Pastor Travis Johnson, it's great to have you back here on Charisma News.
You had a very unique opportunity a couple days ago, and right now you're actually you've
traveled to Washington, D.C. for a very special event.
But this event that we're talking about was you got to meet with President Donald Trump
in a small private gathering.
You got to pray for him on stage in front of faith leaders.
And I want to hear from you.
What was this experience like for you?
Well, you know, it's obviously a privilege to be with any type of leader that leads at
a capacity as someone like Donald Trump.
You know, not only an American leader, but any kind of world leader.
It's very rare air.
And so that's a wonderful thing.
But then to be able to do that with an American former president and white, possibly, and
hopefully, I believe I believe this is what will happen.
I believe President Trump will serve his second term.
But to do something like that in the context of Christian faith, which is so important,
religious liberty, freedom, and to be able to have those discussions in a very unfiltered,
both formal and informal ways was so really wonderful.
And I would be making a big mistake not to also acknowledge that the God of all creation
was in that room.
And he was honored more than anyone else in the room.
The presence of God was in the house.
And that was wonderful.
Yeah.
You know, there was lots of people that were praying for President Trump or had different
speeches beforehand.
And you gave about a four minute speech there.
I want to hear what that was about and what was your heart behind that message.
But I also want to ask you a question with your with your interaction and understanding
of President Trump and what you've heard about his faith.
Do you believe that he is a Christian?
So speaking to the first issue, as far as what I spoke about, you know, on my heart,
there are a number of things and, you know, from life to gender indoctrination of our
children, that being tied to federal funds, depriving resources of schools and organizations
from being below function without hitting a certain level of approval on these agendas.
Very concerning.
It's very concerning.
Life is concerning.
At the bedrock of those concerns is freedom of speech.
If we lose freedom of speech, we lose all of these issues.
I mean, if if you are not able to freely speak, how can you contend for the lives of the unborn?
How can you contend for your children?
And so that was on my mind very much.
And it's also been something that I've been a part of, you know, experiencing personally.
There's no question that it has shaped how I approach my city and how I approach the
work of ministry that we do.
And you know, I feel like, John, that there there's been several decades now of us just
really giving this very sort of palliative gospel.
You know, my my dad died of cancer after a year and a half cancer battle.
The doctor said, well, this can't be cured.
We will be giving you palliative treatment.
It's basically saying, we'll lay you down comfortably to die so you won't experience
pain.
It's very soft gospel.
And the result may have been that we got some crowds, wasn't necessarily a larger church,
but we failed to disciple an entire generation or two.
And so my my real prayer for the American church right now is that we will stand and
speak on the big moral and biblical issues that intersect with politics.
That was my that was what I said.
I said that David did not expect to get involved in politics when he brought food to the frontlines,
but he got involved in his national affairs.
And he showed that when we step forward, the giant will, in his case, will fall back.
But when we'll step forward, the enemy will step back.
And we have to stand and we have to speak for free speech, freedom of religion.
We have to speak for life and against the gender indoctrination of the entire generation.
And we've got to stand as Christian pastors.
And if we will together stand, then the enemy will fall back.
That's what was on my heart.
And so it was a wonderful thing to share that I've traveled in every single battleground
state to communicate that message.
Now, when it comes to President Trump's faith, I know this is that he's very much interested
in the freedoms of the American church and to people of all faith.
It's very important.
It's very important for Christians and all faiths to stand together that we have that
freedom.
And so that's on his mind.
One of the things that he shared was that he was going to work against anti-Christian
bias in our country.
And it's there.
It is there.
You see it happening in school choice.
You see it happening in a number of issues.
Of course, Kelly Shackelford was there and he talked about some of the landmark.
There were like four landmark legal decisions that went to came out of the Supreme Court.
That was one of them that you could not discriminate against Christian parents who wanted to put
their kids in Christian schools using vouchers from states and that sort of thing.
So there was that.
And he also mentioned that if he is elected, he would be opening a faith office in the
White House that reports directly to him and that we would very much be right down in the
middle of that.
You know, I could characterize those conversations a little bit more.
That was both on the platform is also backstage when he was meeting with probably about 25
pastors or so.
So what would that faith office look like in your estimation?
What kind of things did he say behind those closed doors?
Well, in the president Trump's first term, the National Faith Advisory Board, people
like that, people of faith.
Obviously, Paula White has been right down in the middle of that is her relationship
with President Trump has, you know, been ongoing now for quite some time.
And so that that first Trump administration brought through over 10,000 pastors to the
White House.
So, you know, it'd be a continuation of that.
But it would be someone that reports directly to the president to hear the thoughts and
the concerns, the initiatives of people of faith.
And there are many, many, many.
It's the largest voting group in America.
It's the largest voting group.
And so many of us are in one way or the other under pressure from our government.
I think this is the thing.
One overarching theme that was getting into these conversations is that many pastors don't
want to get involved in politics.
However, whether or not we want to get into involved in politics, politics will get involved
in us and it will happen in the way of, you know, laws, policy, even zoning matters.
So all of that would be on the agenda in the White House.
Yes.
So is what was faith?
Yes.
Did you want to talk about his faith?
Yeah.
So I know he talked about his Sunday school.
He talked about his mother's faith.
You see some glimpses here and there, but obviously not using the vernacular that we
as believers would prefer, but tell me about your understanding of that.
Yeah.
I mean, some of that, some of that vernacular is there, you know, he's some of it is familiar
to to my background and then some of it is not, you know, some of it is, you know, he's
also from New York.
I was born in North Carolina.
I grew up in Miami.
I have the distinct privilege of pastoring the most incredible church in Mobile, Alabama.
We have campuses across the Gulf Coast.
And you know, the language in all of those places is different.
You know, in Miami, rather than saying, are you Catholic or Protestant?
People would people would say Latinos would say, are you Catholic or Christian?
But you know, so that language is different.
Well, he's a New Yorker.
He's a he's a contractor.
He's a builder.
He's a developer.
And so, you know, that that shapes that.
And so that's very much there in his conversation.
He talks about religion.
He talks about Christianity.
He talks about faith and and he uses it in Trump, ask language, you know, and he also
would describe struggles that he has.
You know, of course, he talks about how Franklin Graham kind of gave him a hard time about
his language.
Yeah, it's good.
It gets better every time he says it.
Actually, you know, this is like a little embellishments here and there and is a great
storyteller.
You know, it's what makes him very effective in so many ways.
But here's what I believe that he is very much conscious, conscious of faith, conscious
of the Lord.
He openly declares that Jesus is king and Jesus is welcome in his rallies and in his
administration.
There's no question about that.
There's no question that the assassination attempt.
It was like a marked difference.
You know, I was at the RNC at the convention in Milwaukee.
I was sitting about three rows behind President Trump.
That was a different Donald Trump that I saw.
I mean, not not on a fundamental level.
I mean, he was still who he was.
But his temperament, it was all different.
He's very calm.
He's affable.
He's, you know, personally, he's very easy to engage with, easy to talk to.
And that temperature, I'm not saying it's down.
I mean, I don't think there's any I think it's terrible thought that in the church,
there's some idea that Christian have to be Christian men have to be lesser men, less
masculine.
No, I mean, the strong he's a strong figure.
But there is a real tenderness that President Trump.
I'll tell you a story really quickly.
Yes, I was in I was in Bedminster the night that he was arrested in D.C. and we met with
him right after after that event.
And before he walked in, he had stopped just outside the doorway.
There's no door.
And I'm sitting on the corner of the table, kind of where I was in the pictures backstage.
Backstage I was sitting next to Eric Metaxas, Ralph Reed and then Mark and Grace Driscoll.
We were all kind of right there in that corner.
And so I was at the corner like that right by the door.
And President Trump walked up and he stood and had a conversation for like five minutes
with one of the servers there at Bedminster and was asking this very quietly how their
family was and how the woman's children were.
If she was enjoying working, is everything going well?
He was very much interested in her person.
Because you just get to see a different picture than what's happening on on that stage.
And it is very, very human.
And it's it's amiable really draws you and he does a great job of that.
Yeah.
Now, you sent me a picture and I'm putting it up on the screen here.
But you're talking directly to the president there.
Can you tell us what you said and maybe what he said, if that's OK?
Well, I mean, there was some there was something there was.
There was a conversation that took place on that stage.
I was a part of the conversation.
It was with the president.
It was about spirituality.
It was about next steps.
It was awesome.
Yeah, it was.
It was wonderful.
There was some of that.
I don't see.
I feel like it would be right for me, for me necessarily to necessarily to disclose
it.
But, you know, somebody else can do that.
Sure.
But it was it was really wonderful.
It was wonderful.
And I know that the men and women on that stage are praying for him.
And, you know, as far as that goes, you know, I'm praying for Kamala Harris.
You know, I had the privilege of praying for President Trump the night before his debate
with President Joe Biden.
And you know, I prayed for President Biden that night as well with the you know, in that
in that moment.
And you know, those invitations also, when we have meetings like this, there there were
invitations sent out to the other candidates as well.
And, you know, that's not just something that National Faith Advisory Board would do.
But that's something that all Christians should do where Paul instructs us to pray for our
leaders.
And that's that's not just a thing we should do.
This is instruction from the scriptures.
And it's a real privilege.
I will say in America, our leaders are also us because our government, we don't have a
king and our constitution lays out that our leadership is we the people.
And so while I pray for President Trump and I pray for Joe Biden, President Biden, I also
pray for the American people.
And I especially pray for Christians who are our leaders, as well citizens who are leaders,
that we would all do our jobs and we would go vote.
It would be a terrible dereliction of duty if we didn't show up and vote.
Some of the greatest the greatest decision that we'll make is who's going to lead our
country when it comes to politics and our government.
So yeah, that was that was an enjoyable time.
And I'm especially appreciative for the President Trump would consistently consistently take
so much time with the church, with evangelical pastors and to come and be in moments like
that, both speaking and being spoken to and having conversation.
Pastor Travis, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule.
I know you you literally just landed and you're now in Washington, D.C. to do something at
the Museum of the Bible.
And that's really cool.
We can maybe talk about that at another time.
But thank you so much for taking the time to share with us from this kind of is behind
the scenes inside look into President Donald Trump's faith from your perspective there
and for giving us some pointers on how we can be praying as well.
Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Thank you, John.
I appreciate it.