ORLANDO, Fla. — At most churches, worshippers arrive with money for the offering plate. Here at Northland Church, just outside Orlando, parishioners come with obsolete computers and printers, old stereos and other hard-to-recycle items.

The evangelical megachurch has made a commitment to the environment — what members here call “creation care.” It’s part of a wide-ranging social agenda championed by Northland senior pastor Joel Hunter. Hunter says the agenda signals a maturing of the evangelical movement.

“We like to call it `growing up,'” Hunter told the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”

“I think especially in the political realm, we went through a phase more recently when we were known for what we were against rather than what we were for. We were pretty narrow in what we were paying attention to. That wasn’t true in Jesus’ time, because Jesus was very broad in what he did,” Hunter said.

Like most evangelicals, Hunter opposes abortion and gay marriage. But his agenda also includes the environment, poverty, torture, peace and interfaith dialogue.

A self-described “pro-life registered Republican,” his views captured the attention of President Barack Obama. Hunter was part of a group of religious leaders who prayed privately with Obama during the campaign. He’s now a member of Obama’s advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Hunter believes evangelicals have a spiritual obligation to have a positive influence wherever God places them — even if that may be among Democrats.

“I hope that along the way I could be of encouragement in the president’s spiritual life because that’s what a pastor does, that’s what we care about,” Hunter said.

Despite his national visibility, Hunter makes it clear that his base of operation is Northland. The nondenominational church was started by 11 people in 1972. Hunter, who was a United Methodist pastor, came to the congregation in 1985. Today, about 12,000 people attend the church every week. Northland calls itself “a Church Distributed.”

“We emphasize what goes on outside the building rather than what goes on inside the building, and we want to equip people for living great lives where they are,” he said.

The Internet helps with that distribution. Thousands of people around the world participate in the worship services through an innovative online Webcast.

“So when we built this building,” Hunter said, “we built it as a communications device and the selling point to the congregation was, `Look, you are not building a building that just seat 3,000 people at time. We can seat 3 million people at a time if we have enough broadband, and we have enough people who can gather around a computer screen.'”

As the church grew, so did Hunter’s vision of having an impact on the wider culture. In July, 2006, he was chosen to lead the Christian Coalition of America, the political advocacy group founded by broadcaster Pat Robertson. But Hunter withdrew even before he took office when it became clear that coalition members were uncomfortable with his broad issue agenda.

Mark Pinsky, a former religion reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, said even though Hunter was forced out before taking office, “he really won, because the issues on which he lost his job were the right issues as far as the coming evangelical movement is concerned.”

Indeed, in many ways, Hunter has become a national voice for evangelicals seeking a new style of leadership.

“There is a whole new generation of young evangelicals coming up that really don’t care about any of the labels,” Hunter said. “`They could care less, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — they don’t care. What they care about is, can we change the world for the better.”

Hunter still gets push-back from evangelical traditionalists, and received some of his strongest negative reactions when he offered a closing prayer at last summer’s Democratic National Convention. When he got to the end, he stopped and told the crowd “to end this prayer, your prayer, the way you usually would end prayer.”

Hunter last said he did not want to “hijack” the prayer for Christians.

“To make somebody, or to cow somebody to silence, as you pray in Jesus’ name … is really a sacrilege,” he said, “because only Christians can pray in Jesus’ name.”

There are some who worry that Hunter’s relationship with Obama and his position on the advisory council could hinder the pastor’s ability to speak truth to power. Hunter doesn’t buy the criticisms.

“The president has made it very clear — and this is another thing I like about him is — he is not looking for `yes’ people here,” Hunter said. “He’s looking for people on this council that will have a prophetic voice and all of us made the agreement that we would be on the council (only if) we could be blunt honest.”

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At the same time, he knows power can be seductive, but says he’s not just answering to the president. “On judgment day when I stand before God, I’m going to have to answer to what I’ve said.”

And for Hunter, it comes down to a simple calculus.

“I think what I do is not so different than anybody else except maybe in different circles,” Hunter said, “but I just live my life as best I can and I just pray that I’ll do God some good.”

Eds: A version of this story first appeared on the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.” Please use the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly byline.

A file photo of Hunter is available via https://religionnews.com