Simple Living This Week No. 59 – Church Doctrine, New Website Hosting To Avoid Cancel Culture

Happy first day of March! This is my birthday month so I’ll be looking forward to that in a few weeks. Caroline and David have already been asking me for birthday gift ideas so I need to come up with a few small things I would like. Since I can’t eat out we’ll probably roast an organic chicken, our go-to celebratory meat when we want to eat together. (They share meals each day that I can’t eat.)

We submitted our paperwork to become members of the church we’ve been attending off and on for more years than I’m going to admit. You will not be surprised and probably laugh when I tell you this story.

We filled out the forms and one of the questions asked, “Do you fully ascribe to the Constitution of (insert church name) which includes the Statement of Faith and the Church Covenant?” I selected “No” and explained in a few sentences each the three things I did not fully ascribe to (their specific views on last things, alcohol, and deacons). I understand their views and I’m not opposed to them, per say. But I don’t fully ascribe to them. The pastor said in his twenty years of doing this he had never had someone turn in a membership application that said, “No.” So we discussed them and he finally realized that while I did not fully ascribe to them, I was willing to abide by them.

In my mind, “fully ascribe” and “abide by” are two completely different things. I am willing to abide by the views they have established even if I don’t fully agree with them.

Anyway, at the membership meeting a few weeks ago I guess they voted to change the wording of the form. LOL!

Words have meaning, people! If you listen to any videos I make or my podcasts, you already know that I speak deliberately and sometimes slowly because I’m thinking carefully about what I’m saying. I am a word person and try to be precise when it comes to important things. I’m less so when I’m writing a post like this, but if I’m discussing important topics then I want to make sure I clearly articulate what I’m thinking.

Anyway, I thought it was funny when we heard they had already voted to change the wording. I wish I had been there to hear the discussion, but since we aren’t members we didn’t attend the membership meeting.

I also wish I could speak more openly about the church because there are many things about it that I would like to share. But I try to keep some aspects of our life private so I won’t be linking to anything about the church.

If you’ve known me in real life or online for a long time, you know that deciding to join a church again is a big step for us – especially me. We’ve had some pretty bad experiences with churches. Ten years ago I did not think I would ever join another church, but here we are. Hopefully this goes better than the previous one. Different denomination so I’m a bit more hopeful.

So that’s the big thing going on in our life right now.

Other than that our week will be work, homeschooling, etc. David took Caroline out to do some shopping and go to Sonic for supper today so I enjoyed a blissful four hours alone. Stretches like that are very few and far between now so I was thankful for it. I spent the time working and enjoyed the quiet in the house.

I don’t have any big homemaking goals this week. We’re all-in on getting our new hosting set up which will set up an entire series of other things that have to be moved, updated, etc. It has been a multi-week process which has been a bit frustrating, but the company has been absolutely slammed as people are switching to hosting that is “safer” in this cancel culture we’re living in.

We finally got all of our domains switched over to the “safer” company over the weekend. Now we are moving our websites. We’re moving to a much larger, dedicated server (as opposed to the virtual private server I’m on now). Our goal is to run everything through my website, including videos and podcasts. It’s simply impossible to rely on any other platforms right now. Either you are stuck waiting on their timetable or you discover they aren’t as trustworthy as you thought they would be. We’ll be paying more for the server each month, but we’re to the point where we really don’t have a choice.

Once we get everything set up, I’ll share a link to who we are using. I’m not sharing it until we’re up and running though just in case we have an issue. David is actually on hold right now, waiting for an engineer to talk with. Apparently this company’s name was shared widely at CPAC last week and over the weekend and they have been overwhelmed even more than they already were. I’m glad for them, but just want my site done! LOL!

In any case, what is up in your world? What are you working on in your home right now? I hope you’ll leave a comment and tell us about it.