The Gospel Truth about our future

In October 2019, we took then-NC Lt. Governor Dan Forest and his wife Alice to Israel with 40 North Carolina pastors and spiritual leaders, including Pastor Cameron McGill and his wife Tiffany.

Eight months after returning home, the longtime, beloved football coach of the East Bladen High School Eagles - and Democrat Bladen County Commissioner - Russell Priest unexpectedly passed away. Pastor Cameron was asked to officiate Commissioner Priest’s funeral on August 2, 2020, held on the high school baseball field to accommodate the large turnout.

Following the service, the Bladen County sheriff and the chairman of the county commissioners approached Cameron about running for the vacant seat in a special election in a district that was predominantly Democrat. “I was very humbled and honored,” Cameron recalled. “I was out working on the pier; I don’t know if I ever really took them seriously. They said they’d give me time to consider it. I had just helped with Coach Priest’s funeral at the ball field, and my boys grew up under his leadership.”

Cameron went home and told his wife Tiffany what had happened:

“You’re not going to believe this - I was approached about running for the vacant Bladen County commissioner seat.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I told them I was in overload, and no, we have so much going on in our lives right now.”

“Maybe that’s why God sent us to Israel,” she replied.

The next day, Cameron walked into the county office and filed.

Last week, NC Pastor and Bladen County Commissioner Cameron McGill was elected Chairman of the Bladen County Commissioners. As the Bladen Journal reported: “WHITE LAKE - A new chairman is sitting in the middle seat for the Bladen County Commissioners as a result of a new vote Dec. 1 in Elizabethtown.”

www.bladenjournal.com/news/110704/cameron-mcgill-elected-as-new-chairman

Pastor McGill’s story illustrates a Biblical pattern: God often drafts reluctant servants - Moses at the burning bush, Gideon in the winepress, and colonial pastors who wavered before stepping into civic leadership. Renewal rarely begins with the confident, but with the obedient. America will not be restored by celebrities or polished political professionals, but by ordinary pastors and parishioners who answer God’s nudge to stand where competition is fiercest - the rough and tumble of the public square.

This is why the American Renewal Project’s goal is to see 500 North Carolina parishioners run for local office in 2026 and 2028: city council, school board, county commissioner, parks and recreation boards, and more.

Local offices may seem insignificant, but they shape the moral ecosystem of the community: what children are taught, how families are protected, how public resources are stewarded, and whether righteousness or corruption sets the tone for civic life. The future of a state is not forged in Washington, D.C., but in school board meetings, county commissions, and city councils. This is precisely where obedience to Christ’s ekklesia Kingdom assignment in Matthew 16:18 can have the most significant long-term impact.

To incentivize this vision, any NC pastor or spiritual leader whose congregation produces 5 candidates filing for local office in the subsequent 2 cycles -

• 2026 election [filing deadline: December 19, 2025];

• 2027 election [filing deadline: July 26, 2026];

- will receive a complimentary tour of Israel in early 2028.

Meanwhile, two buses of North Carolina pastors are departing for Israel January 6-14, 2026, with Calvary Chapel-Bangor Pastor Ken Graves serving as Teaching Pastor. The Tour includes dinner with Ambassador Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem on January 11th.

https://vimeo.com/1146262936?fl=pl&fe=sh

We are doing this for 2 reasons:

1. To restore America to her Judeo-Christian heritage and to reestablish the Biblical culture laid down by the American Founders throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

2. To counter Cultural Marxism, a destructive ideology that for 75 years has been injected into the bloodstream of the nation and its institutions. It teaches young people to despise America and distrust one another, exploiting racial division while posing as moral enlightenment. In reality it is the toxic outgrowth of godless secularism.

Which brings us to the troubling rise of 27-year-old extremist Nick Fuentes, whose message was recently amplified by Tucker Carlson. Both a loudmouthed Hitler devotee and a heedless Holocaust denier, Fuentes is the leader of the so-called Groyper movement who presents himself as a voice for alienated young white males.

Fuentes’ appeal mirrors the Left’s long normalization of such identity-based frameworks as Affirmative Action, Critical Race Theory, and DEI, all of which elevate racial identity as the measure of political and moral legitimacy. This parallels the Sexual Revolution, which normalized promiscuity, redefined marriage, and ultimately championed transgender identity and gender fluidity as presumed expressions of personal truth.

Fuentes’ movement is simply a distorted mirror-image of the very ethos the culture has been catechized in since the 1960s. And when a society is trained to believe that identity is everything, it should not be surprised when new identities demand a seat at the table, with some of them, inevitably, dissolute and morally unrestrained.

Early American education formed children through Biblical wisdom, as seen in the New England Primer:

A - In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.

B - Heaven to find, the Bible mind.

C - Christ crucify’d for sinners dy’d.

… continuing through Z - Zacchaeus, he did climb the tree, our Lord to see.

Proverbs 10:8 says, “The wise in heart accept commands, but the babbling fool comes to ruin.” Dr. Bruce K. Waltke notes: “The wise know they need mentoring and welcome it. The fool is so full of himself that instead of receiving wisdom, he prattles out his own ‘clever opinions,’ devoid of true wisdom.”

Our prayer is that Gospel Fire will glow and radiate through the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of federal, state, and local governments, and that this same Fire will reclaim public education, restoring a Christ-centered worldview and wisdom.

Providentially, and to America’s blessing, Gideons and Rahabs have entered the public square.

David Lane

American Renewal Project