Unrefined Observations

This is another brain dump of thoughts and meditations that I could turn into articles if I had more time. But I'm very much focused on preparing for all the new things our church will be involved in this fall. So these are offered as unrefined.

It has been my observation that the sort of mini Reformed resurgence that happened during the pandemic years was primarily driven by women. In particular, it was driven by wives and mothers who were listening to podcasts and introduced their husbands to the content they were consuming. I have observed that in many cases the women were more deeply committed to those ideas than their husbands. But it was such a chaotic time that the husbands adopted those ideas and ran with them. Now that the pressure is off, I suspect that many of these men will start to assert themselves and pivot away from the doctrines that they, to some degree, just went with during the pandemic. So I fully expect a sort of counter-resurgence over the next couple of years against anything that gained popularity during the pandemic era.

There was a recent issue where the elders of one church put together an anonymous packet, went to great lengths to keep their identity secret, and sent the packet off to a bunch of other churches and ministries, accusing another pastor of plagiarism with accusations that ultimately were very weak at best. They did not go to this man privately. Instead, they undertook this sort of covert shadow campaign to ruin his reputation. It's a complicated issue, and there are all sorts of other factors in the story that I don't care to weigh in on. But I will tell you that when I was working my way up the rungs of the Christian influencer world, I felt myself start to struggle with jealousy and envy in a way I never had before. In general, I'm just happy to see Christ preached and other friends of mine do well. And one of the reasons I pulled back out of all that and stopped doing all the things I was doing was that I didn't want to become one of these ministers who are just hamstrung by their envy of God's favor on other people's ministry. And I'm so glad I did. That's what I think underlies so much of the infighting you see out there.

In a kind of related issue, the internet allows people to be busybodies at a whole new scale. And many of these busybodies hide their meddling under the justification that they're simply trying to protect the sheep. Obviously, there's a place to use mass media to do that very thing. Paul did it through the circulation of letters. But I have known some of these men and observed them to be quite disconnected from their own local church, and yet they know all the contours, nooks, and crannies of hot issues online. Therefore, they strike me as effeminate busybodies posturing as manly prophets who are willing to do what no one else does.

I do not think we care enough about reputation. We should want a good reputation, and we should go out of our way to protect the reputations of others. However, a reputation that's good before man but bad before God is the worst sort of reputation. It means someone is a fraud and will go to extreme measures to maintain a fiction. Others may think they know you, but God knows you indeed. The individual should always think first and foremost: What is my reputation before God? As an extension of that, sometimes someone's reputation will seem as if it's been tarnished by another, but in reality, all they've done is reveal the truth that there was a great discrepancy between their Godward reputation and their manward reputation. It wasn't the revealers of the truth who hurt that person's reputation. It was the person himself who engaged in the deep fiction.

Some years ago, I heard a church member tell me that they didn't agree with the steps the elders took in dealing with an individual. And instead of defending us, I simply asked, "What were the steps that we took?" That stopped them in their tracks for the moment, and they named a couple of things. And then I asked, "Did you know about this, this, and this? And that we did that and that?" To which they replied, "I wasn't aware of that." And I said, "Do you know why you weren't aware of that?" To which they said, "Why?" I said, "Because you never asked us. So you have been walking around forming judgments without simply voicing your concern to someone in the know." If you're concerned with how someone did something, or how you think someone did something, come to them and say, "Here are my concerns," and hear what they have to say. It's always funny to me how people build these entire scenarios in their heads that are disconnected from the facts of a situation.

I joined a lot of local community Facebook groups just to kind of keep in the know on what people in Clermont County are concerned about. Let me tell you, people are really excited about the Panda Express. Anyhow, about a week ago, we got hit by some really intense straight-line winds and a tornado, and many of us were without electricity for several days. One of our church families experienced a ton of damage on their farm, with multiple barns getting knocked over with farming equipment in them. And so I texted them and asked if they were doing okay and if they needed any help. And they didn't, because they've been living out this way for a long time and had lots of friends and family members out there helping them. At the same time, I was reading these very sad messages on some of these community groups where there were older people asking for someone to come help get the broken trees off their lawn or bring them some food or whatever. And they were talking about how they were all alone and all this. It is a contrast. Localism will do you no good if you don't put in the work of building a community, and that takes a long time. At the same time, some communities become so robust that they become an umbrella. They give shade to those who didn't even participate in their construction. It is my hope that my family and my church family build that sort of robust community so old people, when they're in need, know exactly who to call.

I mentioned that I had started collecting comic books again. It's been a wonderful trip down memory lane as I've completed runs of *X-Factor*, *Marvel Comics Presents*, *Alpha Flight*, and a very difficult and expensive run of *The Uncanny X-Men* going back to the '70s. I enjoy going to the stores, flipping through the long boxes, talking to the people there, bringing my kids with me, and just talking to them about why these things mattered to me. Then I love sitting on my couch, listening to my record player as I read something that once comforted me as a 12-year-old. I've also started buying autobiographies and biographies of my favorite artists. I like to sit down and read their stories at nighttime. It has me back in my sketchbook, trying to regain many of the skills that I lost because I didn't keep them up. At present, I am working on my figure drawing. It's very soothing and calming. My brain is stimulated, but not stimulated in that hyperactive sort of way that you get from internet-based media. I find that it allows my brain to think more clearly, and I can feel anxiety and worry lessen. It's become obvious to me that what we call anxiety really is, in many cases, just an intense irritability because we will not stop stimulating ourselves. We will not pull back and relax in a good way. And the irony is that when you relax in a good way, you can work harder. You become more creative. You become more useful.

I mentioned that I've been working on a lot of things for our church. East River is about to go through a huge transition to its own building, having midweek services, and adding some new elders and deacons. We're redesigning the website and how our internal systems work so we can do a much, much better job of helping people get connected and serving in our church. And naturally, that has me looking at other websites and seeing what other churches do. It makes me think that so many of our churches are lopsided and weak because they're not willing to learn from those with whom they have some mild disagreements. But there are a lot of churches in the country, and even in our community, that do things much better than we do them. And I'm happy to learn from them, and I hope I can return the blessing someday.