Dr. Charles W. Ferguson

I had a meltdown.
Not any ordinary flame-out or burnout moment — but an honest-to-God, my-being-can’t-take-no-more kind of meltdown.

Saying that out loud might cause some to look at me through the lens of my profession and assume I’ve become unfit. But the truth is, this moment was long overdue. I was forty-four years past due for a crash-out. Apparently, 2025 was the appointed time to finally pour out my humanity.

For years, I lived in a personal prison of high expectations. The bar was never too high. The challenge was never too great. But the lack of acknowledgment — that’s what broke my heart. Nothing I did seemed good enough to be seen.

Most people think my entire existence has always been rooted in being a pastor or a leader. Truth is, at 13, I dreamed of being rich — owning houses in every direction with a car to match. Ministry wasn’t my plan; it was my call. A divine interruption that pulled me from what I wanted toward my purpose.

Yet every turn seemed to come with someone trying to deter me.
When I wanted to play basketball — too big.
When I applied to Kentucky State — stay and take the sure thing.
When I pursued my first master’s — your grades won’t get you in.
When I was too nice as a teenager, too qualified for a job, too ambitious for new dreams — the story was always the same: stay in your lane.

For forty-four years, I questioned the God in me.
For forty-four years, I wondered if being me was enough.
For forty-four years, I lived with mixed messages about my life.
For forty-four years, I was good enough to care for others but not worthy of care myself.

But Friday came — and it all came out.
The pain of rejection.
The hurt of dismissal.
The agony of disrespect.
The exhaustion from caretaking and the longing to be cared for.

It all came out.

My meltdown was my release — from horrible treatment, from hidden burdens, from the quiet acceptance of pain I never deserved to carry. It was the burning away of the veneer, the unmasking of my own soul.

I am no longer interested in being “the one.”
I have purpose to fulfill, and it cannot include lazy spirits or parasitic energies that leech the life out of what God is building in me.

There is too much to do — too much purpose to live — to keep serving as a host for those who only show up to feed off your strength.

This is the charge: to keep and to glorify God.
That’s the rhythm of my life now — not dictated by those who drain, but by the One who restores.

If you’ve read this far, maybe you’re assessing your own world too.
Sometimes we surround ourselves with crowds, believing they’ll cheer us forward, when in truth, they just want proximity to our light. They offer no aid to our growth. They belittle our pace. They drop us when we no longer serve their purpose.

They forget us in drought but show up begging in our harvest.
They lean on our strength but never return the favor.

So maybe — just maybe — this is your season for a meltdown.

Not to lose your mind.
Not to lose your faith.
Not to lose yourself.

But to reclaim the sanctity of your being.

You and I are created in the image and likeness of God. We are not objects of idol worship. We are flesh and blood — sacred and divine. We have more to us than titles, positions, and connections.

Our lives are holy.
Our existence is sacred.
And sometimes, it takes a meltdown to remember that.

Romans 1:20–23, 28–32 | Mark 8:34–37
By Dr. Charles W. Ferguson

I wrote these thoughts earlier this week but never hit “post.” The constant ebb and flow of the days got in the way. But now, I believe this moment is exactly when they were meant to be shared.

The hateful actions that saturate our society have forced me to pause and assess the true condition of the human heart. Some are angry at the government. Others are emboldened to support a bastardized form of Christianity, daring to call this season “revival.” Many call harmful budget cuts “necessary,” while failing to see that they are reenacting Abraham’s sacrifice — except this time there’s no ram in the bush.

Yes, people are willingly placing our youth on the altar — sacrificing potential, promise, and hope on the altars of greed, selfishness, and corruption. Others continue to protect pedophiles in the name of “progress,” defend dollars in the name of profit, and excuse ignorance in the name of power. Everywhere I turn, I see the pain and suffering of so many, while others recline in comfort and convenience at the expense of the vulnerable.

Some voted for politicians in good faith, believing their causes would find justice in the halls of legislation. But simple Bible study would remind you: the transfer of your power can never be trusted in the hands of the corrupt.

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Counting the Cost

Jesus, holding court with the crowd, placed before them two piercing questions about what it truly means to follow:

“If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever would save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?
What can a person give in exchange for their soul?” — Mark 8:34–37

Jesus knew his mission was not for the faint of heart. It was not about personal comfort but about restoring a people long marginalized — calling them to find power in God again. Yet, he forced the crowd to assess the transaction before them: What is the profit margin for your soul?

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Selling Out for Pennies

In 2025, it seems some have sold their souls for far less than thirty pieces of silver — maybe just a chicken sandwich from Popeyes. Many no longer want to hold power accountable. It’s now about which side offers the best temporary comfort. But even comfort comes with a cost. And as Jimmy McMillan once shouted, “The rent is too damn high!”

That inflation — spiritual, moral, and social — is the direct result of those Paul described long ago:

“Though they knew God, they did not honor him as God… They became futile in their thinking… Claiming to be wise, they became fools…
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind… They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice…”
(Romans 1:21–29)

Sound familiar?

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The Betrayal of Education

Nowhere is this moral decay more evident than in the way education is being handled — or mishandled — right here in Ohio.

Our legislature has treated public education like a pawn in a political chess match. They have stripped the Department of Education of its independent authority, placing decision-making power in the hands of political appointees who view children as budget lines and teachers as expendable labor. They call it “accountability” and “reform,” but the outcome is control — the dismantling of equitable education for working-class, Black, and rural communities.

Meanwhile, the federal Department of Education remains complicit in the erosion. Instead of standing with students and families, it has bowed to corporate interests and test-score economics. Funding formulas continue to favor those already advantaged. Policies claim to “close the gap” while widening it for those who can least afford to fall further behind.

And what do we see across Ohio? The arbitrary closing of schools that devastate neighborhoods. The manipulation of constitutional laws that guarantee fully funded education for all children. This manipulation cannot continue to be circumvented by political gamesmanship or fiscal negligence. All must be held accountable for the continued erosion of the future of our children — and the generations yet to come.

The state’s educational priorities now mirror the same spiritual sickness Paul warned about: trading glory for greed, wisdom for propaganda, and children’s futures for political power. Ohio has become a case study in what happens when moral leadership abandons public trust. And our children — the very ones Jesus said are the greatest in the Kingdom — are being crucified on the altar of indifference.

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When Silence Becomes Sin

Aren’t you tired of people raising the stakes on suffering? Aren’t you weary of giving your will over to those who justify their corruption while leaving devastation everywhere?

My eyes can no longer stomach the silence of those who claim morality yet enable the machinery of oppression. Prove that you are not a passive community. Refuse to let the corrupt steal education, opportunity, and future from the next generation.

Stop listening to the lies of those who tell you it’s for your good.
Engage. Resist. Demand that placeholders bend to the will of the collective.

Because the price of your silence and complicity… is just too damn high.

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A Holy Charge to the Church

The Church can no longer stand as a neutral observer to this collapse. Silence in the face of injustice is not wisdom — it is wickedness. Advocacy is not a political hobby; it is a righteous and holy pursuit. It is the manifestation of divine love through public action.

When we advocate for the protection of children, the preservation of equitable education, and the integrity of constitutional promise, we are not meddling in politics — we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus, who overturned tables when sacred spaces were defiled.

The time for empty prayers and polite statements has passed. The altar is full of names — of children, teachers, and families — who deserve better. So let the Church rise as both sanctuary and sentinels. Let pulpits thunder again with conviction. Let communities organize with holy boldness.

Because when it comes to the future of our children and the soul of our society,
the price of silence is still too damn high.

One of the crazy things that I have witnessed in the past few months is the willingness of Black people to deny significant parts of their identity for the environment that we are currently traversing. It is challenging for me to watch people who share my heritage live in denial of a certain level of dignity and divinity—to buy into a supremacist ideology that will spit them out in five seconds or less.

Ever since the death of a podcaster sparked something within people, I have sat back wondering to myself—is this really it? Is this the environment that Jesus Christ died for? Is this the world that many individuals have decided to settle for in the name of a mascot Jesus that definitely ain’t my Jesus?

Maybe the statement must be an observation more than a command: stop sacrificing your Blackness for white approval.

Many white people would take this statement and suggest it is a racist statement. Listen close—whiteness is the condition that lifts flesh to an unrealistic place of dominance over someone or something. It’s not a color—it’s a culture. It’s a power structure that convinces people that they are superior simply because history told them so, and they never questioned the lie.

And what breaks my heart is how many of us have started believing the lie too. Somewhere along the line, we traded in the richness of our heritage for the comfort of assimilation. We began confusing acceptance with affirmation. But the truth is, you can be accepted into a system that never intends to affirm you. You can sit at the table and still be on the menu.

There is something spiritually violent about denying your own reflection just to be liked by those who benefit from your invisibility. It’s like trying to baptize yourself in someone else’s approval while drowning in your own denial.

We can’t keep selling our birthright for social media validation and proximity to whiteness. We can’t keep performing humility while our humanity gets trampled. We can’t keep calling it “unity” when what’s really happening is erasure.

When I look around, I see a generation trying to reconcile faith with a culture that has rewritten Jesus to fit its politics. The “mascot Jesus” being paraded in the public square is not the same Jesus who flipped tables, walked with the marginalized, and challenged empire. That Jesus—the one I know—never asked anyone to sacrifice their Blackness for belonging.

Many people have never looked at the nature of dominance as something that is not a part of the method or the ways of Christ. While some might agree with that sentiment, most people do not recognize how ingrained it is in their psyche, mentality, or theology.

Consider that people will continue to defend the lives of those who propagated hateful rhetoric 99% of the time but managed to craft the 1% for those who refuse to examine the totality of their existence. It makes me understand, in a greater sense, why people are so gung-ho about becoming apologists for this brand of Christianity.

The truth is that following and examining the life of Jesus closely will never require any human defense. This brand of religion has attempted to tell me that my importance will only be embraced when I deny myself. Yet the denial appears to be more about becoming a part of a monolith—which, by nature, is ungodly.

Why would I ever consent to denying the image and likeness that was given to me by God?
Why would I have to give away my uniqueness to make a community feel better about my existence in it?

You know, at this very moment, I finally realize why my anger and frustration with so-called followers has finally hit its fever pitch. I didn’t have to change. I didn’t have to give up my uniqueness. I finally see it.

This horrible virus that persists is the result of a source that knows it can’t thrive or survive in a world of color. In other words, lacking the true knowledge of self as God intends has created hatred for those who see themselves only through God’s eyes.

When you know yourself, no one can condition you.
When you are devoid of a sense of your unique self, you will attach to anything at the risk of forfeiting the God-given blessing of being you.

That price is way too high.

Give me the real Jesus and my identity that is found in Him.
Anything less is cheap, frail, and worthless.

What does it profit to gain the world and lose my soul?
Or what will I give in exchange for my soul?

Absolutely nothing.

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Closing Reflection

So from this day forward, I choose freedom over fitting in. I choose truth over tolerance. I choose the Jesus who walks with the wounded and stands with the silenced. I choose to live as one made in the image and likeness of a God who never needed validation from empire.

If that choice costs me access, applause, or approval, so be it. My soul is not for sale, and my Blackness is not up for negotiation. I am who God created me to be—fully, fearfully, wonderfully. And that is more than enough.

Stop sacrificing your Blackness for white approval.
Walk boldly in the divine image that shaped you.
Because the world doesn’t need another imitation of power—
it needs a living reflection of truth.