatment. Nothing broke, but it was tighter than it needed to be.

If you’re going to do this, pick your dates before the campaign picks them for you.

One smaller thing I’d fix. I never said in the invitation that you could buy dinner from the buffet or just come for the event. Both were fine with me, but I never wrote it down, so people had to guess or ask. Put that one line in the invitation and nobody has to wonder whether showing up means buying a meal.

One more thing

I’ve been here a few years and people know me. If you’re serving a church of sixty in a county that votes ninety percent the other way, this is a different decision than the one I made, and you’re the one who can size that up, not me.

So I’m not asking you to do this. I am inviting you to consider it, which isn’t the same thing. If you weigh it and the answer is no, that’s a real answer and for plenty of people it’s the right one. Nobody should finish reading this and feel like they came up short.

What I’d hand you is that I spent twenty-one years thinking it would cost more than it did. Not nothing. Just less than I was afraid of.

One pastor, one town, one time. You know your people.