Our loss on Referendum 71 last week was made certain by three failures on our part:

We failed in our message.

We failed in our methods.

We failed in our money.

Furthermore, I still have to wonder if God was in the effort.

Our message was mostly created for and directed at those already convinced. We are church-based people. The message of the campaign was mostly aimed at church people. Standing for righteousness makes sense to church people but has the opposite effect on non-church people. To outsiders the message sounds a lot more like the less attractive self-righteousness.

Mentally, the campaign never turned the corner and redirected the emphasis to those needing to be convinced. The method was to work through churches. Brochures were distributed to churches. Energy was spent in churches. Blogs were directed to the faithful. This is not the Bible Belt. Any voting strategy that has as its primary method to reach church people is bound to fail from the start.

Our side was outspent many times over. That imbalance represents our failure in money. In more than 25 years of involvement in these kinds of efforts, we have never had the money to run effective campaigns on the conservative Christian side of things. It seems like our people will give to churches but are very reluctant to give to campaigns like this.

Since the failure, I have noticed that those who ran the campaign have tried to spin it that we had success in that we now have 200,000 people energized to work in behalf of conservative Christian causes. Personally, I wonder why those 200,000 didn’t get financially behind the campaign we just finished. That mighty army gave about sixty cents per person to the campaign. How do you win when those most committed give an average of sixty cents?

Because of the lack of strategic planning on our side of the R-71 campaign, I called our side a “leaderless army.” Gary Randall objected to that. Maybe he was right. When you consider how little money was put into this effort by Randall’s Faith and Freedom Political Action Committee, maybe it should have been an armyless leader.

Maybe more important than anything else is the question of whether or not God was in this effort.

A great deal of effort went into claiming God’s support. From the beginning, Randall claimed divine blessing and approval. He said, “I am certain God is in control” and “I have an abiding sense that God is leading in all things.”

With respect to the referendum itself, Randall said, “It is a miracle. And it is clear how God performed it.” “With God’s help” the referendum made the ballot. “God helped us.” Please pardon me for asking the obvious, did God change his mind or was the claim of divine blessing a bit overstated?

For the record, even though I did not support the signature gathering, once it was on the ballot I gave it my best effort. I do try to note that the efforts are mine and not necessarily identical to the will of God.

If a claim of miracles and divine approval is made, we need to take that seriously. It just seems like the “miracle” that Randall claimed fell a bit short of its biblical counterparts.

Was the referendum an effort blessed by God? Did the Kingdom of God advance because of the effort? I have not heard of people giving their lives to Jesus because of the referendum. I did hear from a non-Christian friend commenting about one of his friends. He wrote, “I noticed the anger building in him, and tried to soften his approach, but he’s fed up. Referendum 71 has turned him against Christians.” Neither is a Christian.

We paid a price for the referendum. It was not just a question of the price we would pay if we didn’t run the referendum. We have to consider the price of doing it as well.

We clearly lost ground with some. Did we gain offsetting ground with others? I don’t know. I do know we all worked hard for what we hoped was the will of God. We did it mostly for the right reasons.

In our best motives, we might have done it for God’s glory. Unfortunately, it appears we have fallen short of the glory of God.

The Rev. Joseph B. Fuiten is the senior pastor of Cedar Park Church in Bothell and he is the former president of Positive Christian Agenda. Currently, Fuiten serves on the Board of Directors for the Family Policy Institute of Washington.