Our actual influence will be in those quiet moments of praying for our children as we tuck them into bed. It’ll be those subtle gospel conversations where you labor to help your mechanic get one step closer to maturity in Christ. It’ll be walking through the message of Job with the grieving widow. Don’t get me wrong, our tweets will count too.

I remember reading somewhere that a tiny band of coyotes have a way of making themselves sound much more numerous than they actually are. In fact, I think I heard that in a sermon illustration designed for encouraging pastors in the midst of conflict. Often when somebody comes to a pastor and says, “people are talking, pastor”, what they really mean is, “My three friends and I are talking and assume that most everyone else would be on our side too”.

I’ve thought of that illustration often when I’ve had to field criticism. I’ve learned to ask for the names of the coyotes so that I can more easily assess what we are facing. That’s not to say that four coyotes cannot create strife (or even that their howl isn’t warranted). It’s just to say you deal with a situation differently when 75 coyotes are howling than when it’s four trying to sound like 75.

As I scroll through my Twitter feed I’m thinking a bit about the coyote. Social media has the capacity to create a bit of coyote in all of us. It’s easy to overestimate our influence. The whole machine is designed to place us at the center of our own little universe. Twitter is especially prone to this. Not only can you speak to your merry little band of lobos but you can howl at anyone you desire (at least until you get blasted by the shotgun known as the permanent block).

This is why so many of us evangelicals, and those firmly entrenched in TGC-land all the more, are confused by this Trump movement. Almost everyone in our news feed is #NeverTrump. We occasionally hear from those “outsiders” but their voice is quiet. We are the majority. Our howl is the loudest. But in reality social media has blinded us to the fact that we are the outsiders.

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