Quanquam non nego quin Apostolos postea quoque, vel saltem eorum loco Evangelistas interdum excitarit Deus, ut nostro tempore factum est.
The following morning Brother Blayden Tackwater removed his hat, polished its brass buckle on his dark grey bathrobe, and hung it up on the coat-peg in a closet that had been pressed into service as a sacristy. Months of discernment with his dog-eared copies of Albion’s Seed and the Institutes had prepared him well for the moment before him. He walked slowly and deliberately through the hallway and into the great parlor serving as his flock’s first meeting-house.
“Brethren and…sisters,” he called out, taking his place behind a large table to address his disciples. “What an absolute honor it is to stand here before you all. I believe there are no fewer than forty-four of us here today—a small church, by the standards of other congregations, but one destined for growth—growth and greatness!”
Forty-three drowsy young members of the elect beamed back at him, or perhaps at the gigantic eye on the poster taped to the makeshift altar. The congregation, still in its infancy, had reserved a conference room and appropriated the largest desk they could find to serve as both altar and pulpit. In accordance with historical tradition it had been deemed meet and right to continually remind the congregants of the all-seeing eye of Providence. As the church had no permanent building yet and therefore no wooden pulpit to paint on, the deacon had made a last-minute trip to Hobby Hut and drawn an amateur, but adequate, reminder of the judgment to come.
“Folks…this is going to be a truly based synod. The very first synod of the Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant. I’m—I’m so excited!” A tremendous grin and a suppressed giggle washed over him. To be bishop! At his age! Sister Zephyr, especially, looked at him in admiration and expectation.
“We have grown so, so much since I felt called to share the Gospel on my Minecraft server all those many months ago…and God has blessed us. God has blessed us, folks! We know that the elect are especially visible by their thrift and the prosperity they’ve been blessed with. It was just when I began my ministry that my crypto portfolio began to take off. And how it has taken off, friends. Our endowment has really—it’s really—”
“It’s zapped to the extreme!” shouted a member of the congregation.
“Yeah! It’s zapped to the extreme. What a fantastic way of putting it, Brother Mike. It’s really zapped to the extreme. It was predestined to zap to the extreme because God has such a great plan for it. It’s gone up 2500% in just the last week. This is not a coincidence, folks, because nothing is ever a coincidence. He is planning great and mighty works in the world with that crypto portfolio.”
Alleluia! The congregation raised its voice in polyphony, if not harmony.
“Brother Dactyl, could you go over the week’s schedule for us again?”
“No problem,” said Brother Dactyl, whose white deacon’s bathrobe more than enveloped his five-foot-five figure. “Today is the opening of the synod, our first meet-and-greet, and final plans for the election on Friday. On Wednesday morning, you and Zephyr are getting married—let’s give them a round of applause!”
Claps and cheers burst forth from the congregation.
“Thursday we will all be engaged in a retreat of discernment for the election, except for the recently-married, who will be enjoying the fruits of matrimony. Then, on Friday, we’ll have the election, on Saturday we’ll have the vestry meeting on the church’s finances and missions planning.”
“And then on Sunday…”
“On Sunday we will of course gather for worship and then pack up and go out to minister to the world.”
“Who’s on the vestry?” asked a girl in the second row of seats.
“Uh…” said Brother Dactyl. “That…I believe Brother Blayden was going to tell us more about the vestry.”
“Of course!” said Blayden, turning his head to the side and grabbing, with his teeth, a nicotine pouch tucked between his shoulder and his robe. “Well…the vestry, as we know, is a committee of laypeople assisting the minister in leading the church. I, uh…”
He flipped through the index of the Institutes looking desperately for guidance.
“Well, I have discerned that we should have a vestry committee. If you feel called to be a member of the vestry, in any case, please step forward.”
“But what will the vestry do?” asked the girl.
“I’m…I’m not entirely sure,” Blayden admitted. “Calvin doesn’t mention them but a church should really have a vestry. Does anybody know what the vestry is supposed to do?”
“At my church they helped handle the finances and did the donuts and coffee at Bible study before services,” piped up Brother Molossus, an early member of Blayden’s Minecraft server whose build suggested a great deal of relevant experience with donuts.
“That sounds just wonderful!” said Blayden. “Brother Molossus, do you feel called?”
“I sure do, Brother Blayden!”
“Excellent! Well, uh, let’s find...does anybody here have bookkeeping experience?”
“I had to learn bookkeeping when I had to do taxes for my influencer income,” said a member of the congregation. “We’re tax-exempt so it should be easy.”
“Well, Brother Matrix, how about joining the vestry as the financial specialist?”
“I would be blessed,” said Brother Matrix.
Within short order the church had seven members of the vestry.
“Other points of order,” Brother Blayden continued. “For the wedding tomorrow and services going forward we will need communion wine. Did anybody bring some?”
A general look of bewilderment reigned over the Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant.
“I do believe I asked the deacon to pick some up…”
“I’m only nineteen,” said Brother Dactyl. “And my parents don’t drink, and even if they did I couldn’t bring it with me through security.”
“Who is…who do we have here who is at least twenty-one?”
The faithful looked around at each other, waiting for someone to raise their hand.
“I’m twenty and my birthday’s next month,” said Brother Molossus. “But I think I might be the oldest.”
“We’ll need some for the wedding service tomorrow,” Brother Dactyl reminded them. “And, of course, for the rest of the week’s services.”
"We could get some grape juice,” suggested Molossus. “At my old church we used Welch's."
Brother Blayden considered this for a moment and felt the spirit move within him.
"Modernism, dear brother! Not merely modernism! POPERY!"
He was not entirely certain what popery was, but he liked the sound of it and had read a great many theological treatises by Cotton Mather inveighing against it. Such blatant and unrepentant contravention of true doctrine was surely popery in some form.
“Faith may provide,” Brother Dactyl reminded him. “It always does.”
“It does indeed, Brother Dactyl. Let us pray that God will aid us in preparation for our first services.”
The congregation fell silent and entreated Providence. After an appropriately solemn length of time Brother Blayden began to speak.
“The remaining question on the table is tithes. Now, I know we are all very young and don’t make much. Those of you who can tithe, however…”
“I’ve been tithing from my crypto portfolio,” said a member of the congregation in a T-shirt that read Degen4Lyfe. “I guess Brother Matrix will be taking care of the accounting now?”
“Brother Matrix,” said Brother Blayden, “I don’t suppose you could tell us a bit more about how we should be handling these? I’ve just been keeping track of them in a Google spreadsheet.”
Brother Matrix rose from his seat and sallied forth to the altar desk.
“Well, brothers and sisters, we’re tax-exempt, as you know, which makes a number of things much easier. However, we will still have to report our assets, and…”
“And if they’re in crypto this is complicated,” said Brother Blayden.
“Correct,” said Brother Matrix. “The government requires us to denominate our assets in fiat currency.”
“So,” asked the parishioner in the Degen4Lyfe shirt, “how should I measure—how do I figure out what the right income to tithe from is? I’ve been tithing on the dollar gains every month.”
“But the amount of crypto you hold hasn’t gone up?” asked Brother Matrix.
“Not usually. Sometimes I buy new coins or get some from an airdrop. If there’s an airdrop then I usually hoddle—”
“You—you what?”
“I hoddle. You need to know when to hoddle. You don’t want to sell your tokens right after an airdrop, you gotta hoddle ‘em until they’ve risen in value—”
“In dollars?”
“Well, yeah. How else would I know how much they’re worth?”
“I check my holdings against their value in gold,” said a parishioner in the back of the meeting-hall.
“Aw ptooey, Jack!” said Degen4Lyfe. “They’ve got a new fusion reactor that’s doing real alchemy now. It’s just gonna be fiat in a few years.”
“But then how do you know how much your crypto is actually worth?”
“I use the dollar value but adjust against inflation since 1971.”
“Why?” asked Jack. “What happened in 1971?”
“I think nobody really knows,” said Degen4Lyfe. “But I heard on Moe Logan that that’s when everything started going downhill. That’s when the globalists invented fiat and premarital sex.”
“Naw, that’s bullshit!” said Jack. “They had premarital sex before then. They came up with it all the way back in the 1920s with flappers. They called it a petting party. You would go into a speakeasy and order a petting party and they’d give you a flapper to rawdog with your cocktails. I read about it in The Great Gatsby in sophomore English class.”
“You’re making stuff up. I read every single page of the CliffsNotes of The Great Gatsby and got an A on the test and that wasn’t in there.”
“Well, maybe CliffsNotes skipped that part. I lost my copy but I read every single chapter of the free version on Fanfiction.net. I got a D but my parents made my English teacher change it to a B.”
“BRETHREN! Brethren,” Brother Blayden boomed at last, putting the discussion out of its misery. “I will talk to Brother Matrix and decide how to deal with tithing later. I am releasing everyone for a period of prayer and discernment. If you are on the defense committee, please meet me at 3 in the basement of the meeting-house. And if you are thinking of courting someone, please come and find me or Brother Dactyl for marriage counseling. We will be glad to find you a bundling door and discuss the details of our restoration of levirate marriage. Let us–”
“Do we really have to have sex if we get married?” a girl in a pair of grotesquely baggy jeans piped up. “I might get the ick. I don’t want to marry someone and get the ick.”
Brother Blayden froze, peering keenly at nothing in particular. He began to notice, as the ensuing pause grew pregnant and then heaving, a nicotine pouch stuck between his teeth.
“The Institutes,” he said, covertly breaking a splinter off a post on an adjoining wooden bannister, “remind us of the great joy and pleasure that have been created for us in the marital act…has anybody, uh…”
The congregation stared blankly at its leader, now half-absentmindedly wielding the splinter as a toothpick, and awaited his spiritual guidance.
“Has anybody—has anybody here…performed the marital act…perhaps outside of marriage?”
“My girlfriend wanted us to at one point,” said Brother Matrix. “We were at a party at her house when her parents were away. I thought about it but was worried someone might take a video.”
“Is it anything like gooning?” asked another member.
“I suppose it’s similar,” said Brother Blayden. “I don’t think the Institutes say very much about gooning.”
“I think it has to do with what you’re gooning to,” the parishioner said. “I think you’re supposed to goon to girls in sundresses. That’s the closest kind of gooning to the marital act.”
“That sounds about right to me,” said Brother Blayden, realizing the discussion had passed the frontier of his theological expertise. “Was that what you—what you gooned to?”
“Sometimes. But I’ve been tempted by videos of girl-on-girl.”
“A…a common temptation in our fallen age,” said Brother Blayden.
“You’ll have to tell us all about the marital act after you get married tomorrow,” said the girl in the oversized jeans. “Or maybe Sister Zephyr can lead a discussion in the women’s ministry.”
“That…that sounds like a great idea to me—sweetheart?”
Sister Zephyr’s face displayed a quizzical look.
“But we’ll be busy learning all about married life at first! Maybe later this week.”
“Of—of course, dear. I think—I think we should all adjourn for a day of prayer and discernment. If you are on the defense committee, please meet me in the basement at three this afternoon…”
The Renewed Church of the Plymouth Covenant rose from its seats and meandered cheerfully out of the meeting hall into the fallen world beyond.