@SuperLutheran I've done some work for the institutional churches. Most of those guys I've met have been more businessman than pastor. And I've attended a few dozen churches traveling in the last few years. I make it a point to meet the pastors if I can and talk with them a bit - I'm a guy who's maybe looking to move, tell me about the church, etc.... No one impressed me much.

You said you were concerned that doctrinal compromise on Virgin Birth was leading to the present awful state (I assume you mean sexual degeneracy and familial collapse).

I'm saying that people don't rely on these faery-castle theological constructs and that pastors neither have to or should.

There are plenty of meatspace reasons not to be a degenerate - and everything in your heart and soul militates against it, if you just stop to listen. That's Christ (or Odin or Buddha). Preach that - but first live it. Be able to look them in the eye and inspire them with authenticity.

Modern people will not accept mythology as an actual, literal happening. Trying to convince them to take their own side based on what they're going to process as faery tales is the wrong approach.

As is dragging us through sectarianism over which Jews were good Jews when, how many times to cross yourself or what words must be used in prayer.