Six Vital Lessons the Church Can Learn from Donald Trump's Election

I didn’t mean to stay up all of Tuesday night watching the presidential election returns, but I couldn’t help myself. Like many of my friends, I was so caught up in the drama of Trump’s reelection bid that I couldn’t turn the TV off and go to bed. To make matters worse, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed at the same time to keep up with the latest reports, speculations, comments, memes (they were hilarious) and actual news. By the time Trump gave his victory speech about 2:30am, I was so jittery and exhausted that I couldn’t go to sleep. I don’t think I was the only one.

As the extent of Trump’s victory became clear, a large number of celebrity pastors and other church leaders began publishing their takes on the election.

Jack Graham, a Southern Baptist leader and pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, took a positive approach:

Today is a day to celebrate America. The people have spoken. President Trump will lead us forward as a nation and it is an opportunity for the church to speak Truth with boldness. With grateful hearts we will rise to the challenges of our times and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus. Thank you God for blessing our country.

Reformed writer and leader John Piper, on the other hand, was more cautious. In an enigmatic post that has garnered criticism, he warned America’s churches not to place too much confidence in earthly leaders; even in those who, like Trump, are openly supportive of the Christian faith:

Presidential election results. Having delivered us from one evil, God now tests us with another. “The Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” Deuteronomy 13:3

Evangelist and pastor Greg Laurie saw historical parallels between Trump’s presidency and that of Ronald Reagan, with both playing vital roles in God’s providential plan for our nation:

After winning the presidency, Donald Trump made this statement- “‘God spared my life for a reason — to save our country and restore America to greatness.” I believe this is true… When President Ronald Reagan was shot early in his presidency, he too felt God had spared his life. The night Reagan returned to the White House he confided in his diary, “Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will serve Him every way I can.”  Ronald Reagan went on have one of the greatest presidencies in American history. Let’s pray now for President Trump that he will be surrounded by godly and competent people who will give him good counsel in the days ahead. God bless President Trump and God bless the United States of America.

Franklin Graham—son of the late Billy Graham, leader of the nationally recognized Samaritan’s Purse Ministries and a key evangelical leader—went to even greater lengths regarding the impact of a Trump presidency on many of the causes and ministries that America’s churches support:

I thank God that Donald Trump won this election! This win is historic in many ways. Millions and millions of people were praying, and I believe God heard their prayers. It’s a win for the family. It’s a win for the economy. It’s a win for millions of unborn children. It’s a win for freedom of speech. It’s a win for religious liberty. It’s a win for law and order. It’s a win for American manufacturing. It’s a win for coal miners. It's a win for farmers. It’s a win for the oil and gas industry. It’s a win for national security. It’s a win against bureaucracy and government regulators. It’s a win for freedom-loving people everywhere, not just here in America, but around the world.

Many other evangelical leaders weighed in, all of them to one degree or another seeing Trump’s election as holding great promise for America’s churches. I think they’re right. This moment, it seems to me, opens a window of opportunity for gospel ministry throughout the nation.

But it’s not the advantages that a Trump presidency brings to gospel ministry that I’ve been mulling over since his election, as obvious as they may be. Instead, I’ve been thinking through the other side of his election; namely, the strategies that he used in order to win. And here’s where I think America’s churches have something to learn. I don’t mean that religion should parallel politics. Not at all! If history teaches anything, it’s that whenever religion gets mixed up with politics it’s religion that suffers.

At the same time, Trump’s campaign seems to have succeeded because of how it identified and responded to several underlying trends in American life that Kamala Harris and her Democrat party were either ignorant of or chose to ignore.

While I don’t pretend to be an expert on political strategies, it seems to me that are six key factors that contributed to Trump’s victory. The same six, I believe, contain lessons for America’s churches in our future ministries. I list them below in no particular order because, if I’m being honest, I’m not all sure just how they’re related. But one thing is certain, all six are important for us in local church leadership to come to terms with.

The first lesson is the importance of young men. In one of the many post-mortems of Harris’ loss, it was her failure at reaching younger men—especially Generation Z (young men in their twenties)—that was among her worst failings. Here’s Marion Thibaut giving the exit poll numbers:

"If you are a man in this country and you don't vote for Donald Trump, you're not a man," said Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist long focused on the youth vote. Donald Trump won the presidency with 54 percent of men voting for the Republican, up slightly from the 51 percent that supported him in 2020, according to exit polling by NBC. But what raised eyebrows was among younger voters aged 18-29, where 49 percent of men voted Trump -- shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left. As Elon Musk -- tech bro, wealthy businessman and major Trump backer -- put it on Election Day: "the cavalry has arrived."

In what was one of Trump’s most important appearances in the campaign—Joe Rogan’s podcast—the former president reached an audience of almost 40,000,000 viewers, most of who were the younger men who make up Rogan’s podcast audience.

The takeaway from Trump’s success is that local churches must find ways to reach young men. It’s not an easy group to reach, but it’s a group hungry for purpose and belonging, and wise churches must find ways to invest in it.

The second lesson is the greater inclusion of ethnics. Trump’s election marked a seismic shift in presidential politics in which many of past ethnic trends were reversed. The New York Post provides the new political realities:

A majority of Latino men, big gains among Asian voters and black men — and a lot more members of Gen Z. That’s how Donald Trump built a diverse coalition that propelled the former president to an electoral blowout on Tuesday — adding nearly 9 million more votes than he won in 2016. Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss was marked by her campaign hemorrhaging long-held Democratic support from groups that have been stalwart Democratic supporters for generations, according to exit polls by Edison Research. The surveys showed a dramatic drift rightward for young and non-white voters, according to GOP pollster and strategist Patrick Ruffini. “It is historically unprecedented in the modern era,” Ruffini told The Post, referring to the period following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Churches have long offered limited ministries to different ethnic groups, especially in the last few years as immigration has increased. But the coalition Trump built that led to his election shows that America’s ethnic population has reached the level where small, limited ministries aren’t enough. It’s time to figure out how to make different ethnic groups not only welcome in church but also invited into full fellowship.

The third lesson is the changing landscape of communication. As I mentioned above, Joe Rogan’s podcast interview with Trump was a highlight of the entire campaign. Circumventing the traditional media, Trump went straight to his audience and built a personal connection with people that wouldn’t have been possible any other way. Another major communications outlet for Trump’s campaign was X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk’s social media platform. As with Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump effectively used X earlier his campaign in an interview with Musk that may have had as many as 1 billion views.

Of course, the vast numbers who connect with social media is far beyond the reach of all but the largest megachurches. Still, local churches must learn to respond to the changing nature of communications in the modern world. Almost every church today needs to invest in a Communications Director to help them navigate the new landscape in order to maintain connection with their congregation as well as provide a front door into their church for the larger community. Today, communications isn’t an afterthought of ministry but an essential part of it.

The fourth lesson is dealing with distrust of institutions. A hallmark of Trump’s campaign was his and his supporters’ distrust of institutions. From the legacy media that has long scorned him and beat the drum for his demise to the government agencies’ actions during the COVID lockdown to government security agencies spying on American citizens to the old guard of the Republican party trying to resist change to his pledge to “drain the swamp” of government bureaucracies, Trump has long questioned many American institutions. Robert Kennedy, Jr, whom Trump may appoint to head the Food and Drug Administration, put the agency’s employees on notice, saying, “The FDA’s war on public health is about to end…If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Today’s churches—my own Southern Baptist Convention as well as Methodists, Lutherans and many others—are moving more and more into a similar position of suspicion if not actual distrust. And with good reason. Denominational institutions that once were central to the mission of local churches have grown into bureaucracies that seem mainly concerned with their own perpetuation. In the coming years, local churches need to reverse that trend and once again assert the priority of individual congregations.

The fifth lesson is the critical need for authenticity in leadership. For me and many others, the most glaring difference between Trump and Harris wasn’t their party, gender, age, education, experience, policies or race—although all those differences were apparent. But in terms of personality, the thing that stood out more than anything else was their authenticity. While half the country clearly didn’t respect or like Trump, no one would deny that he was who he said he was. Harris, on the other hand, came across the opposite fashion. She seemed to be uncomfortable in her own skin and unclear about which persona she was to present according to whichever group she was speaking to at any given moment.

In today’s church environment, where so much is changing and so many pressures are coming to bear on local congregations, the one factor in leadership that trumps all others is authenticity. Pastors must be who they say they are. Their beliefs, values, character, actions and decisions must all be in alignment. They must be the people that their congregations believe them to be.

The sixth lesson is the importance of welcoming new voices into the organization. The most creative—and to some, unnerving—leadership decision Trump made in his campaign was when he welcomed into his inner circle and his future administration three people from outside the Republican party: Robert Kennedy, a member of the most famous Democratic family in American history, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic US Representative from Hawaii and Elon Musk, businessman, inventor and investor who wasn’t politically active until this election. But Trump’s instinct was right in that his campaign needed the new energy and new ideas that these three brought to it.

Churches are notorious for being inward looking and hostile to input from outside themselves and their own traditions. And, to be honest, there’s good reason to maintain continuity with tradition. At the same time, there’s also good reason to mesh tradition with creative expressons of ministry. And for that new voices can provide insight and direction when old voices can’t.

However the church moves forward in the next four years, I believe there’s a wide-open opportunity to learn from this presidential election and respond to some of the same trends that led Donald Trump to be relected President of the United States.