Ongoing Engagement

Ten years. Doubtless others of my fellow Twelvers will be noting our recent tenth anniversary of this blog.

I have been part of it from the beginning and so I suspect I have written upwards of 240 or so blog entries here. Some of my blogs were deemed too one-sided and political, and probably had I had a few to do over again, I would have nuanced more. But there has been much to weigh and ponder and in doing so, we may not always get everything right.

Our ten years on “The Twelve” spanned most of the Obama years in the U.S. and all of the Trump years. As time has gone on, tensions in the church have gotten to the snapping point. The COVID pandemic provided the final tug needed in many places to cause things to veer into chaos in many congregations.

The stories I have heard from pastors—some of whom simply had to leave their longtime ministries—have been harrowing. But some in those same congregations have their own tales to tell. The walking wounded exist on all sides of our various divides.

The church is in tough shape in a lot of places. But that is what makes “The Twelve” so very necessary now as much as ever. As Reformed Christians we need to reflect deeply and well on what Christ is calling us to do by his Holy Spirit during times of upheaval and significant turbulence.

No one can quite yet see what the church will look like if and when the worst of this pandemic finally abates. But as time has gone on, few have come to the conclusion that things will go back to how they once were. Too much has changed for that to happen. Too much hurt has been inflicted and felt on all sides for “normal” to return. This is why we need ongoing engagement at a place like the Reformed Journal and “The Twelve.”

“The Twelve,” as we say every year at this time, is an all-volunteer operation. We do it out of love for the church, for the academy, for society at large. But we do need some modest funding to keep the lights on, to update our website for maximal effectiveness, and to hire people to fix stuff when some electronic hiccup occurs. We don’t have advertisers.

So we appeal to our faithful readers—those who agree with us a lot of the time and also those who find us disagreeable now and then—to contribute to our little enterprise. Just about every day a couple thousand people read our blogs, and now and again that number is two or three times higher. We want to keep going into our next decade and so ask you to consider a gift to keep the Reformed Journal strong. Thank you!