Mike.

2025 was a year of reckoning for many so-called Christian leaders.

I don’t need to name names. You probably read about many of them. If not, you can check out the websites of Julie Roys or Ministry Watch, and many others. That’s not really a recommendation just an FYI.

At times it seemed like the public fall of yet another ministry leader hit the news every other day.

The constant drip of so many, including a couple pastors I had admired from afar, took a toll on me, to be honest.

I did not, for a minute, believe that any pastor or ministry leader was perfect…or that the person we saw on video or on stage fully represented who they were when the cameras and lights were off. We’re all sinners. All flawed. All human. We all make mistakes and bad decisions, including and especially me.

But what was making headlines often represented deliberate and longstanding deception, manipulation, and dishonesty by those we thought lived to a higher standard.

After a while, I started wondering if anybody was living what they preached. What they said they believed.

I know the answer to that is…OF COURSE there are!

But the skepticism and cynicism crept in.

And I hated it.

If these charlatans are making me, a long time believer, cynical about Christians what’s it doing to people who are skeptical, on the fence, or outright antagonistic?

—

On New Year’s afternoon, I drove to Sycamore Delaware.

It’s not a town. It’s a couple of roads and home to a fairly small population, but a high percentage of the people who live in Sycamore share the last name of Dukes.

I lived there for a couple of years beginning in 1980. I rented a rancher from one of the Dukes’.

I had known some of the Dukes for a while, but living in the neighborhood I came to know many of them better.

One of them was a guy my age named Mike Dukes. Mike was married to Sandy, and he lived on Dukes Lumber Road. That may not have been the official name of the road then, but that’s what it is now. Everybody just called it Dukes Road. I’m not sure how many Dukes lived on Dukes Road but there were several including Dale Dukes who lived on the corner. Just around the corner on Sycamore Road was his Dale’s Dad, whom everybody called Pop Pop Silas. Across the street was Scott Dukes.

Down Dukes Road was Dales brother Ross, and next to them were Ross’s sons Mike and then Barry Dukes.

I’ll stop there because at this point you probably need a scorecard.

Suffice it to say by the early 80’s there were a lot of Dukes in Sycamore. And there are more now.

My wife and I became close friends with Mike and Sandy, and Barry and Cami. It was before we all started having kids.

Mike and Barry were carpenters. It ran in the family.

I was not. It did not run in my family.

Those guys could build anything. I could barely put up a mailbox.

We played a lot of Uno, ate hard pretzels, and spent a good deal of time together in those days.

Ross was my Sunday School teacher. I sang in a gospel quartet with Dale and Barry. And I came to realize that there was something special about this Dukes family.

—

The reason I went back to Sycamore on January 1st was to attend the Celebration of Life for Mike. He passed away a couple of days before Christmas after more than two years of serious health issues, a transplant, open heart surgery and more.

I visited with him last Spring, in the home he built on Dukes Road next to his parents and his brother.

His health was bad and I thought a visit might encourage him a little.

Hopefully it did.

Unexpectedly, it encouraged me a lot more.

We told some stories of the old days and laughed about some memories. One story that I remembered was me offering to help Mike and Barry and Ross one Saturday when they were building Mike’s house. We all knew I’d be useless, but I figured I could hand them stuff.

They were installing flashing. I had no idea what flashing was or why they needed to install it, so I was asking a million questions. In my defense, I was a reporter at the time, so that’s what I did. I asked questions.

At one point, I think Mr Ross got tired of my questions. They were actually working and trying to get this house built and I was standing there asking dumb questions.

I picked up a piece of the flashing, which is like a thin piece of metal, and I said, “Why do they call it flashing?”

Ross thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard and the rest of the day he called me Flashing. At church the next day, I was known as Flashing. He’d bring that up for years.

I never found out why they call it flashing, but I did learn that the Dukes family is what Jesus meant in Matthew 5:13 when he talked about his followers being “the salt of the earth.”

Jesus meant they were “valuable, pure, and essential for preserving goodness, like salt preserves food and was highly prized. It describes honest, humble, and dependable people, with origins tied to the ancient importance of salt as a preservative.” (Source: Quillbot)

As I sat in the auditorium at Central Worship Center last Thursday, I looked around at the large crowd, all there to pay respects to Mike.

I recognized a lot of people from the years that I spent living in Sycamore, and attending church there. I listened to the stories about Mike, offered by his son and daughter and his brother, and his cousin Tim, who is now the pastor at CWC.

Barry shared that not too long before he passed away, Mike told him he considered himself the most blessed man in the world.

This from a man who had been dealt a really bad hand in the health department, resulting in two years of surgeries and hospitalizations and the realization that his life on earth was going to end way before anyone would have expected. Barry said Mike never complained. Never played the “why me” card. But always talked about his faith, his love for Jesus and his family, and the blessings he had been given… his 48 year marriage to Sandy…his kids and grandkids.

When Jesus called people the salt of the earth, he was calling them indispensable and trustworthy.

Like my visit with Mike last Spring, I left the service Thursday with a renewed sense of purpose and hope, and a realization that there are plenty of good people…good Christians…good leaders…in this world. People who are trustworthy.

But you don’t want to look for them on TV or YouTube or on a big stage with fancy lighting.

They’re driving nails and teaching their daughters how to ride bikes and loving their spouses and eating hard pretzels with other people who are out there trying do the right things every day. The honest things. The trustworthy things.

And they don’t have time to be cynical.

Thanks Mike.