You're listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Out Loud Talk Radio.

I'm your host, Jimmy Hinton.

What happens when people have a bad experience in church or any faith for that matter?

Do they stay?

Do they go?

Do they tolerate it?

How important is it for people to have a good experience?

And what does that say about us?

As a pastor, this is a really important conversation for me.

What kind of an impression do we make on people when people walk through the door?

How are they treated?

Do we greet them?

Do we offer comfort?

Or do we talk at them?

Do we talk down to them?

Do we belittle them?

There are an endless, endless number of scandals that are uh in the news every single day that involve churches.

In fact, there's one that just came out last week.

By one, I mean at least a hundred.

I mean, these stories are everywhere.

But the one that I'm talking about, the big one that I'm talking about is Greg Locke.

Pastors accuse Greg Locke of spiritual abuse and financial mismanagement.

There's an article by The Roy's Report, Julie Roy's.

I know Julie.

She's a great reporter.

But that was in the news last week.

But I'm just browsing her page here.

And the stories are endless.

They don't stop.

Um Anglican art bishop to be tried for sexual immorality.

Living that nightmare.

Daystar TV's Josh Brown talks about death threat, quote, false accusations.

Florida Church votes to leave PCA denomination that suspended its pastor.

There was some kind of misconduct there.

Um and on and on.

I mean, these stories are just endless, right?

They're absolutely endless.

But there's an article, and it's a fantastic article by Bob Smitana at Religion News.

I know Bob.

Bob's a great guy.

I've done several stories with him.

Uh I've been interviewed, I should say, for several stories that he's done on abuse in the church.

And uh Bob is just a stand-up guy.

And uh I can't say enough nice things about Bob.

Uh, there are great reporters out there.

I know that I harp on the mainstream media, but there are fantastic reporters out there.

I was just texting with another very good reporter friend of mine just the other day on a story that he's doing.

Um there are great reporters out there who are fair and balanced, honest.

But Bob wrote an article on religion news that's titled, Why do some people stay in their faith and others leave?

A pew report offers clues.

This definitely caught my attention, especially this time of year.

We have what's called creasers.

It's kind of a um, I guess a slang term in the church.

I don't really love the term, but a lot of people refer to people who show up to Christmas and Easter services only.

They refer to them as creasers.

They're uh it's kind of a combination of obviously uh Christmas and Easter, but I think it's a little bit of a play on the word Christian as well, where they they call themselves Christians, but they only show up to church on Christmas and Easter.

And I guess it was meant to be a little bit of a derogatory term, at least that's how I've heard it used, where they're kind of mocking the people, not mocking, maybe that's not the right word, but uh they're kind of picking on people who only show up for Christmas and Easter.

They dress up, they dress to the, you know, to the hilt, they bring their entire family, they bring the, you know, the husband brings the wife and the kids, and they look like the the perfect American family, and they show up for Christmas and Easter, and other than that, you never see them grace the door of a church building.

And so people call them creasers, right?

And I've heard the things that people say about them, but I ask a different question.

My question is what is it that keeps them from coming into the church throughout the rest of the year?

And I don't know, you know, that the the and this is total speculation here, folks.

It could be a hundred different reasons.

It could be apathy, it could be you know something on their part, but we also have to ask ourselves as Christians is there anything that we're doing that prevents them from wanting to come throughout the rest of the year, and I think that's a valid question.

And especially in light of this research that was just done by the Pew Report.

Uh, I think it's really important for us to ask these questions.

Is there anything that we're doing as Christians that prevents people or keeps people from wanting to come?

You know, because what happens with a lot of these scandals is they tend to cover them up and pretend like the church is just this beautiful, wonderful place and all are welcome, and it's it's so warming and welcoming, but just beneath the surface, there's all kinds of abuse that's going on.

I mean, that that article about Greg Locke.

Uh there are two married pastors who've resigned.

They claim that the founding pastor, Greg Locke, created a spiritually abusive and manipulative culture.

And this isn't the first time that we've heard stories like this.

Mark Driscoll was wrapped up in all kinds of controversy where people were saying the same thing.

Same with James McDonald.

Um lots of reports that have come out saying that they're they're very, very spiritually abusive.

They're angry, they come into meetings and they they have these huge demands, they bang their fists on the table.

You know, that was one thing with uh James McDonald.

He would put pictures up of people in the church and would throw knives at them, throw knives at the picture, reportedly.

And he would say, This is what's gonna happen if any of you betray me.

I mean, there were lots of reports from multiple people that James McDonald was very abusive.

He also was financially abusive.

Uh, he was taking funds from the church, and the church was giving him funds and doing all kinds of weird things with properties, buying multi multi-million dollar properties and calling them parsonages, and uh, you know, then he would lie about uh different things and and lie about his properties and it's just this really abusive toxic atmosphere, but when you hear these people preach, it's so polished and good, and they talk about their relationship with Christ, and they they do what I call the the breath talking.

It's like the fake uh the fake voice, the fake preaching voice, where they they get real whispery with their voice, and they talk about the power of God, you know, and it's like this big show.

And I'm like, dude, just be yourself.

Yeah, uh right, right?

Like, why do you whisper talk?

Why do you breath talk?

And the the more quote-unquote spiritual you are, the more you talk with your with your breath, and the spirit of God, the power of God is taking, you know, it's all fake.

And I don't like fake.

It puts me off, and I can imagine people who are searching for churches who see the abuse that's happening beneath the surface, and yet they see these guys walk on stage and they're revered as superheroes.

I mean, all these guys, Greg Locke, for years and years and years, I've heard his name.

He's been on speaking circuits and all over the place, and just so wonderful.

He's such a great guy, and on and on and on it goes.

And that's why I I have a little bit of a beef with turning point USA, having Doug Wilson on the on the on the speaking circuit.

You know, this guy is an absolute tyrant.

Very abusive, spiritually abusive.

He's he's a misogynist.

I mean, the way that he, and and it's this is not my opinion, but look at some of the things that he's written about women.

It's terrible.

It's very, very abusive.

And yet he's revered because he's very polished.

He's, I mean, he's a much better speaker than I am.

He's a very polished speaker.

He's a great speaker.

He's not a great guy.

And this article by Bob Smitana is really really good because he's he's asking all the right questions.

You know, how does it impact people whenever how does it impact specifically their faith whenever we're not good people?

And that's why it's really important.

That's why I talk about the hidden lightness all the time.

We have to expose the darkness by letting our light shine.

And that really comes directly from Ephesians chapter 5.

Now, Paul's talking about exposing the deeds of darkness.

In fact, he says, in the context of not becoming like the sons of darkness.

That's what he calls them.

Don't be don't be like them.

He says, therefore, do not become partners with them.

For at one time you were darkness.

But now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light.

For the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.

And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

For it is shameful, even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.

For anything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore, it says awake o sleeper and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Look carefully then how you walk.

Not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Yeah, so it's this idea that by shining your light, letting your hidden lightness shine.

You expose the deeds of darkness because the things that are done in darkness can't remain hidden if there's light shining on it.

That's the way that we're supposed to walk.

As Christians, as believers, we're supposed to walk as children of the light.

We walk in that light and we inspire other people.

That's why I end the show every day.

Let's inspire other people.

Join me in being a light.

That's not just a cliche here.

It's a call to action.

So I want to read a little bit here of Bob's article.

He just published this a few days ago on December 15th.

He says Americans who had a positive religious experience as kids are most likely to keep the same faith as adults.

Those who had a negative experience or had negative experiences are most likely to change faiths or give up on religion.

And while a majority, 56% of Americans still identify with their childhood faith, a third, 35% have switched, including 20% who now say they have no religion.

Those are among the findings of a new report from Pew Research Center based on data from Pugh's 2023-24 U.S.

religious landscape study and a survey of 8,937 American adults conducted between May 5 and May 11.

Researchers asked Americans what religion they'd been raised in, as well as their current religion.

And then they asked those who switched or left their childhood faith about why things changed.

They also asked Americans who are religious why they remain part of that faith.

So it all mostly boils down to did I have a good experience?

Did I have good experiences?

Or did I have negative experiences?

And I could write multiple books on the negative experiences.

And the reason I can rate books about those is because they're the ones that stick in my mind.

There have been many, many times that I've thought about resigning.

At one point, I had a letter of resignation written, and I was ready to hand it in.

That's how close I was.

And it was in another state.

Actually, I had been given multiple job offers.

And I was looking into them in one, I actually went, I took my family.

We visited the church.

It's a church that uh we know, we we know the the minister there, he's now retired, but he was retiring, and he said that I was kind of a uh a shoe, and I was the first pick, and they weren't even looking at other candidates.

My name had come up.

And he said, if you say yes, we're not even gonna search for other for other ministers.

And I was like, well, maybe God is saying something to us.

Because it was at a point where we were just in the middle of being mistreated.

I mean, as it boils down to be being mistreated and not having a good experience at all.

We went, we looked at the church, and we decided it just it wasn't the right fit.

My kids didn't want to move out of state.

They, and so, you know, the options were either stick it out and try to resolve the conflict, or resign, stay located where we're at, and we would have to find another another church, and I would just not be in ministry anymore.

And those negative experiences really wreak havoc on every aspect of life.

My health suffered, my mental health suffered, physically, I I had lost 25 pounds because of the stress.

It was not a good time.

And this is happening in churches all over the place.

We tend to remember those negative experiences more so than the positive ones.

That's just how we're wired.

That's how our brain remembers things.

Well, we're coming up on a break.

We will unpack this, and there is good news in this.

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It's titled Why Do Some People Stay in Their Faith and Others Leave.

A pew Report offers clues.

And there were some surprising things in here.

There were a couple things that jumped out that were surprising.

Now, on the surface, we're like, well, well, yeah, of course.

If you have a good experience, you're likely to stay.

And if you have a bad experience, you're likely to leave.

It's like anywhere, right?

You go to a restaurant, you have a good experience, you tend to go back.

You have a bad experience, you have one bad experience.

And people typically won't go back.

They won't keep going back to the same restaurant.

Maybe they will, maybe they'll try it again and just assume that there was a bad day.

Maybe maybe the cook had a bad day, or a waitress or waiter had a bad day.

You know, we'll we'll tend to go back one or two more times.

But we won't keep going back.

If we keep having a bad experience, and we're paying to buy food, we expect that food to be good.

We expect the service to be satisfactory.

There was a restaurant that I can think of that we absolutely loved.

We loved the food.

I mean, the food was so good.

And we went two, I think two different times, and both times.

I'm not kidding when I said it took a minimum of an hour and a half until we got our food.

We weren't in a packed restaurant.

It was a small local restaurant.

There were maybe, I don't know, three other couples in the restaurant.

It wasn't busy.

And I'm telling you, it took forever.

It's like the the cook was cooking in reverse.

And I don't get it.

I don't understand it.

I cook, I love to cook.

And I just, in my wildest dreams, I can't imagine why it took that long to get our food.

But both times that we went there, it was that way.

And we finally stopped.

I was like, I will not go and sit for an hour and a half waiting to get our food.

I just I don't have that kind of time.

I think half an hour is reasonable.

Anything beyond that, it's you're kind of pushing it.

But an hour and a half, that's unacceptable.

So we stopped going there.

And unfortunately, a lot of other people did, and the restaurant permanently closed.

That was no surprise to me.

The food was phenomenal.

It was so good.

I mean, honestly, one of the best restaurants that I mean, as far as quality is is concerned, one of the best I've ever been to in my life.

And that restaurant could have been such a smashing success.

But it was the experience that stopped people from going.

And it closed its doors.

And I think that can be applied to churches, right?

And really any other area.

So that part's not surprising.

We can have the best worship service in the world.

Absolutely.

I mean, phenomenal.

We can have, and this happens a lot, by the way.

We can have great preaching.

We can have a great music team and you know, the whole shebang, just a phenomenal flawless worship service from start to finish.

But if we give people a bad experience, they're not going to come back.

And I've seen many churches close our doors that were great churches.

But they didn't provide a good experience.

And you, you know, when I talk about bad experiences, it doesn't have to be abuse.

Like I was talking about abuse earlier, but it doesn't have to be abuse.

Or abuse of any kind.

I haven't heard that word for a long time.

Laxidaisical attitude when people come through the door.

But I walk in the door and not one person greets me.

And I'm not there to get my, you know, to get my hand kissed by people, and they don't have to go out of their way.

And, you know, I'm not looking for royal treatment, not by long shot.

But when people don't even acknowledge you when you walk in the door, that's a bad experience.

And this happens all the time.

I've seen it happen at my congregation.

I've watched visitors walk through the door, and not one person has walked up and greeted them.

And believe me, I let my congregation know it.

When I see that happen, I'm like, please, please put yourself in their shoes.

If if you walk into a church and not one person takes time to greet you to say hi to you, you're not going to feel welcome.

I mean, you're you're just not.

You're not, you're not going to want to come back.

So that part of this study doesn't surprise me, but there were some things that did surprise me.

I'm going to read on.

I'm going to talk about how they break this down.

Um for the study released Monday, December 15th, changing from one brand of Protestantism to another did not count as switching faiths.

Right.

In other words, if you switch from Methodist to Presbyterian, that's not counting as switching faiths.

The study found that 86% of Americans were raised in a religion, but those who stayed tended to have a different experience from those who left.

Quote.

Our data shows that the nature of their religious experiences as children, that is, whether they were mostly positive or negative, plays a significant role in whether they stay in their childhood religion as adults.

The studies authors wrote.

And when I go back through, I guess that makes sense.

But when I go back through and I think about my memories at church, it's the memories that I remember the most, my most vivid memories are when I was a young kid, being in a youth group, going to events, doing big things, these one-time events, youth rallies, you know, these one-time events that stick in my mind.

Bible bowls.

You know, it's the trips that we traveled, and uh we had an experience.

And it obviously was a positive experience, but we we created memories.

There's a camp, there's a local camp that I remember.

We used to go, I by used to, it might have been twice.

Once in the summer, once in the winter, at least that I can remember.

But we went to this local camp and just had it was like a men's retreat.

But at the men's retreat, the men brought their kids.

And I remember, oh my goodness, I remember we had this big snowstorm, and they they had the sledding hill.

I can still, I mean, I still vividly remember this, and I was probably 10 years old.

I remember exactly what it looked like.

I remember, I remember this, the smells of walking into the cabin, having the fire, the crackling fire.

I I remember those memories very vividly.

Now, as I get older, you know, uh, teenager, right about the time that I left for college, I have very, very few memories of church.

Good or bad.

I just I don't have a whole lot of memories.

But what we those experiences matter.

And when we have, I was fortunate, I had really good, really good experiences as a kid.

So I'm in that category of the 84%.

I had a positive experience.

I'm still in the same faith that I was when I was a Kid.

But I got to tell you, as I got older, I started having bad experiences.

And lots of them.

I remember every single one of those just as vividly as the good memories that I remember when I was a kid.

We remember, we tend to remember more the bad experiences.

Those play in our minds over and over.

So it's vital that we avoid the negative.

We have to avoid the negative experiences.

And that means that we have to be on our best behavior all the time.

And I've heard people say, well, you know, when when somebody behaves very badly, or somebody, somebody especially is a criminal.

Um, child sexual abusers, churches say this all the time, and they're like, but look at all the good that they've done in their life.

The abuse was just a small part of their life.

That doesn't work, folks.

Those children, those children who are sexually assaulted, that sticks with them forever.

It changes their view of who God is.

It destroys our self-worth.

It wrecks any ounce of trust that they'll ever have with any adult in the church.

I mean, it really, really does a lot of damage.

And so we can't make that argument.

Oh, but most of what they did was good.

And so we need to look beyond the bad that they did.

No, we really don't.

We need to be careful.

We need to be consistent.

We need to make sure that we give people a good experience.

And the way that we do that, and I'm not talking about the camps and you know, all those fun events that I was mentioning.

I'm talking about giving somebody an experience with other people, human-to-human contact, where we let our lightness shine, where we treat people with decency.

It's the stories that I highlight on the show every single day.

It's being the person who's kind of in the background just doing kind gestures for other people.

I I had one of my church members email me the other day.

It was this heartfelt email, and he said, I just want you to know so many people from the church have reached out to me.

And when I need people, they're here.

I don't even ask.

They're just here.

And I want you to know that everything that you and your family have done, and everything that everybody else at church has done does not go unnoticed with me.

And that that moved me.

That made me feel proud, proud of my congregation.

Because people remember those experiences.

They matter.

69% of people who had a negative experience have no religion.

Zero.

They've left church altogether.

I mean, that's the vast majority of people who have a negative experience, will leave the church altogether.

Or whatever faith it is.

So Americans who grew up in what Pugh called highly religious homes were more likely to keep their childhood faith, 82% than those raised with low levels of religious religiosity.

Only 40 47%, less than half of those people stayed.

And so that's why I talk about consistency all the time too.

We have to consistently be good people.

We have to consistently show up to church.

When you're missing church for every other thing and reason in the world, um, you don't instill that in your in your kids.

You don't instill a sense of consistency.

You don't instill a sense of urgency.

And no matter how many times I tell people that, I think parents still find excuses a lot of the times to, you know, whether it's the ball game or man, sports have really interfered with with church in recent years.

But it could be the ball game or it could be whatever, you name it.

When we start finding reasons to have low levels of religiosity, we can't expect our kids to have high levels of religiosity.

Do you follow me?

And the research shows that.

But here's what surprised me the most.

Those most likely to keep their childhood faith were Hindus.

Followed by Muslims, 77%.

Jews, 76%.

Those with no religion, 73%.

Protestants, 70%, Catholics, a little over half, 57%.

Latter-day Saints, 54%, and Buddhist, 45%.

That really struck me.

The people most likely to keep their childhood faith were Hindus.

At the top of the list, Muslims, number two, Muslims doesn't surprise me.

That's one that they're really, really good at instilling our faith in their children.

They live and breathe their religion.

Jews, 76%.

That one doesn't surprise me that much.

That's the same thing.

It's the Shema.

The Shema is teach these things to your kids.

Talk about them when you wake up and when you lie down, when you walk along the road.

You know, talk about the scriptures constantly.

And that's really instilled in the Jewish faith.

Um, which is fantastic.

But what surprised me was that the people with no religion stay consistent more than Protestants.

Those most likely to keep their childhood faith, which is no religion at all, 73%, they beat Protest Protestants.

That's pretty alarming.

And I think that just goes to show that a lot of people must not be having good experiences.

So we need to work on this.

We need to do something about this.

We'll talk about that after the break.

We are coming up on another break here.

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According to a pew research that just came out on December 15th, this was a long study.

It shows that our experiences.

As kids really matter.

Whether we keep our faith, our childhood faith, or whether we switch faiths or dump religion altogether.

Our childhood experiences really matter.

So it's really important as Christians, as believers, it's really, really vital.

Not just important, it's vital that we provide positive experiences for people.

And I'm not talking about fake experiences, and I'm not talking about the church that I just saw in Texas that they're doing this uh Christmas production that I thought it was, I thought it was a fake news story at first, but then I was kind of looking and I was like, nope, that's I'm pretty sure that's real.

But they had um they had like animals and they're charging tickets for people to come to pay for the production, but they had like full-blown animals, camels and horses and cows and donkeys.

They had tons of people coming down on on wires, like dropping out of the ceiling.

They had angels dropping out of the ceiling, and uh they had a drummer that that had a full blown drum set that was dropping out of the ceiling.

Like I'm watching this, and I'm not gonna lie, part of me is a little bit jealous.

I'm like, man, what would it be like to have that kind of a budget?

But the bigger part of me just shakes my head, and I'm like, I get trying to put on a good production for Christmas.

Like I really get that.

I under I understand that we ought to put our all into into a Christmas service when we're celebrating the birth of Jesus.

But a production like that, like it was wild, absolutely wild.

And uh, I don't I don't know.

I'm not talking about those kinds of experiences, folks.

I'm not talking about going over the top and spending a couple million dollars on some big production.

I'm talking about person to person, treating people with kindness, dignity, respect, honor, patience, yeah, being welcoming to people.

That's more important than anything else, period.

And the fact that so many people are leaving the faith.

It's alarming that what was it, 69% of the people who had a negative experience have no religion.

Well, here's another alarming thing of those people, of that 69%, about half of Americans, 53% who no longer claim religion, known as the nuns, after growing up religious, did so by age 18.

By age 18, if we don't give positive experiences, these people would leave church, many of them forever.

They'll never come back.

It's so important for us to especially treat kids with kindness and respect, to be welcoming to them, to be protective of them, to not allow abuse to go on in the church.

And that's why I fought so hard for so many years trying to protect innocent people after I discovered my own father was a pedophile.

I watched what it did to the faith of his victims.

Most of his victims have absolutely zero to do with God.

Full blown atheists, and I get it, I understand it.

I'm empathetic.

It ruins their perception of who God is, especially when it's done in the name of God, when the abuse is done in the name of God.

I've seen children who were not abused, but they just were they were treated like they were nuisances, that they were problems, that they were noisy and they were they were too loud and they were jumping over pews, and adults would be really quick to correct them or to correct the parents, and to make the kids feel less than.

You have nothing to apologize.

We're so grateful that your kids are here.

You ever been around a kid?

Ever.

Sometimes they just they they just have a meltdown.

Sometimes for no reason.

It is what it is.

But to point out a kid, and I've seen I've seen videos of of pastors doing this, where they'll publicly call out, humiliate and shame kids because they're disruptive.

That blows my mind.

And I will almost almost guarantee that many of those kids will never be back again.

As they grow older, they'll leave the faith, they'll never come back.

These experiences matter.

The way that we treat people and talk to people and talk about people really matters.

That's why I did a show on President Trump, his remarks about Rob Reed, right?

He he was so offensive and mean and cruel and made it all about himself.

And I don't know, right?

You don't fight fire with fire.

I get that Rob Rayner didn't like President Trump.

He was very vocal about that.

Uh, he himself was very nasty at times.

I've heard, I didn't look into this, but I've seen posts about well, Rob Rayner when Rush Limbaugh got cancer, he announced that Rob Rayner not only didn't have sympathy, but he said that was that was a deserved prognosis because Rush Limbaugh was such a nasty person.

Like I said, I didn't verify that.

I I didn't find the actual quote.

So I can't say, I mean, that's allegedly he said that.

If he did, then that was a terrible thing to say, but you don't fight fire with fire.

You don't retaliate when somebody is murdered.

Um, you don't talk down to people and bash people.

You know, I talk about it all the time.

That's not what inspires people.

What inspires people, the stories that we see.

In fact, I'm gonna share one this week.

I guess I'll just leave you on the hook for that.

I'm gonna share another inspiring story where people came together.

The nation came together and rallied around this individual, and it just it was such a heartwarming story.

And I'm like, this is what inspires people.

This is what makes people have hope.

It restores our hope in humanity, it restores their hope in life.

It gives them something to live for.

When we rally around people, when we make people feel like they're the most important person in the room.

I'm telling you, it gives them will to live.

It gives them a reason to live, it gives them a reason for hope, it gives them a different view of God.

You'll hear a lot of people, it's really interesting.

You'll hear a lot of people who have no religion.

When somebody does something that impacts them for good, when they rally around them when they pray for them or they, you know, do something really special, raise money for them, they'll say, you know, I used to have this really bad view of God, but now I'm not so sure.

Now I hear it all the time.

I read these stories, and that's the one thing that jumps out at me.

It's it's that people they start to believe in God again.

And they do that when we're the hands in the feet of Jesus.

When we do these acts of kindness, when we give people that good experience, we've got to do kind acts to people.

We've got to be kind to them.

We've got to be, we've got to be nice to them.

We've got to be the good Samaritan.

When we see somebody in need, we need to step in and we need to protect them.

You know, the Bible doesn't ever suggest that we do that.

It's it's never a suggestion.

It's always a commandment.

I still love what James says.

James, the brother of Jesus, he says, pure and undefiled religion before our father is this.

That we care for the orphans and the widows in their distress and keep oneself unstained from the world.

You know, you care for people when they're struggling.

I have a church member and a dear friend of mine.

He and his wife, I didn't know this until just literally just about a week ago.

He and his wife have been doing this for years.

But they go to our children's aid home, which is essentially a residential program for foster kids who can't find foster parents.

Which wrap your mind around what I just said.

They're the unwanted.

Not only do they get pulled from the home because of abusive or uh just uh inhumane living conditions, but then they can't find foster parents.

Nobody wants to foster them.

So these kids, and they know it, like they're not stupid.

They know that nobody wants them.

Maybe it's because of their age, or maybe there's just a shortage of foster parents, whatever the reason, but they're in this foster home together.

They're living together, and it's basically like a like a dormitory.

And these kids have had a hard, hard life.

So this dear friend of mine from church was telling me, you know, we have this one boy that we bought Christmas presents for, and we asked him what he wanted.

We went there, we visited.

Uh, we asked him, what do you want for Christmas?

And my friend started tearing up, and he said, you know what this boy told me he wanted for Christmas.

Socks.

He wanted warm socks and a pair of gloves.

And he started to tear up, and he was like, you know, I can you imagine being a 12, 13 year old boy, and your Christmas wish list, all you want for Christmas is a pair of socks.

He's like, I think about, he's like, Jimmy, think about when you were 12, 13 years old.

Your parents asked you, what do you want for Christmas?

He's like, think about your wish list.

Oh, I remember, you know, I was back in the day of the Sears catalog.

You remember the Sears catalog?

We'd go through that thing, and you know, that was before the internet, and we'd have to go through and we would earmark pages.

We would circle things, we'd we'd get a pen, and we'd circle things.

I always loved it when I had my own catalog.

If I if I had a catalog that I didn't have to share with my siblings, right?

Because you didn't want your siblings to see what your what your wish list was.

Because they might ask for the same thing.

And in my mind, I was like, well, what if they get what if they get what I wanted and I don't?

So like that was the coolest thing is if if you could keep your Sears catalog hidden from your siblings.

That was that was like the cat's meow.

But I remember going through it and just being so excited.

I wanted the I I can still remember.

I remember what what my wish list was.

I remember what I got.

I remember a remote control car.

That was like the big present that I wanted.

And I got it.

And I remember I would spend days with this remote control car.

I can still picture, I can still remember exactly what it looks like.

I could probably do a search online and find the exact car that I got when I was probably 10, 11 years old.

You know, but those experiences, they they do something inside of you.

And we need to give experiences for other people.

And so my friend from church, he's a he's a dear friend of mine, he's a church member.

He said, Me and my wife, we're gonna make sure that he has the best Christmas that he's ever had.

And you see, that's representative in that child's mind.

That's representative of who God is.

God cares enough.

These Christians care enough about me to do something really nice for me.

And I want to encourage you too.

Like, this isn't just a story on people's experiences, good or bad, and and leaving church or not.

This is about calling us to do something kind for people.

If you're a Christian, and I mean, really, whatever your your religion is, but I'm a Christian, so I'm speaking to the Christians here.

Do something for for somebody.

Christmas is coming up in a heartbeat.

Do something nice.

Find a foster care center that's near you.

Just bring presents.

Bring I had another church member who would do that.

Years ago, she would bring presents to all the kids.

She would, she would go up and visit, and she would sit down and listen to every single kid.

And this woman, this dear friend of mine did not have money.

And so I was like, look, I talked to our treasurer.

I was like, we've got to help her out because what she's doing is such a blessing to these kids.

And I remember the one year I brought the presents because she didn't she didn't want them to know that it was her.

I brought the presents, I delivered them, and I remember the director crying, and she was like, I can't tell you what this means to these kids.

She's like, they would not have had a Christmas were it not for your church member.

You know, we need to think about other people.

We need to give them a good experience, and we should be doing that in the name of God.

When we do that, I promise it's gonna, it's gonna make a shift inside of people.

The pure research shows it.

I mean, I'm just reading you numbers.

I'm just telling you what the facts are.

When you give somebody a good experience, whatever your faith is, those kids will tend to stay.

We have such power to be the hidden lightness and to be kind and generous, generous with our time, generous with our money.

And so I urge you to do that this holiday season.

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There is a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us.

When there's so much darkness that envelops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people.

Join me and be in the light.