Calling someone a psycho for simply getting in shape and not telling the world about it because he missed out on all the content he could have shared is clearly ironic and meant for comedic effect.

This isn’t mocking getting in shape. Quite the opposite.

For most of history, when men got in shape, they didn’t have a public platform in their pocket to tell the world about it. They did it because it was good. They did it for their family. They did it for the Lord. No doubt they shared their progress with the bros. But they didn’t broadcast it to an indiscriminate audience of strangers.

Now, if you’re a coach or trainer using your own results as advertising, that makes perfect sense. But if you’re posting primarily to inspire strangers or to be admired by them, I’m still going to question it. I think it’s strange. It runs against both history and what has generally been normal male behavior.

What’s being mocked here is our overly performative culture. We’ve become accustomed to treating nearly every personal accomplishment as content for public consumption. It’s immodest. It lacks restraint. And I don’t think it’s healthy.

Someone asked who I had in mind when I wrote this post. It was me. I had myself in mind, and my tendency to overshare, which I’ve been disciplining. I’ve made major strides on some serious health issues, including my weight. I’m sharing some of that with close friends and family. Some of it. Not with you. Once upon a time, I would have.

Someone else suggested the post was “copium.” I think the idea behind that is that I’m mocking people who do this because I don’t have the results they do. Nah. As I said, what I’m mocking is the sharing of everything. I’m mocking me. I’m mocking us. I’m happy for their results.

Is it wrong to share stuff like that? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s going to depend on so many things. But I think it’s good to make fun of our culture (and ourselves) as we figure this stuff out.

Now, before I say what I mean by that, some of you are already thinking, “Yeah, but what about men? Isn’t that one of men’s biggest problems too?” Of course it is. I just said there are many problems.

But another problem is that many of you can’t read what’s right in front of you without immediately thinking about the opposite. You’ve been trained to read antithetically. Instead of taking the point being made, you immediately think about how it isn’t universally true or how it applies to someone else, and you miss the point entirely.

When it comes to men and women, our culture assumes you can never talk about one without immediately talking about the other. If you praise men, you have to praise women. If you criticize women, you have to criticize men. Everything has to be perfectly balanced. It’s one of the ways our age has made honest conversations unnecessarily difficult.

Back to the point.

Modern culture has told women they can do anything a man can do, and probably do it better. It has told them they can have it all. They can be a mother, a lawyer, an astronaut, bake sourdough, keep a spotless house, and become the next Allie Beth Stuckey.

At first glance, that sounds like the culture is giving women unlimited agency. But there’s a twist. While women are supposedly capable of everything, they’re also told they’re rarely responsible for anything. If they fail, it’s because the “patriarchal system” is rigged. If they’re anxious, it’s because their husband doesn’t love them like Christ enough, not because they refuse to take their worries to God. Then there’s trauma culture, which labels nearly everything as trauma and then uses that label to excuse sinful reactions and behavior.

So women are told they’re stronger, smarter, and more capable than ever, yet they’re also taught that their failures and sins are almost always someone else’s fault. That combination produces people who are proud and fragile at the same time. They’ve been raised in a culture that constantly flatters them, so correction feels like an attack.

That’s what I mean by women losing agency.

Women need to be told they are responsible before God for the outcomes of their lives. They are responsible for their sinful attitudes and actions. Outside circumstances affect everyone, but they do not remove personal responsibility. Women must own their sin, repent of it, and accept the consequences that often come with it.

That isn’t misogyny. It’s love. It’s helping women recover adulthood from a culture that constantly encourages them to remain children.

I am very much in favor of strong women. But by strength, I mean strength of character. Nothing keeps a person weaker than refusing to take responsibility for their own sin, and nothing makes a person stronger than humility, the ability to see yourself truthfully before God.

That kind of humility produces remarkable women. Women who are gracious. Women who walk through life with poise. Women who are not easily offended because they are far more concerned with their own souls than protecting their pride.

Any pastor or ministry that undermines a woman’s agency is a people-pleasing, woman-fearing, God-dishonoring ministry. They do not have the courage to love women enough to tell them the truth. More often than not, they are married to women who think this way themselves. Instead of helping them grow in grace, they flatter them, excuse them, and surrender to their weakness and sin.

Another part of this, and this is where the men come in, is that many men are married to women who have bought into these modern lies. They are proud and very difficult to correct. The husbands have either bought into the same lies themselves or have simply surrendered to the fact that their wives won’t receive correction.

These are the “happy wife, happy life” kinds of men. More than anything, they just want to keep the peace. They want their wife to be happy regardless of her spiritual condition so they can go about their lives without conflict.

So when something in the culture or the church upsets their wife, they get upset too, not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve disturbed the little bit of peace they’ve managed to carve out in their marriage.

That’s when the names start. You’re a misogynist. You’re a woman-hater. You’re unloving. They’ll say whatever they need to say because they have to reassure their wife that they don’t agree with the man calling her to repentance. They need her to know she’s basically fine, or at least that you’re overstating the case. The goal is simple: get things back to normal.

Many of these men are pastors.

On the other side are men who have become embittered. They’ve watched this for years, they’re tired of it, and now they’re overcompensating. They speak without patience, but patience is exactly what’s needed. When an entire sex has been catechized by a lie for decades, sanctification takes time.

So you’ve got flattering, enabling husbands on one side and embittered men on the other. Neither helps.

It’s our mess. God has given it to us, and it’s our responsibility to deal with it. So we must.

Much of that inheritance has been lost. Churches have grown weak, divided, or theologically adrift, while entire communities have become increasingly secular and pagan.

It is time to reverse that decline. It is time to make missions local again.

Ohio Valley Mission exists to plant new churches, strengthen faithful ones, and recover historic Protestant Christianity one community at a time.

Our inaugural meeting will be held on October 10, 2026, at the new East River Church building in Batavia, Ohio. The meeting will run from 9:00 a.m. to approximately 1:00 p.m., with lunch provided.

The meeting will include a devotional from the moderator, reports from member churches and the Steering Committee, and open discussion about planting new works and receiving new member churches.

Until formal bylaws are adopted, Ohio Valley Mission is being led by a Steering Committee consisting of Michael Foster of East River Church, Moderator; John Weis of East River Church, Clerk; B.J. Newman of Little Miami Fellowship; and Zach Hill of Silver City Church. We intend to add three more members to the committee.

Church leaders who are interested in Ohio Valley Mission or would like to attend the inaugural meeting may contact us at michael.foster@eastriverchurch.org. Our website will be online soon with additional information and registration.

I’ve been hesitant to publish the first because I don’t want to come across as passive-aggressive. There’s always someone who has just left your church, and in many cases, you don’t want them to feel singled out.

The second article almost became my talk at the Evergreen Summit. As a matter of fact, a good bit of the talk I gave came from a half-finished draft of that article.

One thing that connects these two articles is that they deal with an old problem that took on a particular shape during the COVID era.

Our church attracted a lot of people who were simply looking for a place that was open without restrictions and willing to speak with clarity about what was happening in the culture. Many of their churches had shut down or had become quite authoritarian. So people left churches they had been part of for a long time to join our church, which had just come into existence.

We always did our best to caution them against leaving without making a real effort to work things out with their elders. I’m happy to say that, on more than one occasion, this led to people staying at their churches, which eventually became more reasonable.

There’s also a pragmatic reason for taking this approach as a church planter or pastor. People tend to leave your church the same way they came to your church. You’re doing your future self a favor.

People often just up and leave with very little conversation. Usually, the conversation is a single phone call or a long, detailed email. Sometimes it’s a list of complaints. More often, it’s an email explaining how they’ve changed, how thankful they are for you, and how God has called them somewhere else.

Frankly, the complaint-filled emails are easier because the conflict is right on the surface. The “it’s not you, it’s me” emails are more difficult because they’re often trying to sidestep a conflict that is actually there. It may be a conflict worth leaving a church over, but you still have to have that conversation and work through it.

It is amazing to me how many people seem to think that God calls them to make major spiritual decisions without seriously consulting their pastors. That reveals a very immature doctrine of the church because the importance of pastors is something every form of church government agrees on.

Besides dislodging people from churches and institutions they had long been part of, the COVID era also brought an explosion of podcasting and YouTube streaming. As local pastors failed people, or at least appeared to in some cases, many Christians turned to social media for guidance.

It is incredible to me how much content people consume. Hours and hours of streams and podcasts reshaped people’s entire way of thinking and undid what years of discipleship had built into them.

Now, in some cases, this was a good thing. I’ve been glad to see the poison of feminism and egalitarianism reversed in many individuals. I’ve been talking about these things for more than two decades. Ideas that once seemed to live out on the fringes have entered the mainstream.

But many of the new voices weren’t anchored in historic biblical theology. They also carried a deep current of anger and frustration. For some people, those years of online discipleship took a turn for the worse.

The people caught up in this usually experience it as a spiritual awakening. They had been asleep for so long. Then, by consuming all this content, the dots connected and they finally felt alive. At last, they saw things as they really are. Maybe they became Roman Catholic. Maybe they became an annoying cage-stage Calvinist. Maybe all they wanted to talk about was marriage courts and the Nineteenth Amendment. Whatever the issue, they became supercharged by a handful of ideas and allowed themselves to be almost entirely reassembled.

Usually they did all this without involving their pastors, at least until the very end.

I can already hear people defending themselves as they read this. “Yeah, but churches are so bad today.” “Pastors are so bad today.” “There aren’t any good men anywhere.” “Look how many people capitulated to feminism.” “Look how many capitulated to government overreach.”

True enough. But the abuse of something isn’t permission to reject it. Much of that is nothing more than a justification for radical individualism.

Now this has taken on another form with the introduction of AI into everyday life.

I think chatbots would be much more helpful if they were bullies. Instead, they’re flatterers. They tell you your thoughts are brilliant. They reinforce your instincts. They rarely tell you that you’re the problem.

So now, instead of emailing their pastor or asking for a meeting, people are having long conversations with ChatGPT.

In both cases, whether it’s social media or ChatGPT, they’re entering into a parasocial relationship. One is with someone who doesn’t know them and might strongly disagree with the decisions they’re making if he actually did know them. The other isn’t even a person.

So here we are, a few years out from the COVID era, dealing with the aftermath of people who no longer trust institutions but do trust YouTubers and chatbots they have carefully curated to tell them what they ultimately want to hear.

Recovering from this will require a revival of robust ecclesiology that begins with the necessity of the local church and its pastors*.

And if you start teaching that, people will get angry. They’ll hand you a long list of failures to justify their individualism.

That’s simply the price of being faithful. You’ll have to bear it.

As kind of a P.S.

*Now, of course, there is much more to be said. Part of that teaching is a return to shepherding, to actually caring for the souls of the people in your church and making yourself available to them.

Even that will be a challenge because shepherding has been reinterpreted through a therapeutic lens and the idea that everyone should have an almost BFF sort of relationship with their pastor. I don’t think that’s true. It’s not bad, but I don’t think it’s required.

Nonetheless, I learned growing up on a farm that if you want something to trust you, you feed it and spend time with it. The shepherd must live among the sheep.

More on that maybe tomorrow.

Painting: Frederick George Cotman

My wife and I have lost two children, one daughter to a very late-term stillbirth and one son to miscarriage at about fourteen weeks. Both losses were incredibly painful, but in different ways.

Though a person is a person from the moment of conception, the experience of grief often corresponds to how much of that child’s potential has already been realized in the minds and lives of the parents. The more you have seen, anticipated, and experienced of that child, the more there is to mourn when that future is suddenly taken away. In other words, you grieve a stillbirth differently than you grieve a miscarriage, just as you grieve the death of a three-year-old differently than a stillbirth. In every case, a human life has been lost, and that alone is reason enough to weep and cry out to your God. There is no shame in acknowledging that the experience of grief is not identical in every circumstance.

This difference in grieving can be especially pronounced for fathers, particularly in the case of miscarriage. Unlike the mother, he did not have the same physical relationship with the child. The baby was inside her. Her body was changing day by day to become a home where God was knitting together a human person. For the father, much of the relationship is still anticipatory. It is real, but it is also more abstract.

As a result, his grief may not be as intense as his wife’s, and that can create its own set of temptations. He may feel guilty that he is not grieving as deeply. Or, if he is not careful, he may fail to appreciate just how profound his wife’s loss really is. She is not only mourning the death of her child but also enduring the physical and hormonal realities that accompany miscarriage. A wise husband will not compare griefs or try to measure them against each other. He will simply recognize that his wife is carrying a heavier burden in this moment and seek to bear it with her.

Remember, with each tragedy, you have to decide whether it will pull you together as a couple or pull you apart.

If you are the wife, show your husband compassion. He has lost a son or daughter too, but not in a way that usually allows him to experience the grief as intensely as you do. If you are the husband, show your wife compassion. She is bearing the brunt of this pain because of the physical nearness of the relationship and the way that relationship was already being realized inside herself. Live with one another in understanding.

One thing that can be surprisingly helpful, particularly for the mother, is seeing the child, even in his or her smallest form. It helps make concrete what already exists in your heart. This was real. There was a person inside me. I am right to be sad. I am right to grieve. Many men will instinctively shy away from this because they find it disturbing. Even so, I would encourage you to do it if you are able. It will help you understand what your wife is carrying and remind you that this wasn’t merely the loss of a pregnancy. It was the loss of your child.

I would also encourage you to bury your child. It does not have to be an elaborate funeral. When we buried our son Pascal, only our immediate family was present. I led a brief graveside liturgy. We each threw a little dirt on his casket, buried him, and planted something over his grave. I am very glad we did. He is a real person, and he continues to exist forever.

If you publicly announced the pregnancy, I think it is usually best to publicly announce the loss as well. It spares you the need to relive the tragedy through dozens of awkward conversations. Even if you never announced the pregnancy, you should still tell a few close friends and your pastors. They need to know what you are carrying so they can pray for you, care for you, and watch for signs that your grief is becoming something more dangerous, such as deep depression.

One of the most common questions people ask is, “Why did this happen?” At one level, the answer is simple. Our first parents rebelled against God, and through sin death entered the world. Every miscarriage, every stillbirth, and every funeral traces back to that awful reality. Personally, I have not found it helpful to spend much time trying to uncover God’s secret purposes in a particular loss. Those answers are rarely available to us, and they will not bring your child back. Better to fix your eyes on the hope of the resurrection, when Christ will finally put death itself to death.

There will also be a season of physical healing. That usually means abstaining from sexual intimacy for a time. Take the time your wife needs to recover, but do not unnecessarily prolong that season. The marriage bed is one of God’s good gifts for comforting husband and wife. At the same time, remember that fertility often returns quickly after a miscarriage. While you should not remain trapped in grief, I would also caution against rushing immediately into trying for another baby before you have had time to process what has happened.

For many women, one of the hardest parts of grieving is watching other women carry healthy pregnancies or hold newborn babies. It can be difficult not to resent those who have what you were so eagerly anticipating. That temptation must be faced honestly. You have suffered a genuine loss. You are right to grieve. But you must also fight to rejoice with those who rejoice. If bitterness is left unchecked, one tragedy can spread into a lifetime of resentment.

In my experience, the pain never completely disappears. It changes. The sharpness fades, and the waves of grief come less often, assuming you grieve well. Grieving well means calling things what they are and interpreting them through the lens of Scripture. You lost a child. That child was a real person, made in the image of God, with an eternal soul. Death claimed your child because death entered the world through sin. But Christ has conquered death. There is a resurrection coming when all who belong to Him will be raised and this broken world will finally be made new.

I believe I will see my children again. Why I believe that is a discussion for another time. But that hope has changed the way I think about both miscarriage and stillbirth. As painful as they are, they become another reminder that this world, as good as it can sometimes be, is not our home. They create another bond with heaven and another reason to long for the day when Christ wipes away every tear and death is no more.

1. Marry for demonstrated potential. Anyone can imagine who a person might become. Marry someone whose character and trajectory you can already see. Catch them on the way up.

2. Marry as young as is reasonable. There is something good about growing up together. You develop your tastes, habits, traditions, and way of life as a team rather than trying to merge two established lives later. You do not need to have everything figured out before you get married. Much of life is better figured out together.

3. Children are infinitely better than pets, so do not put them off. A pet is not a substitute for a child, no matter how much modern people pretend otherwise. Your childbearing years are shorter than they seem, and the years with your children at home go even faster. Start having them sooner rather than later.

4. Talk frankly about sex. Do not expect your spouse to read your mind or leave important desires unspoken for years. Talk honestly about expectations, frustrations, frequency, and enjoyment. Then have as much sex as the two of you reasonably can.

5. Argue from the same side. In the middle of a disagreement, stop and remind each other, “I love you. We are on the same side. We are going to work this out.” Your spouse is not the enemy, and beating them in an argument gains you nothing. The goal is to solve the problem without damaging the marriage.

6. Pray together every day. Shared prayer should be a normal part of married life rather than something you save for a crisis. Talk about what you are reading in Scripture and what the Lord is teaching you. Your spiritual lives should not develop on two separate tracks.

7. Own your sins and failures. When you are wrong, say, “I was wrong. There is no excuse. Please forgive me.” Do not qualify it, explain it away, or immediately bring up what the other person did. Clean repentance does a great deal of good in a marriage.

8. Have a budget and regular conversations about money. Most financial fights are made worse by secrecy and surprises. Decide together what you are doing with your money, write it down, and revisit it regularly. You should both know where the money is going.

9. Make plans and follow through. Make three- or five-year plans and break them down into one-year goals. Decide where you want to live, what you want to accomplish, what you want to save, and what kind of family culture you are trying to build. Then quit talking about it and do the work.

10. Go to church every Sunday. Make Lord’s Day worship a settled part of your household. Do not attend only when the weather is good, the children are behaving, and nothing else sounds more enjoyable. Go when you are tired. Go when you are traveling. Go every Sunday unless you are providentially hindered.

11. Do not have close, private friendships with the opposite sex. Your closest friendships should be with people of your own sex or friendships you share as a couple. Friends of the marriage are a blessing. Private emotional intimacy with another man or woman is foolish and unnecessary. You are not above temptation, and neither is your spouse.

12. Do not let the children divide you. Children quickly learn how to play one parent against the other. Do not permit it. Even when you privately think your spouse handled something poorly, support one another in front of the children and work out the disagreement behind closed doors.

13. Wives, do not nag. Husbands, follow through. These two problems often feed each other. A wife keeps reminding her husband because he does not do what he said, and the husband grows resentful because she keeps reminding him. Wives should back off the constant correction, and husbands should become men whose word can be trusted.

14. Once something is forgiven, leave it buried. Forgiveness means you no longer keep the offense loaded and ready to fire during the next argument. You may need to work through consequences or rebuild trust, but you do not get to drag an old sin back into court after you have said it was forgiven.

15. Balance each other in raising the children. Mothers often need to be warned against coddling their children into weakness. Fathers often need to be warned against provoking them into bitterness. A good husband and wife correct one another and pull each other back from their natural excesses.

16. Keep some margin in your life. Do not schedule every hour, spend every dollar, and use every ounce of energy. A family with no margin is always one flat tire, sick child, or unexpected bill away from a crisis. Leave enough room to serve others and absorb problems without living on the edge of exhaustion.

17. Willingness matters more than blame. Many problems are solved faster when both people stop building a case and start showing a willingness to help. You may eventually need to determine who was responsible, but proving that the whole mess was your spouse’s fault does not repair anything. A willing spirit will carry a marriage a long way.

18. Divorce is almost always worse. A hard marriage is painful, but divorce usually creates several new forms of pain while solving fewer problems than people imagine. It affects your children, your finances, your friendships, your future, and often your faith. Fight for your marriage every day rather than fantasizing about how easy life would be without it.

19. Live well within your means. Some of your friends will have nicer houses, newer vehicles, and better vacations. Some received help from their families. Some are unusually disciplined and successful. Some are financing a life they cannot afford. Do not compete with any of them. Spend what is yours and enjoy the freedom of living honestly.

20. Build shared habits and interests. Run together, garden, lift weights, work puzzles, travel, read books, or build something. Find pursuits beyond television and children that belong to the two of you. The children will eventually leave, and you do not want to discover that you have become two strangers sitting in the same house.

21. Encourage one another’s same-sex friendships. One of the kindest things you can do is push your spouse toward close and godly friends of the same sex. Your wife needs good women around her, and you need good men around you. Those friendships strengthen each of you, and two stronger people generally make a stronger marriage.

22. Play the long game. Marriages have seasons, and some of those seasons are harder than others. Things may get worse before they get better. Do not treat a low point as though it tells the entire story of your marriage. Stay faithful long enough to see what years of repentance, patience, and love can build.

23. Enjoy the life you have together. The years move far faster than you think they will. The loud house will grow quiet, the children will become adults, and your strength will fade. Many of the things that seem urgent now will prove unimportant. Pay attention, laugh often, and enjoy one another while the Lord gives you the time.

So be it.

If you want external discipline, accountability, and a body of like-minded churches laboring together, you’re going to have to stop caring about those criticisms.

The irony is that many of us are not fleeing discipline. Quite the opposite. We are fleeing the lack of discipline. We are fleeing institutions that refuse to deal with obvious biblical compromise. They won’t speak clearly on the issues of the day. Their courts often function more like the American tax code. If you have the right connections, enough money, or enough institutional pull, there always seems to be another loophole.

Many of us would love to belong to institutions with deep historical roots. Not just fifty years of history. Centuries. But participation in many of those existing institutions now requires compromises we simply cannot make. It often means peaceful coexistence with apostasy, female preachers, doctrinal ambiguity, or institutional priorities that value credibility with those who do not fear God more than faithfulness before God.

Those are not options for us.

There are faithful men in those bodies. Some have found little nooks and crannies where they can labor according to their confession and conscience. God bless them. I hope they prosper and reform those bodies. But for those of us who are not in that position, and who also have no desire to remain permanently independent, we’re simply going to have to build.

One of the strangest realities of our day is that many denominational pastors can easily coexist and even work with independent churches, even if they remain isolated forever. But the moment those same churches begin to associate, cooperate, and build something larger together, suddenly the cries of “schism” fill the air.

That only makes sense if the concern isn’t actually unity. It’s competition. Or perhaps it’s the fear of competition. I’ll let others sort that out.

As for all the handwringing over the accusations of starting another denomination or being a pope, I’ll simply borrow the words of Phil Collins.

“I don’t care anymore.”

Some of us are no longer willing to risk our churches, our people, and our ministries by placing them under courts that might defrock faithful men over mean tweets while refusing to deal with genuine corruption. We’re tired of endless committee meetings debating questions that were settled centuries ago while churches decline and wolves prosper.

We want to get back to shepherding.

We want to revitalize dying churches.

We want to plant new churches.

We want to raise up elders.

We want to train pastors.

We want to preach Christ.

Some people seem content to spend their lives standing on the sidelines wearing referee shirts and criticizing everyone else who’s actually playing the game. We’d rather take the field. If that means playing a little street ball while we build something healthier, so be it.

My prayer is that independent churches would stop being independent. I hope they increasingly join together in associations, fellowships, missions, or whatever name best fits their purpose. That is a move toward greater unity. It is a move toward greater order. Not greater division.

The older denominations should also recognize something. Membership in them may still confer legitimacy with older generations and in a few demographics. But many younger pastors and congregants see affiliation with them as a question mark, not a badge of honor. Institutional credibility is not inherited forever. It is sustained by faithfully preaching the Word, rightly administering the sacraments, and consistently practicing biblical church discipline.

When those things disappear, credibility disappears with them.

So onward and upward. Toward greater unity. Toward greater accountability. Toward greater order. Towards more revitalized churches and new churches in this nation of ours.

Let the referees squeal.

Just don’t let the sheep starve while the wolves grow fat.

P.S. Ohio Valley Churches’ website will be live here next week: www.ohiovalleymission.org. We hope to plant and/or help revitalize churches in smaller and mid-sized cities across Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.

Two years ago, East River found itself in a position where it had to choose between its confession and its denomination. In the end, we concluded that we could not break our vows because our convictions had not changed. Though the parting was as peaceful as such things usually are, we were left without a denominational home.

Even before we officially left, it had become clear that this would be the outcome, so we began evaluating our options. We ultimately decided that we would either pursue joining the PCA or, if that proved unwise, establish something more like an association or fellowship.

After attending two General Assemblies, our assessment of the PCA is that it contains many good men. Broadly speaking, we would estimate it to be about 25% conservative confessional, 50% flexible moderate, and 25% progressive. In the end, however, we decided not to pursue the PCA because of the recent lawfare and what we see as an unwillingness to practice straightforward church discipline within its own ranks.

That said, we believe there are many faithful men there who are working to accomplish good things, and we will gladly encourage them in that work wherever we can. We simply believe that joining the PCA at this time would not be healthy for the church God has entrusted to our care.

Could that change someday? Absolutely. But that’s not this day.

We had talked about starting something called the Boniface Fellowship a couple of years ago. At the time, however, we decided to put that on hold so we could take a deeper look at the PCA before making any long-term decisions.

Now we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to move in a different direction. We’re moving forward with something very similar, but under a new name: Ohio Valley Mission or, if you prefer, Ohio Valley Churches.

The public website should be live within the next couple of days. Below is some of the information that explains what we’re hoping to accomplish through this venture…

Purpose

Ohio Valley Mission is dedicated to planting and revitalizing confessional churches in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. We do this through mutual encouragement, resourcing, and relational accountability.

Who We Are

We are regional. To bring focus to mission, we focus on works within the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. This allows our member churches to develop real-life relationships and provide support beyond mere digital interactions.

We are a fellowship. OVM is not a denomination; we are a mission. Our ministry is relational, supplemental, and ultimately voluntary in nature.

We are Reformed. All member churches must subscribe to confessional standards.

What We Do

We provide encouragement. We have an online forum for pastors and host both online and in-person events. Our goal is to create a place where pastors can offer mutual encouragement, work through difficult ministry issues, and build a trustworthy real-world local network of like-minded coworkers.

We provide resources. We create training materials, offer coaching, provide pulpit supply, and assist in assessing prospective church leaders. Our focus is especially on resources that help prepare men to start new churches or revitalize struggling existing ones.

We provide relational accountability. While we don’t have any ecclesiastical authority, we will exhort our member churches to be faithful to their confessions and our commitments and form committees to aid in difficult discipline cases upon request.

Commitments

We are committed to historical biblical Christianity. God gave the Church pastors and teachers to help lead it to spiritual maturity (Eph. 4:11–16). Throughout history, these godly men have labored hard to clarify and summarize the doctrines contained in the Bible. The best of these helpful summaries of biblical doctrine have stood the test of time. We call them creeds, confessions, or catechisms. We aren’t innovators. We aim to align with and build on the work God has been doing in His Church throughout history. Therefore, our member churches subscribe either to the Westminster Standards or the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

We are committed to a ministry centered on the preaching and teaching of the Word. While historical doctrinal statements serve as helpful protective guides, the Bible remains the only infallible rule of faith and practice. God has ordained that Christians grow through the preaching of His Word and the administration of the sacraments, which themselves are a visible word. All godly change, whether individual, ecclesiastical, or cultural, flows from the faithful preaching of the Word of God. Consequently, we equip the saints to be “salt and light” by keeping the Word primary.

We are committed to being accessible to the everyday Christian. Biblical truth is timeless and unchanging. Mankind, on the other hand, is bound by time. Our figures of speech, customs, and various aspects of culture have evolved over the years. Therefore, we must work diligently to communicate the unchanging truth of the Bible in a way that is understandable in each specific time and place. We strive for all aspects of our ministry, preaching, music, and more, to be as accessible as reasonably possible to the communities where God has placed our member churches.

We are committed to addressing the issues of our day. Every age faces its own set of challenges. In the first four centuries, the Church worked diligently to clarify the doctrines of the deity of Christ and the triune nature of God. During the Reformation, the doctrines of justification and the sufficiency of Scripture were robustly defended. Today, we see significant confusion surrounding topics such as biblical sexuality, bioethics, and the proper use of authority. We aim to address contemporary issues regularly while ensuring they do not overshadow foundational doctrines.

We are committed to supporting and resourcing church revitalization efforts and new church plants. The local church is at the center of God’s plan of redemption. Through it, the gospel sounds forth as disciples are raised up through the ministry of the Word. As the church goes, so goes society. Therefore, the greatest need for our society is Bible-centered, historically rooted, and locally focused churches. We are dedicated to training, coaching, and supporting pastors who are revitalizing or planting these sorts of churches.

We are committed to mutual accountability. First and foremost, this is demonstrated through the plurality of ordained pastors and elders leading our member churches. These men take vows to uphold their confessional standards and follow all the processes outlined in their constitutions and bylaws. While local leadership remains primary, as a fellowship, we offer a secondary layer of relational accountability by aiding, exhorting, and admonishing the officers of our member churches to keep their vows and uphold their governing documents.

Our Founding Churches

• East River Church (Batavia, OH)

• Little Miami Fellowship (Xenia, OH)

• Silver City Church (Mt. Sterling, KY)

That’s it. This is what we’re doing.

More information will be available in the coming days. We’re planning our first gathering of churches for late September or early October.

If you have questions, feel free to email me or simply post them here.

For that reason, people from many different backgrounds and locations were drawn to our church. But we never wanted to be the anti-vaccine church. We saw those decisions as a consequence of our commitment to Christian liberty and sphere sovereignty. Our vision was always positive: to bring historic biblical Christianity, in all its depth, to the people of Clermont County, Ohio, and the surrounding area. That has always been the vision.

Because of the moment in which we were founded, many people came through our doors who were rethinking everything from sexuality to the doctrines of grace. We had a large influx of Methodists. I remember one family had attended a church with a lesbian minister the previous Sunday before joining us for about a year. For many of these people, the common thread was a desire to be in a church where the Bible was taught, the issues of the day were addressed, and Christians could gather freely for public worship.

At the same time, I knew many of these changes were only surface deep. Americans are deeply independent and generally don’t like being told what to do. Many people had mixed motives, to say the least. The real question was whether we could disciple them into deeper biblical convictions held for biblical reasons.

I think people quickly discovered that our elders weren’t interested in trends. We didn’t want to build a church driven primarily by social media or a media ministry, but by faithful local ministry. Over time, those looking for something trendy or edgy either left or stopped knocking on the door. To be sure, some who left did so for perfectly good reasons.

The reason I bring all this up is because the COVID era is over. In my estimation, it effectively ended in November 2024. The external pressures that held together many unlikely coalitions have largely disappeared. That process began toward the end of 2022, but I think it reached its fulfillment with Trump’s reelection. One result has been the breakdown of political coalitions, media coalitions, and now church coalitions. People who were united by shared enemies or broad ideals no longer feel the same pressure to stay together. They’re reconsidering commitments they may have embraced too quickly.

Churches that built themselves around trends will pay dearly for it. Churches that built themselves around their confessional standards and ordinary discipleship will certainly lose some people, but they will endure because they have built a genuine core.

Over the past several years, our nation experienced a great migration. People relocated geographically, but they also relocated ecclesiastically. Now we’re entering a period of resettling. As life normalizes, many people will return to where they came from. That’s simply a normal part of the process.

The lesson for pastors is straightforward: stay committed to the ministry of Word and sacrament, faithfully applied to the circumstances of your own day. If you do that, you’ll build a church that’s built to last.

As I thought about the needs of pastors, I decided to build a conference, or rather, a summit, around those moments. Something smaller and more intimate. A gathering focused on honest conversations without the distractions of vendors, platform building, or recording. The goal is to build genuine working relationships with like-minded pastors and ministry couples so we can go home refreshed and better equipped to tackle both the biggest challenges and the best opportunities in our ministries.

That’s what the Evergreen Summit is all about.

Here’s what will be a little different. Our teaching blocks consist of three 25-minute sessions back-to-back, followed by a break and then an open panel with those three speakers. Rather than rushing everyone off to the next lecture, we want time for honest questions and practical discussion.

We’ll also have two facilitated roundtables where attendees will be divided into smaller groups to work through real challenges from their own churches. The goal isn’t just to hear good ideas but to think through ministry problems together with brothers who understand the work.

Alongside the main conference, we’ll have a dedicated wives’ track with three teaching sessions, three Q&A panels, and plenty of unstructured fellowship. We want pastors’ wives to leave just as encouraged and refreshed as their husbands.

Coffee and snacks will be available throughout the conference, and none of the sessions will be recorded or livestreamed. We want everyone to feel free to speak candidly and benefit from conversations that are intended for those in the room.

Tickets are still available here for a few more days. Buy them here.

Finally, all sessions will be held at the future home of East River Church, currently known as Norlyn Manor:

4440 OH-132
Batavia, OH 45103

Main Conference Schedule

Times subject to change.

Thursday, July 16th

6:30 pm — Block 1

Michael Foster, “Guarding the Shepherd’s House”
The boundaries and practices that protect a pastor’s soul, family, and ministry for the long haul.

Justin Dean, “The Pastor’s Friendship Problems”
Loneliness, confidants, and cultivating friendships without blowing up your church.

C.R. Wiley, “The Pastor Who Can’t Afford to Quit”
Financial traps, compensation, retirement, bivocationalism, and building long-term stability.

7:45 pm — Meet & Greet
Drinks & desserts.

Friday, July 17th

9:00 am — Panel 1
Foster, Dean, & Wiley.

10:00 am — Breakout Roundtables

12:00 pm — Lunch
Not catered.

1:30 pm — Block 2

Jake Mentzel, “Five Types of Men Who Should Never Be Elders”
Common leadership profiles that often slip into eldership, the damage they cause, and how to identify them before it’s too late.

Brian Brown, “The Shadow Government”
When influential members, former elders, major donors, or outspoken wives function as unofficial elders.

Michael Clary, “Lessons from a Church Split”
How we survived, what we learned, and why the church is healthier on the other side.

3:15 pm — Panel 2
Mentzel, Brown, & Clary.

4:30 pm — Breakout Roundtables

6:00 pm — Dinner & Drinks
Catered.

Saturday, July 18th

9:00 am — Block 3

Bryan Laughlin, “Reformed, Normal, and Growing”
How Reformed churches can grow without compromising their biblical convictions.

Doug Ponder, “Complacency Kills”
Why faithful pastors must never stop leveling up as learners, leaders, and examples.

Joe Holland, “Organizational Wisdom Without Ecclesiastical Compromise”
Why faithful churches should gladly borrow good leadership, communication, and organizational practices while remaining thoroughly biblical.

10:30 am — Panel 3
Laughlin, Ponder, & Holland.

11:45 am — Final Remarks & Dismiss

Wives’ Track Schedule

Runs alongside the main Pastors’ Conference. Women are welcome to join the main conference whenever the wives’ track isn’t in session, with the exception of the Breakout Roundtables. Times subject to change.

Thursday, July 16th

6:30 pm — Block 1
Join the full conference.

7:45 pm — Meet & Greet
Drinks & desserts. Join the full conference.

Friday, July 17th

9:00 am — Teaching

Rosaria Butterfield, “Do Not Grow Weary While Doing Good”

This session encourages wives of elders to stay on mission and stay in their lane. The bottom line: don’t quit. Rosaria will talk about creation ordinance boundaries and blessings, the need to prepare for the six avenues of weariness, and biblical ways to combat them.

40 minutes.

9:40 am — Break / Fellowship

10:15 am — Panel 1
Rosaria Butterfield, Emily Foster, Hallie Holland.

45 minutes.

11:00 am — Free / Fellowship Time

12:00 pm — Lunch
Not catered.

1:30 pm — Teaching

Emily Foster, “Five Ways a Pastor’s Wife Can Minister to Her Husband”

In this session, Emily will encourage pastors’ wives to steady their husbands through ordinary faithfulness. The bottom line: her support sustains his ministry. Emily will cover keeping the household humming, prioritizing sexual intimacy, and protecting his calendar so her steady presence refreshes his soul and guards the limits he needs to serve with joy for the long haul.

40 minutes.

2:10 pm — Break / Fellowship

2:45 pm — Panel 2
Rosaria Butterfield, Emily Foster, Hallie Holland.

45 minutes.

3:30 pm — Free / Fellowship Time

6:00 pm — Dinner & Drinks
Catered. Join the full conference.

Saturday, July 18th

9:00 am — Teaching

Rosaria Butterfield, “Hospitality in a Post-Christian World”

This session discusses the need for Christian hospitality in a post-Christian world and good practices for dealing with hostility and hatred against Christians.

40 minutes.

9:40 am — Break / Fellowship

10:15 am — Panel 3
Rosaria Butterfield, Emily Foster, Hallie Holland.

45 minutes.

11:00 am — Free / Fellowship Time

11:45 am — Final Remarks & Dismiss
Join the full conference.

I was laughing today, delighting in Clancy as she was stuffing her little gluttonous face. Naturally my mind drifted towards how my Heavenly Father must enjoy all the ongoings of my life. How He is deeply invested in my well-being. How He lovingly provides all the things I need. And I am more precious to Him than a sparrow or a flower or a turtle. I am His child.

I have felt the tender care of my Heavenly Father recently. About two weeks ago, we suffered a miscarriage. It has been heartbreaking losing a child. But this is a road we have walked before. We had a stillbirth about 14 years ago. Both times, I have seen how the Lord laid up things beforehand for our time of need. With Nicaea, there was Pineapple sage in my garden for tea to help dry up my milk. With Pascal, there was a little Peter Rabbit keepsake box that I had bought in a bundle with some other Beatrix Potter items off FBMP.

Besides little things like that, the Lord had stored up more things for us. There were many passages of scripture that the Lord brought to mind in the midst of this trial, particularly 2 Sam 12:23, Job 1:21 & 1 Cor 15:51-57. We listed those and Psalm 100 on Pascal’s little casket.

Psalm 100 was included in my Bible reading plan on the day I miscarried. Verse four declares, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” The thought of my son entering into heaven in this fashion both makes me weep and brings joy to my heart. What glories his eyes now behold!

The Lord flooded my mind with song lyrics that had been stored up, particularly Thy Mercy My God & It is Well with My Soul. Listening to hymns & songs of praise also brought comfort. I handwashed dishes one night to old favourites by Caedmon’s Call & Indelible Grace.

Another gift the Lord laid up for us was the support of the saints. It was overwhelming, in a good way, the amount of cards, flowers, Edible arrangements, meals, phone calls, emails, text messages, DMs & comments we received from people letting us know they were praying for us. I am so thankful for our church family at East River and for the Body at large.

Through it all, I was reminded of how important it is that I’m regularly reading the Word of God & seeking to memorize passages. How important it is to be filling the house with praise, so that it may soak into your family’s souls. How important it is to regularly attend a church and be connected with a church body that can come around and support you during both the sorrowful & joyful times of life. These are the means the Lord uses to fill our cup so we don’t run dry when we are down in the Valley of the Shadow.

But we’ve also found it helpful to build family traditions around giving individual kids special attention. One simple thing we try to practice is that the week before or after a child’s birthday, I take them out for a meal, essentially wherever they want to go. A big juicy steak, sushi, or whatever they’re into, and we just sit and chat. It’s very one-on-one, and they make a big deal out of it.

What got me thinking about this was that last night Cedar, my 11-year-old, said, “Hey, we need to go out for my birthday meal.” And I said, “That we do.”

After a while, Emily hated missing out on something so personal and special. So we added another rhythm: Emily takes them out for a meal on their half-birthday, six months before they turn the dial on a new year.

You can build little traditions like this into your family to create real connections, let the kids know they’re special as individuals, and help you stay connected as a parent. These kinds of practices are good regardless of family size, but I think they’re almost a necessity if you have a large family.

It doesn’t have to be birthdays or half-birthdays. Maybe one kid gets to go with Dad to buy the fireworks every year. Another kid is trusted with planning this or that event. Find what works for your family, or steal our idea. I know many of our best ideas were stolen from someone else who was just trying to make it happen.

In the chapters that follow, we will talk about ambition, money, goals, physical and mental fitness, and girls. But none of it will matter if you do not fear God. The fear of the Lord is the foundation of manhood. Without it, you cannot become the man He made you to be.

We’re not sure why. Emily was 14 weeks along, and everything appeared to be going well. But the Lord saw fit to bring him home sooner than most.

He was a boy. We have named him Pascal Watson.

Physically, Emily is doing well, but we are all heartbroken.

Even so, we trust the goodness and wisdom of God. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

For us, Pascal has become another reason to long for heaven.

We are deeply thankful for the strong community of Christian friends God has surrounded us with through our church, my employer, and the broader community. We are being well cared for and have lacked for nothing.

We do, however, appreciate your prayers.

Some further thoughts….

Tragedy and the suffering that follows it are a fire. To adapt an old phrase, the same flame that melts the wax hardens the clay.

There is no escaping tragedy. It visits every life, sometimes in isolated moments and sometimes in long, relentless seasons. Over the last six years, we’ve been living through what I’ve come to call a swirl of death. Multiple family members and friends have died in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

Each time, we have been forced to decide what that fire would do to us. Would it melt us into a sorrowful but Godward faith? Or would it harden us into self-centeredness and self-pity?

Every trial presents a person with an opportunity to confess what he truly believes. Suffering has a way of exposing the deepest convictions of the heart. In the fire, everyone makes a confession, even if he does so unknowingly.

We live in a trauma-obsessed culture that treats suffering as a kind of moral exemption. Many people assume that tragedy, even relatively small tragedies, gives them permission to live faithlessly toward God and resentfully toward others. Suffering becomes a license for self-pity and bitterness. It becomes a reason to question God’s goodness without end.

How often have grieving people been told, “It’s okay to be mad at God”? No, it isn’t. It may be understandable, but it is not okay.

A wise and compassionate person recognizes the frailty of the human heart. In times of suffering, we are tempted to doubt God’s goodness, wisdom, and love. We should not be surprised by those temptations. But neither should we indulge them. Doubt is not something to be coddled. It is something to be confronted. Faith must be reasserted. The truth must be preached to our own souls again and again.

God is good. He is good when He gives and when He takes away. He is good when we understand His purposes and when we do not. Christian maturity is not gauged by the absence of tears but by the presence of faith in the midst of them.

The immature man allows suffering to turn him inward. He becomes consumed with himself and his pain. The mature Christian grieves honestly while refusing to surrender to self-pity. He learns to say with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” The goal is not to suffer less but to suffer faithfully.

In the last three years, I have buried my younger brother, my mother, my baby son, and three good friends. Yet I know there are many who, in that same span of time, have suffered just as much or more. Suffering is not a competition. We all must face the reality of living in a fallen world. Some endure heavier burdens than others, and those burdens often come in different seasons. But every one of us will eventually walk through the valley of sorrow.

Because of that, suffering should not become a scoreboard by which we measure whose bitterness is most justified. Nor should it become an excuse for faithlessness, self-pity, or sinful behavior. Rather, our common experience of suffering should cultivate compassion for one another. It should remind us that we are all frail and dependent upon the grace of God.

It should also give us the courage to lovingly confront those whose faith is wavering. The answer to suffering is not to lower our view of God but to raise our eyes to Christ. The reason we need the good news is precisely that we live in a bad world. The reason we need a Savior is that sin, death, and the devil are real enemies. The gospel is not a message for people who have escaped suffering. It is the announcement that Christ has conquered the very things that make suffering so painful. He has defeated sin. He has broken the power of death. He has crushed the serpent’s head. One day, He will make all things new.

Until then, we grieve. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope.