By Joan Swirsky No, it’s not “the economy, stupid,” in spite of the schizophrenic stock market since our remarkably resilient capitalistic economy ran head into the socialist-cum-communist Biden-Harris regime, with its $1.8-trillion deficit. And no, it’s not domestic policy, where we have had the luxury of being on the receiving end of: High taxes. High […] The post Voter Fraud––The ONLY Issue That Matters in 2024. appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The American-Parisian partnership is as old as our republic. In 1776, we sent across Benjamin Franklin as the founding father of our friendship. A half century later, Paris sent us Alexis de Tocqueville, who became a keen observer of American life. This was on my mind in spring when I boarded Air France in Denver. I was traveling with a group of American pastors to visit church planters in Paris. Witnessing gospel ministry in different cultures always gives me new insight into my own place and problems. So in the spirit of Franklin and Tocqueville, I hoped observing life “over there” would enhance my ministry “over here.” And it did. My time with church planters in Paris helped me see how the noise of ministry in America can command too much of my attention. Similar and Different Paris’s cultural climate is similar in many ways to my American one—with a notable difference. By seeing both the likeness and the difference, I gained clarity for my ministry at home. One similarity is that modernity has eroded the West’s cultural heritage rooted in Christianity. Society no longer shares assumptions about what’s true and good. Both countries retain their skinny national creeds: “liberty and justice for all,” “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” But deeper questions abound: What is freedom? Does it have limits or should it be ever-expanding? What’s the basis of our brotherhood? There’s no consensus worldview to referee these debates. As a result, any sense of shared identity is thinning out in both societies. This summer, Hollywood gave us the dystopian Civil War, where a menacing man in red sunglasses pointed a gun and asked, “What kind of American are you?” A few months later, Paris gave us the Olympic opening ceremony, which waded into a long-running argument about what constitutes “French” culture. Any sense of shared identity is thinning out in both societies. This cultural fracturing affects pastoral ministry. We can no longer assume everyone who lives in our city or walks through the doors of our church shares the same worldview. Discipleship has to start further back, with basic building blocks: Who is God? What is a human? What is freedom? Why are we not free? How will justice be done on earth? Yet despite this similarity, there’s a notable difference—one that’s easy to sense but hard to pin down. You expect to hear certain explanations: Paris is more secular, more unchurched, more progressive. These all ring true but don’t quite capture how pastoral ministry is different there. It’s less noisy. Ministry in a Less Noisy Environment By “less noisy,” I mean something like the difference between an SEC football game vs. an SEC football game during COVID-19. On a normal fall Saturday, a Southeastern Conference stadium is a spectacle that almost consumes the game itself. Tailgate parties, colorful characters and costumes, bands, cheerleaders, and mascots all make for a noisy pageant. But for one season during the pandemic, crowds were limited to a small fraction of capacity. The games went on but most of the spectacle went away. Pastoral ministry in Paris is like pandemic football. The game is essentially the same—to make disciples of Jesus in a modern culture that no longer shares the Christian worldview. But the surrounding spectacle isn’t as spectacular, and the crowd noise is lowered. What’s the crowd noise in this analogy? It’s American evangelicalism, broadly rendered. For good historical reasons, America has a much bigger “evangelicalism”—our constellation of conferences, celebrities, publishers, pundits, denominations, networks and all the commentary and debate they gin up. Tocqueville described the American proclivity for “voluntary association.” Historian Nathan Hatch called it “the democratization of American Christianity.” It’s an unavoidable fact of life, but it also creates a cauldron of noise that surrounds pastoral ministry, the “stadium” in which the normal pastor plays out his ministry. In Paris, I glimpsed what the game would look like with the crowd noise turned down. It looks like my friend Philip moving his family into an apartment by the Sorbonne to plant a church among university students. He spends most of his time meeting students and neighbors, talking about their faith, discipling young leaders, and teaching the Bible to the uninitiated. It looks like Paul, a pastor at Sèvres 72, one of the most established evangelical churches in the city, positioning his church to plant other churches like Philip’s. It looks like Jason, an American who has made Paris home, pastoring a church full of young adults from across the Paris region. After a decade of worshiping and cultivating a network of small groups, his church has grown to the point of needing a permanent building. For good historical reasons, America has a much bigger constellation of conferences, celebrities, publishers, pundits, denominations, and networks. Pastoral ministry in Paris looks basic and normal. How refreshing! I came home planning to be more “Parisian” in my ministry focus. This means not assuming that tending to intramural evangelical debates is the same as doing pastoral ministry. While these debates are interesting and important, they’re more like a precondition to pastoral ministry, not ministry itself. Ministry is prayer, evangelism, gospel preaching, leadership development, pastoral counseling, and community formation. I want to set my goals, make my plans, and fill out my calendar with more of these activities. This is the real action, down on the field. In Paris, there wasn’t much else to see.

This new variant could overtake KP 3.1.1 to become the dominant strain in the US.

We are preoccupied with a great variety of problems. Some of us are concerned about climate change. Others detail the continuing fallout from COVID. Still another group looks with alarm upon the aggression of Russia and the growing appetite for power that appears to accompany China’s ascent. Many view the burst of innovation surrounding artificial intelligence as a major threat. But there is another, much less heralded crisis going largely unaddressed that has the potential to affect virtually everyone physically, mentally, and spiritually. That crisis has to do with the vast growth of an aging population accompanied by diminishing numbers of young people. It has been known for some time that our entitlement programs that provide for the old are on an unsustainable path. Social Security, for example, began with a veritable army of young workers available to support the benefits awarded to each senior citizen. Over time, that margin has eroded drastically. While there were once more than 40 workers per beneficiary, the ratio is now closer to 2-1. The same problem applies to Medicare. Western nations are facing this problem as a group. This much is well understood. What is less well understood is how to solve the problem as we continue to have fewer children but more old people who live longer. Any attempted reform appears to be a political nonstarter. And in the relatively near future, these programs are likely to become unsustainable. But that problem is only the tip of the iceberg for modern societies such as America. We have been economically mobile. Families are spread out in sometimes distant locations across the generations. Elderly parents grow increasingly infirm without any immediate family in the area. Family ties are often strained because of divorces and other domestic disruptions. The once-large network of siblings who could divide up tasks of caring for parents has contracted substantially. We need to develop more robust family, church, and community ties. Our families must grow closer together rather than more attenuated and spread out. In addition, the two-income family has replaced the old single-provider model (virtually out of economic necessity) in which women stayed at home and tended to provide care for both younger and older generations. Finally, and crucially, the old are living so long that their children who must care for them are often elderly themselves and can be easily overwhelmed by the task. This last point threatens to be a straw that breaks the camel’s back as people who are already becoming less capable and less flexible are asked to make incredibly difficult decisions about their parents. Those decisions can be even more challenging when finances are not sufficient to support several years of expensive care in assisted living or nursing homes. Under our current system, many families will exhaust the assets of their elderly parents and then have no choice other than to go through a process of pauperization as they transition to a Medicaid facility unless they are able to handle the caregiving themselves. There is little doubt that many people will find themselves beyond their resources and their own expectations and preparation as they encounter this problem. The first two areas have to do with stewardship of resources. We all need to consider how to prepare ourselves and our families financially as best we can. That may require significantly less focus on accumulating goods and travel experiences and more on saving to provide for our future needs and for those we love. In addition, American public policy will have to take greater account of the perilous dynamic of a large aging population supported by a smaller population of younger people. Most important, however, is that we will have to become stronger spiritually and more connected as we try to face the crisis. We need to develop more robust family, church, and community ties. Our families must grow closer together rather than more attenuated and spread out. How many of us can remember growing up surrounding by large numbers of relatives at family gatherings on birthdays and holidays? How many likewise have seen the decline of such events? How many have expectations of their church body (if they have a church at all) that are more oriented toward a consumer or entertainment experience than toward serious spiritual formation and filial relationships? The challenge of aging parents and grandparents who reach the point of not being able to care for themselves is more pressing than it has ever been. Earlier generations were better situated and better prepared to deal with realities of aging than we are. We need to start weaving the spiritual and social fabric back together, so that we can be responsible and loving toward our mothers and fathers.

Long Deadlock queue times should now be a thing of the past. If you’ve been twiddling your thumbs for upwards of 20 minutes for games in Valve’s new MOBA, the team has now made some adjustments to bring wait times right down. A better “concentrated” set of playtime hours has been implemented, so even more players can attempt to match up at once. Deadlock is still raking in the player numbers, mind you, but now getting into matches will be even smoother than before. Continue reading Long Deadlock queues should be a thing of the past, thanks to Valve MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Deadlock release date , Deadlock crosshair, Deadlock characters

The arrival this week of Once Human update The Way of Winter sees the sci-fi survival game climbing again on Steam. The new PvE scenario has brought the game back above 100,000 concurrent players for the first time in October, threatening to reclaim its crown from returning champion Rust, but has come with a number of additional bugs and other issues. Developer Starry Studio has been busy gathering player feedback since the update landed on Thursday October 17, and has now deployed a whole host of improvements. Continue reading Once Human update rolls out fixes as the Way of Winter brings players back MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best sandbox games, Best open-world games, Best survival games

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