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.

I met Mark just as I was graduating high school. He had found a Bible while in prison, converted to Christianity, and connected with my friend Kurt through skateboarding. Mark was a gifted skateboarder, and eventually he joined a skateboard ministry that Kurt started and my friend Carl later led. Before long, Carl, Mark, Elliott Liske, and I were leading it together. Those were some of the most exciting years of my life.

We would load up a 24-foot Ryder truck with ramps, rails, and whatever else we could cram into it and travel all over America. We held huge skate outreaches where hundreds of kids would come to skate and hear the gospel. We spent countless hours on the road together. Looking back now, it feels like a lifetime ago. We were young men convinced that the gospel could change the world, and in many ways it was changing ours.

Mark and I eventually became roommates. He was a reader, much like I was. We had a television in our condo, but we rarely used it. We spent our evenings reading books, talking theology, and looking for opportunities to share the gospel.

One of my favorite memories of Mark was after we rented and watched The Matrix. We got so fired up that we decided we were going to go out and tell people that the gospel was the truth that could wake them up from the lies of the world. So we jumped in my car and headed out with no real plan other than to find someone to talk to about Jesus.

Somewhere along the highway we picked up a hitchhiker. He was drunk and told us he had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend at a bar on the west side of town and had been walking for miles. We asked where he lived and discovered he was only a couple of miles from our condo, so we drove him home.

The next thing I knew, Mark and I were sitting in the living room of a complete stranger, explaining the gospel and calling him to repent and believe in Christ. Then, all of a sudden, the front door flew open. His girlfriend stormed in, cussing and demanding to know where he had been. She stopped, looked at us sitting there, completely confused, and said, “Who the hell are you guys?”

The man answered, “These are the guys here to tell us about Jesus.”

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

Looking back, I had dozens of experiences like that with Mark. We were always inviting people over to our condo, stopping to talk to strangers, opening our lives to people who were struggling, and looking for opportunities to tell them about Christ. It was a wild time.

Over time, I discovered that Mark had a serious problem with alcohol. Our friend group confronted him about it, and to his credit, he repented. But it would be a struggle that he’d often fall into. It would disappear for a season and then return.

I was privileged to officiate Mark’s wedding to Nicole. It was only the second wedding I had ever performed. We held it at Woodland Mound Park on the east side of Cincinnati. At the reception, they danced to “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses.

I mean this with affection and sincerity, despite how it may sound: it was a white-trash wedding, and I could relate to it completely. These were my people.

Mark and I both came from broken families. His was probably more broken than mine. We were both trying to outrun something. We both knew there were patterns behind us that had swallowed up people we loved: addiction, divorce, laziness, despair. We could see the wreckage scattered behind previous generations, and neither of us wanted that future.

The best way I know to describe it is that some families seem to have a gravitational pull toward self-destruction. It is like a dark portal that keeps trying to drag generation after generation back into itself. You can feel it pulling at you. You can spend years trying to put distance between yourself and it, only to discover that it never entirely stops calling your name. Some people escape it. Some don’t.

By my late twenties, Mark and I had largely gone different directions. He attended my first church plant for a while, but eventually life carried us down separate paths.

Then last year Nicole died in a tragic accident. Mark woke up to discover that she had bled to death in their home while he slept deeply after drinking heavily the night before. It was a horrific thing to endure, and naturally he was consumed with guilt.

During the last several months, we talked more than we had in years. Having walked through my own share of death, I had some idea of the road ahead of him. We prayed together. We talked often. We discussed grief, regret, guilt, and hope. I was thankful that there were people around him who loved him and were trying to help him find solid ground again.

In particular, my friend Elliott Liske poured himself out for Mark. Elliott loved him faithfully during one of the darkest periods of his life. He listened. He encouraged. He showed up. He prayed. He did the kind of quiet work that rarely gets noticed but often means everything to a hurting man.

But in the end, Mark was unable to escape that dark pull. That portal finally caught him.

Where was Mark with the Lord? Only God knows with certainty. I know that he professed faith in Christ. I know that he never denied Christ with his lips and loved church. Beyond that, I leave him in the hands of a merciful and righteous Judge.

What I do know is that our old friend group has suffered more tragedy than seems possible. Carl died in a house fire alongside some of his children. Nicole died in her accident. Another friend, Stella, had an accidental overdose that didn’t seem like an accident to most of us. And now Mark.

I am not against people caring about national issues. There's just a lot of battles happening in the world right in front of you.

There are neighborhoods, towns, and entire pockets of America where despair hangs over people like a thick fog. Addiction has hollowed out families. Loneliness has become normal. Men and women are haunted by their childhood into their adulthood. Some have simply stopped believing that a different future is possible.

These battles rarely make the news, but they are everywhere. They have names and faces. They are happening to people we grew up with, people we worshiped beside, people we shared meals with, people we loved.

If you are in that darkness right now, if despair feels like it is closing in around you, if addiction has convinced you that escape is impossible, please reach out to someone. Call a friend. Call your pastor. Walk into a church. Ask for help. Do not suffer alone.

The lie despair tells is that nobody cares and that nothing will ever change. Neither is true. There is hope in Christ.

And as I think about Mark, I find myself especially thankful for men like Elliott Liske. Men who answer the phone. Men who show up when everyone else disappears. Men who sit with the grieving. Men who refuse to abandon their friends in the darkness.

We need more men like that. And we need to be more like that ourselves. Give yourself to your people and places. Love your neighbor.

My wife and I know something of that pull.

We traveled all over America with our children. But several years ago, we felt the call to come home. Back to the Midwest. Back to greater Cincinnati.

I grew up in the small towns of southern Indiana, just across the river. My wife grew up on Cincinnati’s east side. We met while still in high school, and I spent my younger years coming down to this neck of the woods, falling in love with places like Amelia, New Richmond, Milford, and the kind of small-town life they represent.

So when it was time to come back to the beaches of youth, so to speak, we chose Clermont County.

We believed good things were happening here. We believed this was a place worth planting roots. So we made it our goal to set up shop in the heart of Clermont County, in Batavia Township, to plant a church in the Village of Batavia and to help bring business with us. By God’s grace, we’ve been able to do exactly that over the last seven years.

We love Clermont County. We love our township. We love our village. And we believe Main Street is at the heart of it all.

Main Street is more than old buildings and storefronts. It is where local business grows, where families gather, where neighbors cross paths, and where children learn to love the place they call home. It is where the character of a town is preserved and passed down.

We are committed to preserving the beauty, safety, and distinct charm of small-town America. We want thriving Main Streets where businesses can flourish, families can take an evening walk, and people can experience the kind of rooted community that helped make this country strong.

We believe Main Street matters because as Main Street goes, so go our small towns. And our small towns are the heart of this country.

This Facebook page, which will eventually be followed by a full website, is dedicated to documenting the work we’re doing here in Batavia, and we hope it will be a help and an encouragement to others who share our love for small-town America.

Americans ought to rise up and protect these places from falling into disrepair and disappearing. Because if we lose our small towns, we lose far more than old buildings.

We lose a way of life. That’s why Main Street matters.

It usually comes quietly. A few minutes here. A distraction there. One more glance at a notification. One more hour given to something that does not matter much. It rarely feels like you are throwing life away. It feels small. Harmless. Easy to justify.

Perhaps, you tell yourself you are paying attention because you care. That this is time well spent. That while others sleep, you are staying watchful.

It feels like vigilance. Responsibility. Preparedness. Discernment. It feels like keeping informed for the sake of your family, exposing what others refuse to see, gathering knowledge that will one day prove necessary.

So you tell yourself.

When you are young, this is especially easy because time feels endless. You spend it freely because you assume there will always be more. More time to get serious. More time to become disciplined. More time to repair what was neglected. More time to become the husband, father, worker, or man you know you ought to be.

But time does not wait for us to get serious.

It keeps moving.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

And as the years pass, life has a way of waking you up to what was lost.

The child you were too distracted to notice becomes the grown son who no longer thinks to call when he is in town.

The wife whose attempts at connection were often pushed aside stops trying as much.

The discipline you meant to develop tomorrow hardens over years of weak habits.

The opportunities to build, teach, shape, save, and prepare slowly pass by.

And one of the hardest lessons a man learns is that some things cannot simply be made up later.

You can repent. You can change. You can be forgiven. But forgiveness does not always remove the earthly consequences of wasted years.

This is what makes wasting time such a costly illness. It steals slowly. Quietly. Almost invisibly. Often you do not realize what it has taken until you look up and see what could have been.

What a tragedy to become deeply informed about things far away while neglecting the people sitting across from you in your own living room.

What a tragedy to model for your children a life ruled by distant distractions instead of faithful attention to what is nearest.

The most important work most men will ever do is not flashy.

It is the ordinary work of daily faithfulness. Listening well. Praying consistently. Teaching patiently. Working hard. Paying attention. Being fully present where God has placed you.

That kind of life is built slowly.

And so is its opposite.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Do not waste your time.

Spend it on what will still matter when the noise fades, and all that remains is what you built in the lives of those God gave you to love.

That morning in the foyer, the conversation somehow turned to women wearing pants. She had brought it up. She was all about femininity. She said there were only two kinds of pants: sexy pants and man pants, and women should not wear either.

I joked that there was at least a third category: sexy man pants.

We laughed and moved on.

Several months later, I noticed she was posting what I would call very sensual illustrations online. In many of them, the woman looked somewhat like her. I tracked down the artist and discovered he (George Petty) was well known for creating pin-up art, including a fair amount of outright pornography.

He was talented, no doubt, but it was very odd to see a woman who was so outspoken about external modesty posting sensualized artwork that so clearly traded on sexual allure.

So I questioned her about it and told her I thought it was inappropriate. Her response was, “If it stumbles you, I’ll take it down.”

I told her this was not about me being stumbled. It was about the images themselves being inappropriate and immodest. She pushed back hard. Another woman who was mentoring her also challenged her on it, and she eventually took them down.

But the whole thing was framed as accommodating men’s weakness rather than recognizing the deeper issue.

Not long after that, she had a falling out with the church. The last time I ran into her, she was wearing very tight pants and still carried that same brash spirit.

There is a difference between aesthetic modesty and actual modesty.

Some people adopt the outward trappings of conservatism because they are visible and legible. Long dresses, flowing hair, carefully curated femininity.

Those things can be good in themselves, but they can also become costumes, a way of signaling that you are more feminine, more righteous, and more set apart than everyone else around you.

At that point, modesty has already been lost, even if every inch of skin is covered.

Biblical modesty begins in the heart. It is tied to humility, self-possession, and what Scripture calls a gentle and quiet spirit in 1 Peter.

A woman quietly shaped by Christ will often grow into external modesty over time. When the externals are adopted apart from inward submission to Christ, they often become just another means of self-display.

That is why so much of the modesty-and-femininity discourse that is popular right now feels wrong to me.

Much of it substitutes comparison for personal holiness. It is often a contest to prove who is more masculine, more feminine, more traditional, or more righteous.

It runs on competition before men, not reverence before God. That has always been a temptation, but social media has turned it into a driving force for both sexes.

Anyhow, I would far rather see a woman with a gentle and quiet spirit who is still growing in her outward understanding of modesty than a woman who has perfected the external aesthetic while still carrying a wild, unsubmissive heart.

P.S. We have no problem with women wearing pants, though not all pants are equally modest.

I noticed in one of Michael's posts that you and your husband met in high school. I grew up in the "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" generation and always assumed I would steer my girls away from dating entirely until after graduation. But I keep coming across stories of healthy, marriage-bound relationships that started in high school, and it has me reconsidering whether there might be situations where that is not such a bad thing. Given your own story, I am curious what guidelines you have landed on for your kids, and how you would counsel a daughter in high school if a genuinely worthy young man, also in high school, took an interest in her.

Emily had a little bit of a back and forth with her and more or less laid out what I am about to lay out here. For simplicity's sake, I wrote “I,” but it really is “we.” So here are some of our guidelines…

I tell my kids that I want them to aspire to be marriageable by the age of 20. What I mean by that is that they should possess the spiritual, emotional, and relational maturity to enter into a relationship that could reasonably lead to marriage within eighteen months. That does not mean they must be married by 20.

I think teenage marriage is historically exceptional and is rarely wise. It requires a young man and woman who is unusually mature for their age and who is surrounded by a strong social network that can help carry them through the early years of marriage. At the same time, I have noticed what I think of as a kind of dead zone between about 24 and 30. At least in my own circles, which reach well beyond Reformed Christianity, if someone is not married by then, it often becomes noticeably more difficult. My assumption is that these are often the years right after college or the early career-building years, when work demands longer hours, life becomes more fragmented, and opportunities to meet and meaningfully pursue good prospects become less natural. That is why I want my children to be prepared early. I want them to be in a position to recognize and pursue an exceptionally godly young man or woman who is clearly on a good trajectory.

Generally speaking, I believe the wisest path for most men and women is to be prepared for marriage by 20 and, if the Lord provides the right opportunity, to marry sometime between then and their mid-twenties.

Now, you may have noticed that I said I want them to be able to enter into a relationship that could end in marriage within about eighteen months. The eighteen-month window is, to some degree, an arbitrary number, but my thinking is that it is enough time to move through the full rhythm of a year. It gives you time to walk through the holidays, spend meaningful time with both families, and let each family take the measure of the other. It is also more than enough time to determine whether this is someone you ought to marry. Realistically, you should have a strong sense of that within a few months.

There is another reason for this timeline. I think most healthy young people can keep their hands to themselves for eighteen months. After that, the pressure often begins to build in ways that make self-control more difficult. I do not care what family you come from or what elaborate system of rules is in place. Sexual desire is powerful. Just as water eventually finds its level, sexual passion will often find a way to express itself if a relationship is unnecessarily prolonged. That means there are really only two wise options: either end the relationship or move it toward its natural conclusion in marriage. That is why I tell them that if you are not in a position to be married within eighteen months, you are not yet in a position to begin a serious relationship.

For my boys, this means they need to be on a trajectory where they could realistically become a sole provider within eighteen months plus nine. The extra nine months accounts for the possibility that if they marry and the Lord quickly blesses them with a child, I want them to be prepared to care for a wife and baby without depending on her income, or at least without depending on her full-time income. That is part of what it means to be marriageable.

Once my boys entered their early teens, I started talking with them more directly about what makes a good woman. As I saw their romantic interests begin to awaken, I would point out the kinds of girls I thought showed strong potential and the kinds I would advise caution toward. In both cases, I always explained why. I was not handing them a checklist. I was giving them real-life examples to think through and helping them learn how to exercise discernment. For example, my oldest son once expressed interest in a girl who, in my judgment, flirted with nearly every boy around her, or at least far more than I was comfortable with. So I told him that you can like the girl who flirts with you, but only a fool wants the girl who flirts with everyone. That opened the door to a broader conversation about character, discretion, attention-seeking, and the kind of steady faithfulness that actually makes for a good wife. I also walk my boys through the importance of considering the family a young woman comes from. You do not merely marry an individual. You join two families in the formation of a new household. That does not mean a person is reducible to their family background, but it does mean family patterns, habits, strengths, and dysfunctions matter and should be considered soberly.

I have only recently begun having some of these conversations with my oldest daughter, who turns thirteen in July. That part of her is not fully awakened yet, and I do not want to unnecessarily stir things before their time. I want her to enjoy these final years of childhood as fully as she can before those conversations become more direct and frequent. At the same time, I pay close attention. A good father watches carefully and adjusts the conversation as each child matures.

I am becoming more intentional about laying out clear definitions of maturity and practical goals I want my children to have accomplished before I am willing to sign off on any serious relationship. My oldest son was already on a solid trajectory. He had a clear vocational path, was diligent to save, owned his own vehicle, and had zero debt. That covered many of the practical benchmarks I want to see. Generally speaking, I want my children to have no non-collateralized debt, a fully funded emergency reserve, and a vocational path that is thoughtfully considered for at least the next five to ten years.

This is one reason all of our boys begin working around fourteen or fifteen. The goal is to begin preparing them early to leave the nest well. And despite what some corners of Reformed Twitter might assume, I plan to approach my girls with the same seriousness. We are very involved in choosing our children’s workplaces. They need to learn how to interact well with other people, develop useful skills, resolve conflict, manage money, and carry real responsibility. These things matter. As I continue refining my practical checklist, I will save it and share it at some point. But those are some of the major categories.

No one in our household is permitted to date before around seventeen. That does not mean I want them to start dating at seventeen. It simply means that before then, it makes little sense. If they are sixteen, there is no realistic way to satisfy the eighteen-month framework. And I do not care what label gets attached to it. You can call it dating, courtship, mutual crushes, or just being really close friends. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. And in our house, it is not allowed. Rules like this are not arbitrary restrictions. They are guardrails ordered toward a goal. And I always try to remind my children of that. There is a clear path toward what they want. The expectations are not hidden. The standards are not mysterious. We have laid them out plainly. Now the task is simply to walk in them.

I will admit that I do not particularly enjoy writing about dating. Writing on dating is a lot like writing on diet. The moment you say anything, everyone wants to tell you what worked for them, what did not, what book you need to read, what system you need to adopt, or why your approach is apparently destructive and terrible.

So take all of this for whatever it is worth. This is simply how we seek to apply biblical principles in our household. It is not a universal formula. It is not the way. It is what we believe has served our family well. If you have sincere questions, I am happy to answer them if I can. If you disagree, that is perfectly fine too. And no, I probably do not want to read the book you wrote about it.

I get the skepticism. I co-wrote one a few years back. That’s how I ended up with this gig. I wasn’t the first to enter the fray, and Chase won’t be the last. There will be more. There should be more. No generation gets to coast on the study and sweat of the last one. And if they try, they lose everything.

John Murray saw this long before our crisis hit. He wrote:

When any generation is content to rely upon its own theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation. The powers of darkness are never idle and in combating error each generation must fight its own battle in exposing and correcting the same… A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology that relies on the past evades the demands of the present.

He might as well have been speaking directly to us.

But here’s the catch: most American evangelicals didn’t even have a real theological heritage to rely upon in the first place. They weren’t handed creeds or catechisms or a library of thick, spine-forming books. They grew up in churches where the “library” was Jesus Calling, a women’s devotional with a flower on the cover, a Max Lucado paperback, and maybe a prophecy chart folded in the back of someone’s study Bible. That’s not a heritage. That’s the spiritual equivalent of surviving on marshmallows.

The only Christians in America who had an actual inheritance, creeds, catechisms, confessions, shelves of Puritan paperbacks, and Banner of Truth reprints were the Reformed churches. And even there, something went wrong. They had the materials. They had the doctrinal clarity. They had the theological treasury. But many of them failed to hand down the practices, instincts, and formation that once animated those truths. In too many cases, they passed down books without backbone, orthodoxy without obedience, and confessions without culture.

So the broader evangelical world was starved for lack of substance, while the Reformed world often died from lack of application. And now this current generation is standing in the middle of the mess: a generation with little real theology to inherit, and even less embodied practice to imitate.

That’s the context Murray’s warning lands in.

We are living in exactly what he described: a moment where Christians either had no heritage, or had a heritage they never learned to use. And because of that, we inherited a world collapsing under its own softness. The problem isn’t that the past generations didn’t produce theological riches. They did. The problem is that modern Christians, both evangelical and Reformed, stopped exploring those riches for themselves. We either didn’t receive anything at all, or we received it like museum pieces: admired, dusted, quoted, and ignored.

So, as Murray warned, the decline set in quietly. And now it’s everywhere.

Men are confused. Homes are unstable. Churches are anxious and increasingly feminized. Institutions that once formed men into something solid now produce men who feel fragile, guilty for being male, and disconnected from their own bodies. This decline isn’t mysterious. It is the predictable outcome of a Christianity that preaches redemption while blushing at creation, especially the creation of man as man.

Evangelical churches responded to this collapse by turning to sentimentality. They borrowed the language of therapy, trimmed sermons to avoid offense, and reshaped men’s ministry around emotional vulnerability instead of responsibility. The result is a generation discipled to be harmless, compliant, expressive, and spiritually inert. No wonder young men look outside the church for strength. If the only message they hear inside is “be nice, be safe, be soft,” they’ll find someone who demands more of them.

This is precisely the failure Murray warned about: leaning on the past or, in the case of evangelicals, having no past to lean on at all, instead of doing the hard work of rediscovering Scripture for themselves and facing the present with courage.

And that’s what Chase does in this book.

He rejects the low-expectation Christianity that hollowed out the modern church. He refuses to act like men are disembodied spirits floating through life. He refuses to treat biological realities as irrelevant to discipleship. And he refuses to ignore the cultural forces actively unmaking our sons.

Instead, Davis does what every generation must do if they hope to hand anything down: he takes Scripture in one hand and history in the other, and he presses both into the bodies, souls, and responsibilities of real men living right now.

He isn’t inventing a new theology of masculinity. He’s recovering and applying the old one, the one our fathers once took for granted because they lived it. He understands what our forebears understood: theology is meant to shape men, not sedate them. Doctrine is meant to produce courage, not provide excuses for passivity. And the glory God built into men isn’t recovered by coddling them or treating their instincts like liabilities.

Men need a faith that trains the hands for war and the heart for sacrifice. Something that asks enough of them to actually change their lives.

That’s the heart of Offensive Christianity: a call to reclaim the manhood the Bible actually commands, not the sanitized version our age prefers.

Some readers will flinch at this. At the language of aggression, dominion, discipline, and embodied responsibility. But that reaction says far more about us than it does about Scripture. The Bible never blushes to command men to rule, build, guard, fight, and lead. Only modern Christians apologize for the very things God requires. And the people who apologize tend to fall into two groups: those who clutch an inherited past without ever building anything on it, and those who never had a past to clutch in the first place.

This is why Chase Davis’s work matters. He isn’t reinventing masculinity, baptizing the latest online fad, or chasing a moment. He’s doing the slow, honest work Murray insisted every generation must do: taking the riches of the past, opening the Scriptures anew, and applying them to a generation that has never actually seen strong, obedient manhood lived out with conviction. He refuses to dodge the hard parts. He refuses to drift into the sentimental fog. And in doing so, he becomes a needed voice, someone willing to carry the theological weight others set down.

This book ends the evasion. It speaks plainly about what God requires of men.

It isn’t brutal for shock value. It’s brutal the way steel is brutal, because softness can’t bear weight, and men were made to bear weight. It’s brutal the way repentance is brutal, because sin must be carved out, not comforted. It’s brutal the way Christ is brutal, because His love drives Him to confront where we would rather be coddled. True love refuses passivity, and passivity always hates being confronted.

And Lord willing, this work won’t stop with us. Each generation must rediscover the faith for themselves, must enter Scripture with hungry minds and obedient hearts, but Chase is at least laying down a map. He’s marking the landmarks, the old paths, the dangers, the cliffs. He cannot walk the way for our sons, nor should he. But he is making sure they don’t start the journey blind.

Our generation needs this clarity. And the next generation will pay dearly if we refuse to rediscover it, embody it, and hand it down with strength instead of sentimentality.

The present makes demands that inherited theology cannot answer on its own. But the Scriptures can. And this book is one man’s refusal to duck those demands. Chase Davis has stepped into the gap, taken the Scriptures seriously, and held them up without embarrassment. Any man who reads this book with integrity will feel exactly what Murray intended: the weight God has placed on men, and the call to carry it like someone who belongs to a King.

Purchase your copy from Amazon here (don’t forget to leave a review) or directly from the publisher here.

We had left South Carolina to return home to Cincinnati and were living in a two-bedroom apartment with six kids. We made it work because there was an attic that doubled as one big room for the three older boys.

The apartment was above my father-in-law’s old dental practice, and he let us stay there rent-free. We only had to pay utilities. It was an incredible opportunity to pay off debt and save money.

At the time, I worked in business development and was allowed to work unlimited overtime. So I did. I worked as much as I could. I honestly don’t know how many hours a week I was putting in, but it was a lot.

At the same time, my podcast was really taking off, and I was starting to get invited to speak at conferences. Since I was remote, I could do my job from the road. I would clock out, go speak, then clock back in afterward. It allowed me to maximize the opportunity to build out that ministry while also paying down debt and putting money away for the future.

One day I was at a conference in the Catskills. An evening session had just wrapped up, and I walked out into a big field under a sky full of stars when my wife texted me, “We need to talk.”

I called her and asked what was going on. She had my son with her, who was probably nine or ten at the time. She told me they had been talking about whether or not God was real, and during the conversation he more or less claimed to be an atheist.

So standing there looking up at the stars, I started explaining different arguments about fine-tuning and the nature of the universe. I asked him what he thought about it.

I remember him repeatedly saying, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

And I kept telling him, “Just answer honestly.”

As I circled around a few apologetic arguments and kept getting basically no real response, it suddenly hit me: this is a ten-year-old boy who has spent his whole life in a Christian home, with parents who love him, and in solid churches.

This was not fundamentally an intellectual problem.

He was not wrestling with the historicity of the resurrection or the complexity of cosmology. There was something much more basic underneath it all.

A big part of it was that we were packed into a tiny apartment, and his dad was gone constantly.

I started realizing the issue was not primarily intellectual. It was relational and social. If my earthly father doesn’t have time for me, if my earthly father feels distant, then maybe my heavenly Father, who already feels distant because He can’t be seen, probably doesn’t care much for me either.

Of course, my son had never consciously worked through it in those exact categories. But children often feel things long before they can explain them.

So I backed off the apologetics.

I just told him, “Hey, I love you. When I get back, we’ll talk more. Don’t worry about it.”

After I returned from that conference, I started taking him with me to my co-working place several days a week. I let him drink however much soda he wanted, sit in on my calls, hang around while I worked, and just talk with me about life.

Nothing dramatic.

I just started spending more hours with him.

And over time, all that stuff faded away.

In fact, over time, he became one of the more vigorous defenders of the Christian faith among our kids.

There is no program that can help struggling children like godly, present parents. I almost wish there were, because a program would feel more manageable. It would require less faith.

But God designed the family to be one of the primary means through which children are shaped into a stable and godly way of life.

We only get so many hours.

We have to spend them wisely.

If you give your heart to your children and walk with God humbly, not perfectly, but humbly, God often uses that to draw your children’s hearts to Himself.

At the end of 2024, I took my family on a big vacation down to Fort Myers. Flew all 10 of us down there, got an incredible Airbnb, rented a boat to go fishing out on the Gulf. It was only five days, but we planned it smart. One-way flight. Airbnb only a few minutes from the airport. We were able to make the most of every day.

I think it was one of the best family vacations we ever had.

A lot of memories were made. I spent good time just hanging out, swimming in the pool or the ocean, talking with the kids, being present.

What I did not know at the time was that it would be the last family vacation with just me, my wife, and our eight kids.

Before we could take another one, my oldest son got engaged at 19 and married at the start of this year.

Now, I couldn’t be happier. I love him. I love my daughter-in-law. I’m eager for grandchildren. And I’m sure before long we’ll do another big trip, only this time two Foster families will go together.

But I didn’t know that was the last one.

And I’m very glad I went all out and don’t have regrets.

It makes me think: what “last thing” will I do this year? This summer? Even today?

So I pray…

God, keep me sober-minded. Help me make the most of what you’ve put in front of me.

Ask yourself one question:

What kind of thing am I dealing with?

Most issues fall into one of three categories.

1. Settled Things

These are things that have already been decided.

Your birth family.
Your nation of origin.
Your height.
Your past decisions.
Your upbringing.
Things you did.
Things done to you.

Some of these things were decided by your own past actions. Others were decided by God’s providence. As Paul says in Acts 17:26, God determined our appointed times and the boundaries of our dwelling place.

You can’t go back and change these things.

So the question is not, “How do I undo this?”

The question is, “Does this have any bearing on what I should do now?”

If not, leave it alone. Don’t spend your life fighting settled things.

2. Action Things

These are things you have some real control over.

Your diet.
Your exercise.
Your spending.
Your work ethic.
Your attitude.
Your friendships.
Your theological knowledge.
Your presentability.
Your habits.
Your skills.

These are your controllables.

You may not control everything about your health, finances, relationships, or future. But you usually control more than you think.

So if the issue falls here, don’t overthink it.

Take direct action.

Start small if you have to. Make the call. Go on the walk. Open the Bible. Apologize. Apply for the job. Pay the bill. Clean the room. Do the next faithful thing.

3. Prayer Things

These are things outside your direct control, but not outside God’s control.

The economy.
The weather.
The housing market.
The availability of a suitable spouse.
Other people’s choices.
Timing.
Open doors.
Closed doors.

You can’t force these things. You can’t grab the steering wheel of providence.

But God can act.

So you take indirect action through prayer. You ask. You wait. You prepare. You remain faithful. You do what you can do and trust God with what only He can do.

So ask yourself:

Is this settled?
Then accept it and learn from it.

Is this actionable?
Then do something.

Is this outside my control?
Then pray and trust God.

This is a simple framework, and yes, it’s a little reductionistic. But that’s the point. The goal is not to explain every complexity of life. The goal is to get you unstuck.

Most people waste too much energy trying to change the past, control what belongs to God, or pray about things they simply need to obey.

So categorize the issue.

Then act accordingly.

Accept what is settled.
Act on what is yours.
Pray over what belongs to God.

Still, I think homeland matters. Hometown matters. There is something good and natural about being from somewhere, about sharing a past with a particular people in a particular place. For most of us, the ideal is to settle down and, over time, become rooted.

That is the ordinary shape of things. It is so ordinary that people have often been identified by their place to the extent it becomes part of their name. Just as a man’s work helps define him, so does the place he comes from. A place shapes your memories, your instincts, your speech, your loyalties, and your sense of belonging. It gets into you.

One of my goals is to build a family estate out here on the east side of Cincinnati. I’ve put down roots here. I helped plant a church here. I helped start a major branch of the company I work for here. We own one house now, but, Lord willing, I intend to own more for the sake of our family if God continues to bless those efforts.

I want the Fosters to be from here. I want the east side to be home. I want my children, and perhaps someday my grandchildren, to share more than a last name. I want them to share a place. I want them to know certain roads by heart. I want stories tied to certain buildings, creeks, fields, and churches. I want them to have a place where generations of our family worshiped, worked, suffered, rejoiced, and belonged.

But that does not mean every Foster must stay within a fifteen-mile radius forever.

Roots are not chains.

Sometimes a son leaves for a season to build, learn, provide, fight, or prepare. Sometimes he goes away because he loves home and hopes to strengthen it someday. Localism is not immobility. It is ordered loyalty. It is knowing who and what has first claim on your energy, sacrifice, and affection.

A healthy homeland should produce men who can go out into the world without forgetting where they came from, and who can return, if God wills, with greater wisdom and provision for the people they love.

Much of the success I am having now on the east side of town would not have happened apart from the five years we spent in South Carolina. Those years were essential to the development of It’s Good to Be a Man, the church experience that prepared me for the lockdown years, and my current role at Maddox Transformer.

I had to go on what I call a “tour of duty.”

When we left Cincinnati in 2009, we fully intended to return to the greater Cincinnati area someday. We always had our eye on the east side. Even when we moved to South Carolina, we knew it was temporary. South Carolina was never home. We are not southerners. We made many dear friends there, and we are deeply thankful for our time there, but it was never the place we intended to remain long-term.

God used that season. I’m grateful for it.

Sometimes, to gain the resources, experience, discipline, and relationships needed to strengthen your family estate, or in my case, to establish one, you have to go on a kind of tour of duty. You leave home, or you delay putting down final roots, not because you despise home, but because you are preparing yourself to build one more faithfully when the time comes.

Men have long left home for a season to apprentice, trade, fight wars, learn a craft, accumulate capital, or prove themselves. The goal was not endless wandering. The goal was usually to return with something: wisdom, strength, provision, status, land, or opportunity. The wandering was meant to serve the settling.

There is a difference between being rootless and being temporarily mobile so that you can eventually become deeply rooted.

One is drift. The other is mission.

Men being away from the household for long stretches was not unusual in the ancient world. It was built into the structure of life itself.

The reasons were many, and they often overlapped:

* Trade and commerce. Mediterranean merchants, Phoenician traders, and later Roman negotiatores could spend months or even years away from home. Paul’s world of traveling craftsmen and tentmakers was ordinary life. A voyage from Rome to Alexandria and back could consume most of a year.

* Military service. Roman legionaries commonly served 20 to 25 years far from home. Greek citizen-soldiers could be gone for entire campaign seasons. Even the ten-year absence in the Trojan War reflects a real cultural anxiety. The absent husband and father was a familiar problem.

* Agricultural and pastoral labor. Herdsmen followed grazing routes. Laborers traveled with harvests. Tenant farmers often worked distant lands.

* Political service. Ambassadors, governors, tax collectors, and officials were often stationed far from home for years.

Because of this, the household had to function when the father was gone. That is one reason the capable wife was so highly honored in the ancient world, whether in Proverbs 31 or Penelope in the Odyssey. The household needed to be able to govern itself.

Sons leaving home for a season, with the intention of returning, was also normal.

One of my favorite examples is the tirocinium militiae. This Latin phrase means something like “the apprenticeship of military service.” In ancient Rome, it referred to the formative period in which a young man was introduced to the discipline, hardship, responsibility, and order required of a soldier before he became seasoned and trustworthy.

But the idea was not limited to warfare. The ancient world generally assumed that men were shaped through some kind of proving ground. A boy became dependable through duty, endurance, submission to authority, and tested responsibility. Roman writers used the phrase more broadly to describe the way hardship and disciplined service formed character. Scripture gives us the same kind of pattern in many places. David before he became king, Timothy being told to endure hardship as a good soldier, and older men training younger men in faithful living.

One of the great differences between the modern world and the ancient world is that older societies expected young men to pass through some sort of tirocinium militiae before being trusted with authority.

Today, many people want the privileges of manhood without any real initiation into it.

In the past, that formative stage might come through military service, apprenticeship, hard labor, long journeys away from home, etc. The common thread was obligation. A man was formed by responsibility, not by self-expression alone.

In many ways, what I call a “tour of duty” works the same way. A young man leaves home, endures hardship, gains experience, builds competence, and returns more capable than when he left.

The important thing is that ancient households were oriented around return, not permanent departure. The assumption was that the merchant came home, the soldier returned, and the son eventually rejoined his hometown. Permanent emigration was comparatively rare and often carried shame.

This is one reason exile was such a terrible punishment. To be cut off permanently from your household, land, ancestors, and people was a kind of social death. Ancient people did not treat those things as optional accessories. They were bound together.

That has obvious relevance to localism. The ancient world treated rootedness as the norm and departure as the exception that needed a reason. Modern society mostly assumes the reverse.

Ecclesiastes says:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…” Ecclesiastes 3:1

And later:

“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come.” Ecclesiastes 12:1

Years ago, we rented a house with a second fridge in the basement. I used it to store extra milk and a 60-count box of eggs for our growing family of eight. I used to jokingly send the boys to collect eggs from our “refrigerator chickens.”

It felt like such a gift. With a dry-erase marker, I wrote a little prayer on the freezer door:

“I remember when I prayed for what I now have.”

That sentence has rebuked me more than once.

Tonight, I want to talk about the mega seasons of life. Bigger than daily disciplines, date nights, chores, budgets, or even Lord’s Day habits. I want to talk about the large movements that shape and redefine you, the rhythms within the rhythms.

There are seasons of singleness, marriage, raising children, releasing children, abundance, scarcity, grief, health, loneliness, and deep friendship.

One of the strange things about human nature is that we often long desperately for the very things we later take for granted. A single woman may pray for a husband and later struggle with discontent toward the very man she begged God to provide. A young couple may pray for financial breathing room, only to discover later that wealth brings its own pressures, temptations, and fears.

Each new season reshapes what faithfulness requires.

Some of you are in survival seasons. The children are little. The budget is tight. You feel behind. But one day your house may be quiet enough that you would gladly trade convenience for one more noisy evening around the dinner table.

Others are watching children leave home. That is disorienting too. You spent years building a household, and suddenly the shape of the household changes.

Ecclesiastes teaches us to receive the season we are in instead of constantly fantasizing about another one. God appoints every season and wastes none of them.

YOUTH AND AGED

Scripture reminds us that youthful beauty is fleeting. Beauty fades, skin wrinkles, and strength weakens. My husband likes to say that we start like grapes but finish like raisins.

But we must not diminish beauty. God made the world beautiful. He filled creation with color, fragrance, music, mountains, flowers, sunsets, and stars. And He made women to reflect something beautiful too.

Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” That verse does not condemn beauty. It teaches us that beauty by itself cannot sustain a life.

Youth is a gift. But if a woman walks with God, outward beauty can mature into something more significant: spiritual beauty. Poise and grace.

Think of a little girl learning gymnastics. My daughter started out clumsy, with arms flying everywhere and awkward landings. But with practice, her movements become graceful and measured.

So it is with a godly woman.

Over time, she learns when to speak and when to stay quiet. She learns how to comfort, how to steady a room, how to dress appropriately, when to add something and when to simplify. She learns to carry herself with dignity and warmth.

A man with gravitas brings moral weight into a room. A godly older woman brings poise, beauty, relief, and comfort. That kind of beauty often takes decades to develop.

When I was fifteen, I met a pastor’s wife named Vi Goodrich. She taught at a women’s retreat on abiding in Christ. She was in her forties, a grandmother, with wrinkles and grey hair. But she was radiant. She had joy, kindness, warmth, gentleness, and love for God’s Word.

I remember thinking, “This is the kind of woman I want to become.”

Later, I met Mrs. Julia Major, a widow in her nineties. She was a shut-in, and I began visiting her with my three little boys: Hudson, Athan, and Caed. At first, I thought I was ministering to her. But she ministered to me.

She knew Scripture. She loved hymns. She asked how she could pray for me. She laughed, beamed, held my hand, and testified to God’s faithfulness. She was beautiful.

Miss Julia lived to be ninety-seven and finished her race strong. In the Lord, beauty grows with age.

SINGLE AND MARRIED

It is normal for a young woman to desire marriage.

When I was a little girl, Disney princesses were still princesses. They were beautiful, elegant women in search of a manly, heroic prince. I loved Sleeping Beauty, especially the scene where Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora danced in the woods.

I also loved The Princess Bride. I hoped for my own Westley to come for me. I wanted true love and a courageous man who could lead me through the fire swamps of life.

Like many girls, I had a list. I wanted my future husband to be tall, dark, handsome, musical, athletic, and funny.

The Lord sent me my “farm boy” when I met Michael. He was tall and devastatingly handsome, but blonde. He could tan, which is more than I could say for myself. He could strum a few guitar chords. He had been captain of his football and wrestling teams. I thought he would be serious, but he turned out to be funny too.

I met him when I was fourteen and married him at nineteen. I have spent most of my life loving him, and I am thankful for our marriage.

But marriage has challenges.

I had only become a Christian a few months before we started dating. Michael played a major role in my early spiritual growth, but I had very little time to mature spiritually on my own before being attached to another person. That is one reason 1 Corinthians 7 speaks of the blessings of singleness. Singleness allows a person to be less divided in attention to the Lord.

If you have dreamed of Prince Charming since childhood, and now you are older and still single, you may think of singleness only as a bad thing. It can be painful. But it is not meaningless.

Singleness is real life.

It brings freedom, flexibility, focused spiritual growth, service, ministry, and a unique ability to devote yourself to the Lord.

Marriage is glorious, but it does not complete you or fix you. Michael and I nearly divorced in our early years. Marriage sanctifies you because it places you in covenant with another sinner. Christ alone makes you whole.

We also need to remember that many women who are not single now may one day be single again. Widowhood is a common part of female life. My friend Mary Wolff was married three times and never divorced once. She outlived all three husbands and lived to ninety-three.

So one way or another, life contains seasons of singleness. Our ultimate hope must not be anchored in marriage, but in Christ. He has slain the dragon and knows the fire swamp, and his love cannot be stopped by death.

FULL NEST AND EMPTY NEST

The years of a full house are exhausting and wonderful.

There are years when you cannot go to the bathroom alone. There are knocks, cries, and little fingers under the door. Children follow you everywhere. A chubby hand is always reaching up. Someone wants a sip of your drink or a bite of your sandwich. You may hide in a closet to eat a cookie or make a phone call.

I remember thinking Susanna Wesley was clever when I learned she trained her nineteen children not to disturb her when she flipped her apron over her head so she could pray and study Scripture. I think she was on to something. I wonder if she ever also had a cookie.

But one day, the noises change.

Our oldest son, Hudson, got married in January to my daughter-in-law, Grace. He had graduated and was working at Maddox, but he was still living at home. During wedding preparation, he slowly moved boxes to their rental house while still sleeping in his room with Cyprian.

Then, the Monday before the wedding, he asked me to help move his desk after work. That was the first night he slept there.

Just like that, he had moved out.

Gone from my household.

No more hearing him get ready for work. No more clanking pots as he cooked something delicious. No more laughter from his room. No more ordinary coming and going.

It was harder than I expected.

Part of motherhood in this season is learning how to stay involved without overreaching. How to advise without controlling. How to encourage while allowing your children to build their own lives.

Parents move from commanders with small children to coaches with older children to consultants with grown children, and that last shift is often the hardest.

But the empty nest also brings new opportunities.

The church desperately needs older women. Younger women need discipleship, practical wisdom, encouragement, help with children, and examples of how to love husbands, love children, and manage households.

Not all women had wise mothers. Many need older women to steady them.

Vi Goodrich affected me in two or three interactions. Sandy Fultz modeled this too. She had raised sons and was married to a retired military man and dentist. By the time we knew them, dementia had taken hold of him. Sometimes he would stand and wander during church, and Michael or a deacon would gently guide him back.

Sandy cared for him faithfully until he went to be with the Lord in 2020. She still poured into her family, church, and younger women. She played a major role in the salvation and spiritual maturity of my mother-in-law.

She once told me one of the hardest parts of aging was finding peers who still wanted to grow spiritually. Many older people rest on past victories.

The empty nest is a gift. Rest, travel, enjoy your husband and grandchildren, and learn something new. But do not waste that freedom on shallow pursuits. As responsibilities lessen in some areas, deepen your devotion in others.

SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE

Life cycles through scarcity and abundance.

Sometimes you have money. Sometimes you do not. Sometimes you have deep friendships. Sometimes you feel alone. Sometimes life feels fruitful and stable. Other times everything feels doubtful.

Early in our marriage, Michael had good jobs, I was working, we had strong Christian friends, we were church planting in Cincinnati, hosting gatherings, and raising two little boys. Life was busy and full.

We were in abundance.

Then in 2009, after moving to Indiana during a recession, everything changed. The church plant ended. We were broke and in debt. Michael lost jobs and worked through a temp agency. I dug through couch cushions for change to buy diapers.

The four of us lived in someone’s basement for months, then moved into a sad little house on the edge of town. We had no washer and dryer. We were down to one vehicle. I had to drop Michael off at work so I could run errands. We kept popping tires because work trucks dropped nails on our road.

People were friendly, but we did not have friends. I felt isolated and lonely.

Slowly, the season changed. Michael got steady work. We moved into a townhouse with a washer and dryer, though the dryer kept malfunctioning. We replaced it twice before realizing the problem was lint buildup in the dryer duct.

By our third year there, we had good friends. We added three more children: two who stayed with us and one who went to heaven. There were tears and laughter, and the Lord grew us.

Then we moved to South Carolina. We had another season of financial difficulty, loneliness, new babies, new trials, and new joys.

That is often how life works: feast and famine.

Philippians 4 says, “I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content.”

Paul frames this as something learned, not assumed.

Scarcity teaches dependence; abundance tests gratitude. In abundance, we are tempted toward self-sufficiency. In scarcity, we are tempted toward despair. God uses both.

The Christian woman must learn to walk faithfully in both.

Your life is founded in Christ, your sure and steady anchor, and that foundation holds regardless of your bank account, your friendships, or what tomorrow brings.

CONCLUSION

In our present home, I have a dry-erase board decorated like a coffee shop menu. It says Casa de Foster and lists our hot and cold beverages: French press, espresso beans, iced coffee, and Cedar’s current kombucha brew.

At the bottom, I wrote the same prayer from the freezer years ago, but I added to it:

“I remember when I prayed for what I now have. My cup overfloweth.”

Faithfulness is the goal: to become the kind of woman who, whether she is fifteen or ninety-five, married or widowed, surrounded by children or sitting quietly in an empty house, can still say:

“The Lord has been good to me.”

*Editor’s Note: This was my attempt to cut my wife’s teaching transcript and notes by two-thirds to a size people might actually read online. I did my best to retain all her major points, illustrations, and applications. We will post the entire unedited piece later this year.

The Main Street Campus marks another step in Maddox’s growing investment in Clermont County. Maddox’s presence in Batavia began in 2019, when Michael Foster, now Director of Employee Development, relocated back home to the east side of Cincinnati as a remote employee. By 2022, Maddox opened a small office in a rented room on Main Street. In 2023, the company opened a 40,000-square-foot shop in a former Ford factory along James E. Sauls Sr. Drive and moved its office team into the front portion of that facility.

Maddox’s Batavia operation has since grown to 28 operations workers and 38 office workers. The Main Street Campus will allow Maddox to make room for additional operations workers at the shop while creating dedicated office space for its growing sales and support teams, while contributing to the long-term vitality of the village. (Read the entire press release)

Personally, I’ve been working toward something like this for about seven years, so seeing it finally come together means a lot. Those long days weren’t wasted.

I try to practice what I preach. If you want to meet real needs and actually bless a place, you don’t just talk about it, you work to bring good jobs there. That’s been my goal the whole time: help Maddox see that this county is worth investing in and that we can create both blue-collar and white-collar jobs for the people who live here.

Because nothing steadies a community like good, honest work from a solid company. I’m thankful our leadership saw that too.

And I’ve wanted us on Main Street for a long time. I’ve believed that if you can get people working and walking downtown every day, it starts to change things. It gives other businesses a reason to come in and build something alongside you. I don’t think you ought to have to drive all the way to downtown Cincinnati just to get a great meal or have a night out. There’s no reason our county seat can’t offer that.

So seeing this take shape, by the grace of God, makes me grateful.

If you’re around on the 18th, come on down and join us for the ribbon-cutting on Main Street.