A (15:49)
Story time or whatever. So I have been writing more for the 1517 blog. I will try to put it. Actually, there's already links in the show notes every week. This is a great way to introduce this to people that may not have known this. The bottom of our show notes every week are links to our names. They're hyperlinked versions of our names, and they go to our contributor pages on the 1517 website. And the contributor page is a collection of everything that we've tagged on the website with our names on them. So if we've written articles, they're there. If we have a book in the bookstore, it's there. A video playlist or podcast episodes. As you can imagine, if you go to any of our names on there, the thing you're going to see the most of is probably thinking fellows episodes. But you could also go see some of our latest writing there. So I have had two blogs come out in the last month, back to back. One was like a overview of sanctification in the Lutheran Confessions, which I tried to then, with Kelsey's help, just kind of turn into a, you know, a basic dogmatics kind of article. I had done a lot of these in the past. I had done like two or three of these in the past, and they were always a great format for me, which was about like the 1200-1500 word sort of what, what is this and why? Article on various doctrines. And I don't know, I always feel like I should probably just keep writing those because they do well and they're nice little explainers. So this was that. But then with a heavy emphasis on do the Lutheran Confessions actually speak a certain way about this doctrine? Because we all seem to just assume what sanctification must mean or what doctrines it must be related to. I think without consulting Our confessions are tradition at all. So did that and then one on sort of a unused title of Christ, which is Christ as the fulfillment or the fulfiller of all things. And sort of did an article on that that started cooking in my brain all the way back during Advent just because of those Matthew 1 and 2 texts that use fulfillment so frequently even before Christ was born, to talk about Christ and then sort of looking at that through Christ's ministry and then even in the epistles and their reference to Christ and just how fulfillment affects the way we view Christ and his gifts and his promises to us. So that's a shorter article over at 15:17. And then I've been working on a lot of video projects, been recording videos with these guys that you may have seen up on the YouTube channel. Some singular video and now some scripted videos that are going to come out soon or maybe have already come out depending on where this episode is in the hopper. But we're working on just more high quality direct to YouTube, direct to online video sources, video from 1517, engaging with our audience in that way. There's certainly, you know, I know thinking fellows listeners for the most part this is, you know, a decade of audio podcast content. And so most of these listeners and subscribers are probably well rooted in listening to their podcasts and things like that. But YouTube is the largest digital media space in the world and sort of not putting this kind of theology there, not putting this Christ for you emphasis there would be a big miss because there is a large audience there. So I would encourage everybody who listens to the thinking fellows to go subscribe on YouTube. I think the videos that we've been putting out are great, high quality. They're usually on the shorter end, not full length, think you fellows style, but then also mixing in some longer singular topic stuff like here we still stand conference video and plenary talk and breakout talks and things like that. So I've been writing a lot about that and that's just paired. I don't know, I've been thinking about, I know we loop around on this, but sort of what Adam was talking about. So the spiritual but not religious thing, the article I'm working on right now was inspired. I don't know if it was your, if the episode we did on your book or what it was Adam. But one of the episodes, something came up and I started pulling up as quickly as I could some, some Pew data because I was thinking about the fact that for the last decade, like since 2015 at least, everybody including us, including 15, 17, including various things we've been related to have been talking about the rise of the religious nuns. Right. It's been a recurring theme on this show. It's been recurring theme in Christian magazines and newspapers and articles and stuff online. And while I was kind of looking over some of that stuff again and thinking about how do you reach people who were raised by Christians in all likelihood, but are not Christians themselves, I was kind of thinking about what's the origin of this problem? Because the data also shows kind of what Horton has talked about and what you're talking about, Adam, which is that the religious nuns tend to be spiritual. They. They'll often, you know, the vast majority of them say there is a God or some prime spirit or something like that that they have had or look for spiritual experiences. And so what happened that you had Christian parents, kids who were probably raised at least nominally Christian, and now they're completely religiously unaffiliated, but yet there's still, there's some spirituality there. And a stat that I don't think we've talked about much, except that I brought it up briefly on that show has just been sticking with me. I've been writing about it a little bit. Nothing published yet. But is this the non church going Christian and the rise of the non church going Christian over the decades, it challenges the rise of the religious none. And we're now to the point where according to pew, it's about 51%. So we've crossed the halfway line of Christians, of people who will self identify as Christian, do not regularly go to church. So they go to church less than once a month is basically what that means. And I think there's a lot to explore here about the impact that has on evangelism, the impact that has on apologetics and the way we talk about the faith, the audience for particular types of preaching and doctrine. And it's a problem that I kind of see in my own life and I think connects even to this other thing where I've been writing about sort of singular dogmatic issues, which is just a lot of people who again, are Christian but probably couldn't even the word doctrine would be foreign to their ears or teaching or something like that where there's not a lot of meat or hook to grasp onto that they associate with the idea of doctrines. Somebody might be able to tell you the canon of Star wars, but not know what the word canon means in reference to the Christian faith. Right. And that seems like a more frequently occurring thing. So I've been thinking about that problem there Was another set of stats and I hopefully will have an article out in the next week or so on this. But for every one person converted to Christianity in the United States in the last decade from another religion, six people leave Christianity. Kind of an amazing arc contrast about even sort of missions and event thinking about missions in evangelism, about, you know, if you're putting a lot of effort amongst that while leaving out any sort of, you know, as this counter against like, hey, the church is just a club. All we do is care about the church. You know, we need to be. This is a critique of the Missouri Synod. Often from within too is like we focus way too much on our own churches. We need to do more community stuff, we need to do more outreach, we need to do more evangelism. Well, I mean I think statistically it could be said that we are strictly not doing enough sort of like catechesis and retention of the people who say they are members of our churches, who would self identify as members of our churches or as Christians raised in our churches as well. So I think if you think about the mission field, you think about evangelism, you have to think about every child and future child as one of these potential religious nuns that it's like kind of this small window you have to preach to them and actually while they're going to church is the best window you're ever going to have to proclaim the gospel to them to do that. And so why wait until they're a non believer to then like reach out, quote unquote, reach out to them when you have people potentially captive to hearing the gospel now. So just just thinking about that a lot a bit. But I, I think that's been interesting. I think digital church is bad too. Like a lot of the non church going seems to be supported by quote going to church online, which is interesting as well. Like that number, that 51% number, kind of that's in person worship. It changes drastically if people say that they attend church online, which gets into a whole nother problem about what is the church. Can you even attend, can you attend church online? I think the answer to that question is no. But I'm trying to integrate all those thoughts into some work on that.
