Hello C3 Family!

Weekly Rant - A problem we can actually fix

The numbers above paint a picture that we all are painfully aware of, namely declining church attendance and thus faith in America. Though there has been an uptick in conversions since the end of the pandemic, due to multiple factors, the fact remains that adult church attendance is still at dismally low numbers. However, I would like to call attention to a bright spot that should prompt us to action. The median savings amount for the US adult is $8,000. Now as a refresher for those not currently in middle school arithmetic, median does not mean average, it means the number that appears most often in the middle of a sequence or category of numbers. the average amount in savings for an adult in the US is actually much higher, roughly $62K. I chose to use the median instead of the average for this week's rant because I think it helps paint a bright picture while using some bleak colors. 

You see, the median savings number for the us Adult gives us one of the lowest possible numbers, but even if we take that lowest possible number and apply it to the US adults actually attending a weekly church service, we get a pile of cash that is almost half a trillion dollars. Sure, we may be saving that money for a rainy day, but even if we took half of it ($4K per us adult) we would still have a $250 billion slush fund. That slush fund could be used to rebuild church congregations through some truly great evangelization outreach.

My points is this...We have the means to combat secularism and revitalize Christianity in our country through community based and meaningful evangelization efforts. the only thing stopping is us is our obsession with financial security. It is not the fault of TikTok, bad Politian's, drug cartels, the porn industry, Hollywood, or even Satan himself. It is our fault! We have the means, we just fail to act because of fear. 

Remember, in my numbers above I used the worst available. In reality the numbers are much larger. yes, I know, the problem will take time, innovation, strategy, and hard work in addition to capital. But to be frank, all those sound like excuses to not get started. 

Through Him all things are possible, and we have the means, we just need to give the means to Him and let him do his job as Savior and God.

Weekly Stories

• Nvidia, the US chip maker darling shed over $580 billion in market value yesterday because a high performing and cheaper Chinese product became available (The biggest one-day loss in market value ever for one company on the US stock market). The market as a whole was dragged down by this event since investors are now worried about the US' ability to capitalize on the massive investment into AI chip making.

• Because of the story above, the Nasdaq lost almost $1 trillion in value. This is all because the cheap, high performing, open source, reasoning model of a company called DeepSeek took everyone by surprise. DeepSeek claims their AI model only took $6 million to build and it is rivaling the abilities of OpenAI. Just for context, $6 million would only be 3% of Open AI's budget for their model. 

• Hundreds of thousands of people are going back to northern Gaza for the first time since the early days of the war. This is all part of the ceasefire agreement that we all hope will last but none of actually think will. 

• Trump signed an executive order that eliminates DEI initiatives from the defense department. 

• Perplexity AI is among potential buyers of TikTok and it presented a plan that would give the US government a 50% stake in TikTok if it ever IPOs.

• The state department has frozen almost all foreign aid and woke programs for 90 days while the new administration assesses what has been done and what needs to be done in foreign conflicts. Federal jurges are already tring to block this.

• The 2025 World Economic Forum concluded in Davos this week. The primary focus of the WEF this year was on AI and the Trump administration. Though nothing was really done, just a lot of people saying seemingly nice things to satisfy what I assume they think the public wants to hear. 

• By the way, did anyone catch the fact that Joe Biden just became a member of the Free Masons? This is so in your face demonic, that I don't even have a snarky comment to make. NEWS, EVENTS & SCHOLARSHIPS | COGMPrinceHallMasons.