The history and culture of Texas has captivated people across the world for a long time. The Texas State Capitol embodies much of this.
The Capitol is the common property and birthright of all Texans. The site of the Capitol—with its historic treasures and numerous masterworks of literature and art, as well as the Lone Star State’s stature—demands attention and admiration.
Rather than coming to take it, one should come visit the Capitol, for it is the embodiment of Texas history and the place where public officials labor to meet the problems of state government.
Our Advocacy Day
Participating in Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission Advocacy Day is one of the best opportunities to make sure your presence and voice is recognized and heard.
A personal visit also can have more of an impact than an email, writing a letter or making a phone call to your representative. The solution to addressing an issue could lie in your personal visit. This is why we participated in Advocacy Day, and so should you.
The key to how you should visit is respect. Being polite to staff, follow visitor’s expectations, and respecting those who disagree with your stance are essential. Since the Capitol is a functional workplace, respectful behavior and appropriate is expected.
Taking part in this year’s Advocacy Day on April 20 provided fresh ideas on how to tell our story to legislators and share with them biblical principles about certain issues. We also appreciated discussing how to work with politicians to address issues in our state and getting to know other ministers from around Texas.
Love causes us to go
Someone recently asked, “Why do you go to Austin for Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission Advocacy Day?”
The answer: “Love is messy.”
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Real love, that is. Not the so-called love romanticized and popularized in our culture, or the easy-come, easy-go love that lacks real commitment or fidelity.
Real love—precisely because it is deeply committed—can get messy, because it doesn’t run away when the going gets tough or the commitment makes uncomfortable demands. God loves us with a real love. His love “never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
It is this real love we not only are invited to receive, but we also are called to imitate. As Christ-followers who are deeply loved with this real love of God, we are called to love one another and to love our neighbors in the same way. Sometimes, this love is messy.
‘Advocacy is love’
You may agree so far, but you still may be wondering what this answer has to do with the question about advocacy in general and about Advocacy Day in particular.
The often-messy work of making and passing policy in our communities, state and nation is one of those works love sometimes demands from us as Christ-followers who are loving their neighbors well.
Sometimes love demands speaking up for the voiceless and advocating for the powerless. Sometimes love demands saying something to the governmental and cultural powers that shape our lives together.
It is easy for us as Christians—and particularly as pastors—to lament the sinful conditions of our world and our society. It is harder to engage those processes by which some of these conditions are legalized or restrained.
Thankfully, as Texas Baptists, we have the Christian Life Commission that helps us in this work of advocating for justice and love.
Advocacy is love when we speak for the rights of the unborn and when we champion causes that strengthen families. Advocacy is love when we point out those places in our communities where vulnerable people are oppressed immorally by usurious payday loans.
Advocacy is love when we seek to create or shape policy that enables a more free and just society, not just for ourselves, but for the voiceless, the powerless and the needy in our own communities.
Learning to advocate
For those of us not regularly involved in this kind of work, engagement with the political processes of our government can seem intimidating. Like most fields and specialties, it has its own language. As an outsider unfamiliar with the language, the mechanisms, and the relationships involved, it is difficult to see how to act in a way that might make a real difference.
The Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission helps with this, and it does not get any easier than on Advocacy Day—which happens each session of the Texas Legislature.
On Advocacy Day, they educate us about legislation and potential legislation that touches on areas important to Baptist Christians. They know the numbers of the bills legislators are considering.
They know which senators and representatives are involved with issues important to the works of love we are trying to accomplish. They even schedule meetings with the offices of our senators and representatives. They suggest partners doing similar works of advocacy on the same issues, and they put those partners in front of us.
In short, the Christian Life Commission is a friend who helps us act in meaningful ways. We are grateful to the Christian Life Commission for keeping such conversations in front of us, and we also are grateful for the work they do to enable all of us to speak into moments where policy is being shaped that will affect us and our neighbors.
Tedrick Woods is a bivocational Texas Baptist church planter. He is the senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship Church in Dallas, also serves in the Austin region, and is chair of Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission. Chad Chaddick is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in San Marcos.
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