I've spent a lot less time caring about whatever the latest controversy in Conservative Evangelicaldom is lately.

I don't regret it.

Instead, I've gotten to spend a lot more time with regular, rough, working dudes in my town.

It made me think of some things:

To begin with, most of these guys have not been in church since they were confirmed 20 years ago.

The churches they were confirmed in successfully taught them almost nothing (which is good because they were nearly all ELCA or wimpy LCMS or in an E-Free youth group).

They have some respect for church, but obviously not enough to be part of one.

And to be fair to them, the churches they came from are not places I would ever want to return to.

And they have absolutely no idea, one way or the other, about the moral standards of the Bible.

As in, "wait, the Bible says I can't live with my gf? Wow. I had no idea."

They don't even get angry at being told God says this is a sin. Just surprised no one ever told them.

This kind of "lawlessness" is very much like early medieval Europe after Rome's fall—a crisis but an opportunity.

For the Franks and the Germans, the church coming in and preaching "law" was a blessing. They did not know how to live.

Being told, this way you live is a sin and you will experience God's wrath for it. Don't live this way it is bad. Follow Jesus and live the way He says, instead.

To be told you are in sin when you have no idea and how to repent from it is grace.

This is the grace my people need more than anything. Not breathing fire saying turn or burn, but like a father saying to his child, "I want things to go well for you, but they will not because you have no idea you are swimming upstream."

I had been conditioned, by decades in evangelicalism, that telling people about sin will result in defensiveness.

I am sure that was the case 30 years ago when people knew exactly what they were doing was sin.

Today, no one has any idea. And they are largely glad you told them.

I think this is going to be the way forward for the church. Unashamedly, gently, and fatherly teaching what God demands of them.

The more the old-wineskins of evangelicalism push church growth marketing campaigns about making people feel good (that "worked" 30 years ago) or pivot to full-on embrace of wokeness (that they think "works" now), the more the church of the future can distinguish itself.