Orange Equity

10/10/2026

Happy National Principals Month to our 10 amazing OCPS principals! Thank you for leading with care, supporting our students, and encouraging our staff every day. We’re grateful for all you do for our school communities! 🧡💙

09/21/2026

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdVXqT7NjN9/?stkn=MWowcThvYXYwaWp2bw==

09/19/2026

09/18/2026

Pastoring was never supposed to be about comfort.

Not Sunday performances.
Not keeping donors happy.
Not protecting the brand.

It’s about faithfulness.
Even when faithfulness costs you.

Daniel didn’t stop praying when obedience became illegal.

Paul didn’t reshape the gospel to make it safer.

The early church wasn’t built by blending in.

But today, too many shepherds are either echoing a politicized counterfeit of Jesus — or staying quiet because rocking the boat might rock the budget.

When truth threatens attendance, silence feels safer. When conviction threatens giving, compromise can look like wisdom.

But fear is a terrible shepherd.

And the pastors who do speak up?

Divisive.
Troublemakers.
Disruptors.
The turds in the Christian swimming pool.

Fine.

But when Israel bowed to a golden calf, Aaron wasn’t standing off to the side shaking his head.

He helped shape it.

That should haunt every Christian leader.

COVID exposed how fragile a lot of modern ministry had become. Some pastors quit. Some cowered. Some discovered that lukewarm is easier to fund than courage.

And now we’re here.

Pastors — across every church and denomination — this is your test.

Movements fade.
Politics shift.
Crowds change.

Truth doesn’t.
Jesus doesn't.

History will remember who stood for Jesus, who bowed to the calf, and who stayed silent while others built it.

Jesus said, “By their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16)

And fruit doesn’t lie.

If this season is producing silence instead of courage, compromise instead of truth, and Christian leaders helping shape a counterfeit Christ instead of confronting it, we need accountability.

The Church does not need more comfortable shepherds when this is over.

It needs faithful ones.

Even when it’s hard.
Especially when it’s hard.

Pastors, this season is your job interview for what comes next.

Not your words.
Your fruit.

And for some of you, it’s already speaking loudly.

08/21/2026

Submit your public comment before the proposed new changes go into effect.

https://19thnews.org/2026/08/head-start-program-overhaul-trump-proposal/?fbclid=IwY2xjawT1b9xwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHve35mZSfXgks-9OnmFwHdeBc1LSspytgYMYj2imMzJQ0ZMTS8JyGy6uUuSM_aem_7L1lyYhC3gKZpPwGtutZHQ

A sweeping proposal from the Trump administration would eliminate or loosen hundreds the anti-poverty program’s rules, from classroom ratios and health screenings to parent involvement.

08/19/2026

Before you can sell Christians on righteous aggression, you have to sell them an enemy.

In June, speaking to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, President Trump warned that the “radical left” wanted a renewed “war on Christians and churches.” He said, “They will close your churches,” “They will kill your people,” and “They want to end religion.”

At a Christian worship service inside the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prayed that “every round find its mark” against “the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” asking God for “overwhelming violence of action” against “those who deserve no mercy.”

Read those again.
See the pattern?

Tell Christians God is on our side.
Tell them who God’s enemies are.
Tell them who deserves no mercy.

Then aggression starts feeling like obedience.

James and John knew that trick long before MAGA.

When a Samaritan village rejected Jesus in Luke 9, they asked if they should call down fire and destroy it.

And here’s the uncomfortable part:
They had biblical precedent.

Elijah had once called down fire from heaven.

Sounds cool with James & John.
But Jesus still rebuked them.

They found the applicable Bible story.
And entirely missed the heart of Christ.

There’s a viral parable about red and black ants in a jar: leave them alone and they coexist. Shake the jar and suddenly they attack each other.

The actual “ant science” behind it is apparently flimsy — but the question itself is excellent:

Who keeps shaking the jar?

Who keeps telling Christians whom to fear?

Who keeps turning neighbors into threats, political opponents into enemies, and elections into spiritual warfare?

Because once you convince Christians that the other side is God’s enemy, almost any cruelty can be sold as faith and courage.

Jesus gave us a wildly inconvenient command:

"Love your enemies.”
Matthew 5:44

Not defeat them.
Not demean them.
Not fantasize about fire from heaven.

Love them.

If your Christianity needs somebody to keep pointing at an enemy so you’ll stay angry, afraid, and politically obedient, somebody is discipling you.

But it's not Jesus.

08/18/2026

Have we finally seen enough destruction and calamity that the tricksters and strong men have wrought? Are we now ready to remake the world?

YOU are responsible for remaking it in a better image. You DO HAVE your little sphere of influence. YOU can be a hero big, or small. Act as if no one else is coming to save you. Be the change for the better and those around you will join. Only together can we heal and rebuild in a more equitable, just, loving and balanced world.

'The Odyssey' is the political movie of the decade.Thoughts? Gues...

08/12/2026

Growing up Southern Baptist, I heard plenty of fire-and-brimstone sermons.

I just never expected to deliver one.

But here we are.
S***m’s on fire.

For generations, many have used S***m and Gomorrah as Exhibit A for what God hates most — and somehow our Southern Baptist sermons keep lingering on the Rated R parts, usually aimed at gay people or somebody else’s s*x life.

But then you actually read what the rest of Scripture says about S***m.

And things get uncomfortable.

Ezekiel writes:
“Now this was the sin of your sister S***m: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

That’s not "liberal theology."
That’s Ezekiel 16:49.

Arrogant.
Overfed.
Unconcerned.
Ignoring the poor.

Whatever arguments people make about Genesis 19, this story is not God’s condemnation of gay people.

The scene at Lot’s house is a mob demanding access to vulnerable outsiders.

That isn’t a consensual, loving relationship.

It’s domination, humiliation, and the dehumanization of strangers.

Then the prophets do something the Evangelical Right rarely mentions:

They compare God’s own people to S***m.

Isaiah does it.
Jeremiah does it.
Ezekiel does it.

S***m becomes a warning about societies — and religious people — consumed by arrogance, excess, injustice, corruption, and indifference to suffering.

Which makes the way we’ve traditionally aimed the S***m story a little awkward. 😐

Because if we’re going to look around America asking who resembles S***m, Scripture isn't pointing us to drag shows and pronouns.

It points us toward things much closer to home.

What about staggering wealth beside desperate poverty?

Cruelty and indifference toward outsiders?

Protecting power while neglecting vulnerable people?

Calling compassion weakness?

Using God’s name to bless whatever keeps us comfortable?

Maybe America does look a little like S***m.

Just not for the reasons many of us were taught.

We’ve spent decades using S***m to point at somebody else. But, maybe Scripture was asking us to look in the mirror.

So yes — America may need another fire-and-brimstone sermon about S***m.

Maybe this time, we should preach it to the arrogant, overfed, unconcerned, the cruel, and indifferent — the very people Scripture confronts.

***m ***mAndGomorrah

08/12/2026

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