When our church moved to downtown Battle Ground a little over three years ago, I noticed something almost immediately—and it surprised me how much it mattered. Downtown, there were banners hanging on Main Street celebrating the high school. Not just generic civic decorations, but real, specific pride: students, teams, programs. People posted online, cheering on Battle Ground or (That other team down south that’s also in our district), showing up for games, performances, and milestones. It felt like a town that still knew how to be all-in for its kids.

That wasn’t something I had seen for a long time.

I grew up in a small town with one high school. Everyone was invested. Not because it was perfect, but because it was ours. We were all about the Jackson Ironmen. It’s still that way, especially when it comes to football. People cheered even when the team wasn’t great. They showed up because those were their neighbors’ kids. They understood, even if it wasn’t said out loud, that community isn’t built by winning every argument—it’s built by showing up consistently.

That’s the version of Battle Ground I keep hoping we don’t lose.

Where our church was before, I looked for that sense of shared identity for years. I tried to create it. I talked about it. I hoped for it. But it never really took root. People lived near each other, but they didn’t feel connected to one another. I met with the leaders of all the neighborhood associations and they told me that others had tried to build it in the past, but that these were bedroom communities for Portland. People live their lives across the river, they just sleep here. Institutions were tolerated at best, resented at worst. There was very little sense that anyone was pulling in the same direction. There was no support for the schools. Nothing that made it feel like we were in a community.

So when we came here, it felt familiar in a way I hadn’t expected. It felt like going back home.

It didn’t take long before I started to see that the idea of Battle Ground I had in my mind wasn’t the reality. It used to be. I’ve talked to people, but lately it’s been like we’re trying to live up to our name.

The truth is, communities don’t usually fall apart all at once. They slowly stop imagining a future together. Disagreements harden into suspicion. Fatigue turns into disengagement. Eventually, people stop asking, “What kind of town do we want to be?” and start asking only, “How do I protect what’s mine?”

I don’t think that’s who we are. Or at least, I don’t think it has to be.

Throughout this series, I’ve tried to lower the temperature and slow the conversation down—not to avoid hard realities, but to help us see them more clearly, and from different points of view that we are used to hearing in the FB groups. Most people in this community are not extremists or ideologues. Some are. Then again, some of the extremists aren’t actually in our community. They’ve just chosen to make Battle Ground their playground for cultural warfare. For those doing so, you have our permission to go back to your own communities and play your games there.

But the people in BG are tired, stretched thin. Navigating rising costs, uncertainty, and a constant stream of information telling them something bad is always just around the corner. That’s not moral failure. That’s modern life. That’s the social media algorithms prioritizing rage over peace.

But fatigue doesn’t have to turn into withdrawal from one another.

One reality we can’t get around is that 85–90% of children in our community go through public schools. These aren’t abstract systems. They’re kids whose parents are trying to do their best. They’re teachers and staff who live here, shop here, and raise families here. They’re the same people many churches say they want to reach and care for. The same people who have been hearing Christians talk about them with vitriol. Whether we realize it or not, how we talk about schools sends a message about how we feel about the people connected to them. I literally just had a conversation with a student who said, “They hate us.”

Communities are always teaching something. The question is what lesson we want to pass on.

Faith has something to say here too—not in a loud or domineering way, but in a grounded, steady one. Scripture consistently calls God’s people to love what is near before trying to fix what is far. To seek the welfare of the city. To be present in imperfect places. To be known not primarily for what we oppose, but for the way we love sacrificially. That kind of faith doesn’t demand agreement or blind trust. It asks for courage, humility, sacrifice, and sometimes forgiveness—especially when old disappointments still linger.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending nothing went wrong. It means refusing to let past wounds decide the future for today’s kids and families who had nothing to do with those failures.

When I imagine the Battle Ground I hope we become, I don’t imagine a town without disagreement. I imagine a town that still knows how to disagree without tearing itself apart. A place where we value human dignity above personal agendas. A place where decisions stay local because people stay engaged. Where skepticism doesn’t turn into cynicism. Where leadership is held accountable but also supported enough to do hard work well. Where we still know how to say, “These are our kids,” even when it costs us something.

I hear so often about how people long for the “Good ol’ days.” To be honest I do too. But, you know what? We actually CAN still have the “Good ol’ days”…

If we decide to.

The choice is up to us. It always has been, it always will be.

Can you imagine living in that community that existed 30-40 years ago? The one where everyone showed up for every football and basketball game (Okay, not every, but many!)? The Battle Ground, where we knew our schools were some of the best in the area, our teachers loved our students in ways teachers don’t always seem to do in bigger metropolitan areas, and where we choose to bring up the schools in conversations because we can’t believe all the good things that are happening there.

Can you imagine living in a community like that?

Can you imagine if we all decided that what’s best for this community isn’t if “My side” wins, but if we come together, if we fight for unity amidst our rising diversity, if we work hard to fight off the divisiveness that has engulfed our nation? Where we fight for what’s best for the future, not ourselves?

Wouldn’t it be so amazing if, instead of being in the news because another levy failed, because for some reason we are a hotbed of political extremism, because so many have bought into every conspiracy theory surrounding schools that exists…

Wouldn’t it be amazing if people outside BG talked about that weird community that fights hard to work together? The community that fights hard to make sure the future of their community is stronger and better than what it has been in the past? The community that says – The only way this place gets better is if I make it better? The community that says – the spiteful narrators of division and hatred in our society don’t speak for us – we speak for us. The community that says, we’ve had enough being told how to think about our local schools by people who don’t live here, by people who don’t send their kids to public schools, by people who haven’t had kids in schools for decades. We’ve had enough of people using us as pawns in their greater political schemes or to grow their personal profiteering platforms. We’ve had enough of being manipulated by people for their own personal profit and gain. We listen to the voices of our neighbors more than the voices of the pundits.

I think it would be incredible.

And, I think it’s entirely possible. We just have decide. It will cost us. If we do it right, it will cost everyone something.

But it will be worth it.

That’s the kind of community worth protecting.

That’s the kind of community worth investing in.

Who’s in?