This past month has been unspeakably difficult. My dear friend and co-church-planter Dan Braga was in a car accident with his wife Alexis and daughter Sophia. Sophia was killed instantly and Alexis passed away after fighting for three weeks in the ICU. Dan is left with a severely broken body with a long road of recovery ahead. (Read Dan’s last Substack entry entitled “These Beloved Broken Bodies,” written just before the accident. It’s profound and prophetic.)
I am nowhere near ready to reflect in writing on the events and hospital visits and family conversations and tender prayer times of the past month. The scope of grief and loss is just too vast. Perhaps after the dual memorial of Sophia and Alexis on Sept 5th.
But there is something I’m becoming ready to talk about:
The power of information. Especially in moments of crisis.
When grief and loss hits a community, everyone braces for the pain. But almost no one braces for the information.
But the thing about information… is that it comes first.
Before the prayer meetings or the flowers or the prepared speeches… first there’s a phone call, then a text, then a (conscious or not) decision about whom to tell next and how and when.
Grief is the current everyone eventually feels most strongly.
But it’s also the slower-moving current.
Underneath grief is a faster current, felt first by all but respected only by the mature: the information current. Who knows. Who doesn’t. Who found out first. Who is telling whom.
In the information current, you learn pretty quickly what the people around you are made of.
As I’ve observed the information current up close this past month, I’ve witnessed people at their most beautiful and their most graceless. Sometimes it’s the same person inside the same day.
I noticed how cleanly grief sorts people into two kinds.
I’ll call the first kind first responders. When electrifying news breaks, they move toward the current. They need to know. Want to carry it. To be the one who tells you. Their instinct is motion.
The second kind I’ll call crypt keepers. Think of the stone room beneath a church where the dead are laid with honor and someone stands to keep the door. When the same electrifying news breaks, this kind insulates around it. They hold it still, to keep what’s holy. Their instinct is stillness.
It’s important to say, neither instinct is inherently virtuous. And neither is inherently sinful. Both are neutral types which hold the potential to either heal or wound.
A first responder can be a gift. This is the trusted friend the grieving family names as their voice. The news is their information to share, so they hand the phone to this person and say, “Now go tell the people who need to know, please.” That friend then carries the news exactly as the family wishes it carried, and not one inch further. They release what should be released, hold what should be held, and never once go looking for more, because everything was already entrusted into their hands. Why? Because they’ve been trustworthy before. So they’re trusted again. Their motion is a form of service. They are running errands for the brokenhearted.
But that same instinct turns sour when the motion serves the runner. This is when the first responder becomes the busybody. The one who needs to be needed. They’ve built a small identity out of being in the know. They tend to gather what wasn’t given to them for sharing and pass it on a beat early. They do this to become the source everyone checks, because being the source is the whole reward. And just like that, the grief has become about them.
A crypt keeper can be a gift too. This is the leader who holds a painful thing close for weeks. They field a hundred misty-eyed questions without surrendering an inch of confidentiality, guarding the family’s timing as though it were their own child. This takes a rare maturity. Because it means doing three hard things simultaneously: holding the weight, welcoming the asks, and never (ever) acting like someone who knows. That last piece is the whole test. A healthy crypt keeper carries privileged grief and gives zero scent of it, either through their private conversations or their public social media posts. Their stillness is motivated by tender respect and honor for everyone standing outside the door, aching for information.
The same instinct spoils when the door becomes a throne. Now the crypt keeper becomes the gatekeeper who stops protecting the family and starts collecting the warm weight that comes from having what other people want. Maybe the information came to them through a sideways channel the family didn’t intend. Maybe they’re carelessly guarding information that would be most loving to share. Perhaps they’ve found that a closed hand feels like power. And they’ve grown to like the feeling. Whatever the reason, the people outside sense the exclusion. And bitterness is empowered to grow in the gap.
The bottom line: the healthy first responder and the healthy crypt keeper both defer entirely to the grieving. They both refuse to hoard. Both go quiet about how much they hold. One of them is moving and the other is still, but underneath, they’re doing the exact same thing: they value others above themselves in humility, just like Jesus. (Philippians 2v3–4)
And the two unhealthy types turn out to be the same underneath too. Both the busybody and the gatekeeper feed on the identical thing: the cheap warmth of being important inside someone else’s tragedy.
So the real line isn’t between first responder and crypt keeper. Those are just neutral temperaments under pressure. The real issue runs deeper: How does God call his children to hold what we know? I can hold information as a trust for others. Or I can hold it as a supply for myself.
Servant or self. This is the dividing line. Seasons of communal grief expose which side of that line we’re operating on. Quite an opportunity for personal honesty and growth! I want to be a servant with what I know. I want to move when moving matters, be still when stillness serves, and want no one (ever!) to be able to read from my face how much has been entrusted into my hands.
Because being in the know isn’t the goal of the truly spiritual life.
Being in the Spirit is.
I conclude with some scripture for reflection. These have helped me this past month, in my moments of unhealthy relationship with information:
But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
– Luke 2v19
This is the end of the matter. I, Daniel, was deeply troubled by my thoughts, and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself.
– Daniel 7v28
Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
– Genesis 37v11
Paul was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.
– 2 Corinthians 12v4
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
– Deut 29v29
Dear busybodies, please in God’s name: settle down, work quietly, and eat your own bread.
– 2 Thessalonians 3v11–12 (my paraphrase!)
There’s a discipline underneath everything I’ve written here.
It’s waiting.
More on that in a follow-up essay.
All I can say, my friend, is I am so sorry for what you're going through. I've been praying for you and for Dan and for both your families and for the Park Hill family. I'm sorry man. Love you
Evan, thank you for writing this while the ground is still shaking beneath your feet. What you name here is something most communities never think to prepare for — the way information itself becomes a kind of spiritual test in seasons of grief. Your distinction between first responders and crypt keepers is one of those insights that immediately rings true because it’s drawn from lived experience, not theory. You’re describing the moral texture of leadership when the stakes are painfully real.
What struck me most is how you expose the subtle temptations that hide inside both instincts. Motion can become self‑importance; stillness can become control. And yet, when either posture is surrendered to love, both become forms of service to the brokenhearted. That’s a rare and needed word. You’re reminding us that the real issue isn’t temperament but allegiance — whether we hold information as stewards or as consumers, whether we treat grief as something entrusted to us or something that can be leveraged for our own significance.
Your reflections on the “unscented” nature of healthy confidentiality were especially powerful. It’s one thing to keep a secret; it’s another to carry it without letting it shape your face, your tone, or your digital presence. That’s Christlike restraint. It’s Philippians 2 lived in the shadows, where no one applauds.
I’m grateful you chose to write this now, even in the midst of sorrow too deep for full reflection. It’s a gift to the wider church — a call to maturity, humility, and the kind of spiritual discipline that protects the vulnerable rather than centering the informed. Praying for you, for Dan, and for everyone walking this valley. May the Spirit continue to steady your hands as you carry what has been entrusted to you.