“AND, we have a moderator staff dedicated both to free expression AND to maintaining the conservative identity of Free Republic and to banging heads when necessary. They get their marching orders from our main man, Big Jim Thompson, who, with his brother Matt Dillon, keeps the riffraff liberal troll deadbeats away from our town.”
That statement isn’t exactly right. And that is the likely cause of donations dropping.
Just like here in California, which I hope to escape shortly, driving people -and businesses - away affects the bottom line. Hardly surprising.
Trolls don’t belong on a conservative, activist site. They come to disrupt, not to talk.
YM, as one with an interest in folks going to church, I know that transitions of people over time is inevitable. They don’t like a particular sermon, they don’t like a particular decision, they don’t like that the pastor’s son goes to a Catholic Church, they find a shiny, new bauble of a church, whatever....and then they leave. I just expect it now. You’re gonna lose some, and you’re gonna gain some.
What it means is that you keep trying, because I know I’m far from perfect in this life.
Particularly, you try to keep your active group active, then you try to reach out and bring more into the active group, and if the Lord ever opens a door, then you try to restore friendships with those old members who went elsewhere.
Matthew 5: 23”Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.…”