Today’s Temple Cleansers

On Monday, the church remembered the time Jesus cleansed the temple of those who were using their position and power to fleece and oppress the people of God.

These people defiled the temple by their actions and presence…and our Lord took up a whip to rid the holy place of them.

Today I want to remember todays temple cleansers…my fellow bloggers who do the hard work to both mark and attempt to remove those who defile our churches today.

Contrary to what what critics like this say, it is a hard and selfless work indeed.

Bloggers like my friend Julie Anne Smith and the indomitable women who run The Wartburg Watch put in tremendous amounts of time in a effort to see biblical standards of truth and ethics prevail in the church.

Bloggers have to work harder than “professional” reporters…we don’t have budgets or staffs to help us out, but we are judged by the same journalistic standards as they are.

None of us are making any money doing this and doing this comes at a high cost indeed.

Speaking for myself, (but knowing the others well enough to know they would concur) the hardest part of the job is the stories you’ll never read… because we can’t write them.

Those stories are the ones that keep us up at night, the ones we’ll take to our graves because we are protecting the victims or that we are convinced were true, but couldn’t get anyone to go on the record.

I will leave this life haunted by some of those stories and the people who told them.

Add to that the sheer weight of carrying hundreds, even thousands, of stories of abuse that people trusted you enough to tell you because they had to tell somebody…and nobody in the church would listen.

Add to that the fact  that some we know are abusive are still working the flock and we can’t stop them.

We also endure the threat of lawsuits and wrath of those we are trying to keep from harm.

All that weight, carried well, makes this a holy vocation.

Our critics bemoan the fact that the “traditional”media often picks up our stories.

I bemoan the fact that the traditional media doesn’t initiate the work that we have to do because they won’t… until we make it worth their time.

Stories about church abuse and fallen leaders are trendy in the media now…when I started blogging not only were they not trendy you were condemned to the hottest part of hell by many for speaking of it.

We were the “accusers of the brethren”…satans…for trying to save God’s people from those who would use and abuse them…abusers who where then framed as victims.

Virtually all the stories you read in the traditional media about these issues were first covered by a blog…from the issues in the Baptist church to James MacDonald, someone had the courage to blog about them, often years before any other media would touch them.

By doing so, they effected change, change for the better for the people of God.

So today I celebrate my comrades in “watchblogging” who do what they do not out of love of attention (as some claim), but out of a love for Gods people and His church.

Soldier on, my friends and may God bless your work .

Sometimes you’re never more like Jesus then when you have a whip in your hand…