In the winter of 1995, not long after we had moved the National Community Church into the Giddings Elementary School, I was at a meeting in the Capitol with Ralph Reed, the head of Pat Robertson’s political action group, the Christian Coalition. To most of us in the pro-life movement, Bill Clinton was a disaster, but for Ralph and the coalition, he was the gift that kept on giving. In just a short time, the coalition’s membership had soared from 250,000 to over 1.6 million with 1,600 chapter affiliates spread across the country. With all those members came Pat Robertson’s unmatched fund-raising prowess, and the organization’s budget grew to almost $25 million. I had spoken at many coalition events over the years, but this was one of my first high-level meetings with them in Washington. The room was filled with friends and allies. It was a propitious time after the GOP triumph over Democrats in November. With his perfectly coiffed dome of hair, starched shirts, and tasseled loafers, Ralph was visibly basking in success. I liked Ralph and he was always congenial, even deferential, with me, but there was a lingering sense that he had really arrived in D.C., while I remained on the margins. I needed only to look at the prominent people he had assembled in this room for proof.
The purpose of the meeting was to lay out the strategy for consolidating the victories from the midterm elections. Many of us there were members of the clergy, and Ralph was careful not to begin electioneering, but there were strong hints on how congregations, pastors, and high-profile ministry personalities should be mobilized. After discussing demographics, election trends, and hot-button issues, I remember Ralph leaning forward, looking around the table, and announcing, “We don’t just want a place at the table,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “We want to replace the table with our own.”
His brazen ambition and the way that others reveled in our collective destiny left me feeling momentarily uncomfortable. But perhaps this was the way one needed to play the game in this city. Everyone was confident that with Ralph we could realize our goal. I put away my doubts and, like a sponge, absorbed everything about the way Washington worked. If I felt any pangs of conscience, I soon dismissed them as simply part of the learning curve. I was using muscles I had never flexed before—of course they would twinge—so I took my cues from the experienced insiders.
The effects of the Republican Revolution would soon be felt. Those fifty-four new seats in the House and an additional eight in the Senate had given Republicans control of Congress for the first time in four decades and delivered many friendly new lawmakers to Capitol Hill. Odds were in our favor for the passage of legislation that rolled back some of the measures of the Clinton administration, or might at least stall further advancement of what I, at the time, considered a wicked agenda.
I naïvely attempted to make appointments with senators, representatives, and even federal judges, and was repeatedly though very politely brushed off. I needed to get closer to power, but I was having a hard time gaining access. I had to get creative. What would happen, I wondered, if I simply rode the elevators in their office buildings during the early-morning hours or late at night? Perhaps members would be more accessible when they were not on the floor, or in committee, or obligated to constituents and lobbyists, when the halls were not crawling with tourists.
As I prepared for my first elevator ministry, I put on my time-honored sartorial uniform first suggested by Pastor Fred Dixon: a sober suit, white shirt, and understated tie. But with one special difference. Someone I knew with experience on the Hill explained that a lapel pin was essential to signal my stature and experience. It would demonstrate to all who knew the code that I was a member of a special organization and, as such, I was worthy of their attention. Luckily, I had a pin from the National Clergy Council, or NCC, which Paul and I had founded back in the early nineties, while we were still in Buffalo. It was a network of pastors and ministry leaders we would call together on an as-needed basis—for a pro-life demonstration, say, or a news conference. My title was originally secretary-general, but when several of our members suggested it sounded too “communist,” it was changed to “president.” Being “president of the National Clergy Council” was proof of my national bona fides—and my new handsome lapel pin proved it.
One early morning in March 1995, I appeared for my first day working the elevators, wearing my pin, with my National Clergy Council business cards tucked in my pocket. As I approached the security detail, I remembered my father’s admonition that the only thing separating success from failure is confidence. I crossed the Capitol Rotunda, heading for the proprietary subway that connects to the Hart Senate Office Building. A police officer raised his hand to stop me and said he didn’t recognize my pin. I looked as surprised as if he had not recognized the American flag, even though I knew our council was not on any clearance list. With exaggerated patience, I pointed to the pin and informed him that it was the National Clergy Council logo. Looking embarrassed, he encouraged me to proceed.
I walked confidently to the railcar and hopped onboard. From there I got in the elevator and my vertical chapel was officially open for business. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was a visitor; I had not thought that I would have such a famous lawmaker, and prominent representative of our enemy, as my first visitor. He entered and I greeted him and introduced myself, explaining that I was the president of the National Clergy Council and eager to meet members of Congress. He gave me a polite response, went to his floor, exited, and someone else came in and hit the down button. And so it went, floor after floor, often with staffers and occasionally a bold-faced name: Tom Daschle, Arlen Specter, Ted Kennedy.
Some took my business card and gave the impression they would use it, and they did, calling me later—sometimes to ask for spiritual counseling, sometimes to ask if I might be interested in running a small Bible study group in their offices. But most simply reaching out to explore what political networking opportunities might come with a clergyman like me.
Slowly I discovered portals into the world of the political elite, learning to navigate the corridors of power. Senator Nickles was a constant help to me, but the congressional class of 1994 for the first time ever included lawmakers from my own denomination, the Assemblies of God. The transformation of the Senate and Congress during the middle of Clinton’s first term in office created a congenial landscape, and I made some good friends. One of them was Ed Buckham, the new chief of staff for Texas congressman Tom DeLay, the majority whip in the House of Representatives. Ed was well-connected on the Hill. He had been head of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of the most conservative members of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives. A lay evangelical minister—and a charismatic—he would often walk the grounds of the Capitol, praying in tongues. We understood each other entirely and he tutored me in the ways of the House. He explained which members were likely to be open to my elevator approach and those not worth my effort. He prayed with me, made sure I was on the guest list for various events, and warned me about political charlatans and enemies.
There was so much to absorb and so many moving parts. The demand fragmented my life. I spent my days trying to establish myself in Washington while my family was making the same effort in Manassas, thirty-five miles away, in a completely different community and disparate culture. Companies in Washington gave their employees incentive gifts of tickets to the opera; in Manassas they gave out tickets to the stock car races at the county fairgrounds. Cheryl and the kids were living in a whole other world, and the vast gulf between our experiences often made it hard to relate to each other after long days.
In addition to the toll that it took on my family life, the inroads I was making into Capitol Hill increasingly took time away from my congregation and my work as a pastor. But I felt a strong gravitational pull toward the Hill, the personalities, and the possibilities. I turned my eyes away from my humble little flock and toward the potentates, who I believed could literally change the course of the nation.
When I told my denominational supervisor I wanted to give up the church, he was relieved, but reluctant to grant permission unless I could suggest a suitable successor. Mark Batterson was an impressive young minister teaching at Washington’s Urban Bible Training Center, an educational program for inner-city pastors. Over lunch, when Mark and I discussed how he would lead such a church, it was clear he would do something special. I asked if he would assume the pulpit if I were to resign. Without hesitation, he said he would. Cheryl and I were done. National Community Church was now in the hands of a new leader, who remained and went on to build it into one of the largest and most effective evangelical congregations in the metro Washington, D.C., area.
Finally, I was positioned to fully commit to the work that had drawn me to Washington in the first place. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Chuck Colson, and D. James Kennedy had preceded me in working the levers of power on a policy level, but I wanted to do something more immediately accessible. I wanted to become the first missionary to Capitol Hill. It would be an opportunity to bring biblical truth to bear on not only elected officials but those appointed and confirmed by them. My mission field would now be not only Congress and the White House but also the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court justices—and I would do it up close and very personal.
With limited resources to pull it off, I had to take on just about every job to pay the bills. The American Center for Law and Justice and a few other sympathetic groups hired me as a consultant. Meanwhile, I worked every church connection I had, spending pretty much every weekend on the road preaching in pulpits all over the country, raising support wherever I went. I quickly built a small team of full-time employees and lay and clergy volunteers. Our work was to challenge the political leaders in Washington by exposing their machinations, rebuking their moral turpitude, reminding them they were all accountable to a higher authority than themselves, and reporting it all back to our supporters across the country.
In the end, this translated into support of Republicans and criticism of Democrats. I would look at their speeches on the floor, their legislation, sometimes the groups with whom they met, and talk to their staff members, sometimes to the members themselves. I wrote a monthly newsletter that I would send to the now several thousand people on our mailing list—folks who lived in small communities in Oklahoma, say, or Kansas, or Alabama, or rural Washington State—and I would zero in on the issues most important to us, such as abortion, and report on the nefarious doings of the Democrats and the rectitude of many Republicans. Then I would return to Capitol Hill and meet with like-minded officials in a prayerful way, to engage them in thinking about their work with an eye to the Lord.
We renamed ourselves Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital and devised a simple mission statement: “To challenge Capitol Hill with Biblical truth and to change the nation, one policy maker at a time.” I wanted to lead every needy soul to the Savior so they could find forgiveness of sins and, consequently, change their thinking and actions when it came to public policy. “The solution to the mess in our country,” I said in many a Sunday sermon, “is the gospel. When a heart is changed, a head is changed. When a head is changed, a policy is changed. When a policy is changed, a nation is changed. That’s how it works, folks, plain and simple.”
This change, I thought, would get done through individual witness, which meant sitting and talking with members of Congress and their staff in offices, in those elevators, across lunch tables, in group Bible studies, and in special events. I was exhilarated and engaged. I was on a first-name basis with some important people, funders came on board, and I even made some friends in the Clinton White House. Every day offered a new opportunity to evangelize, to connect with power brokers, to do an interview with national media, to explore new territory. I was in my glory. I could feel the working of the Holy Spirit in everything I was doing. From the small events where a few staff members from Congress appeared for Bible study, to the day a Supreme Court justice reached out to ask for my counsel in a family crisis. This was heady stuff. Sometimes, I would remember Pastor L. M. Thorne’s words at the Abundant Life Church, “God’s gonna use you, my brother, in a mighty way in this country and it’s going to be for his glory, honor and praise.”
I was beginning to believe it.