David Bergsland was my very first paid subscriber on Substack. Not the first person to read the work. Not the first person to comment. The first person who decided the work was worth pulling out a card for — before there was much here to justify it. That kind of trust is not nothing. It's actually everything in the early days of building something.
I want to be honest with you about David: we don't agree on everything.
He'd tell you the same thing. In fact, he already has — more than once. David is the kind of person who reads something I've written, finds a place where he sees it differently, and says so directly. No passive-aggressive social media commentary. No quiet unfollows. A straight, clear, "Here's where I land differently, and here's why."
That's not a liability at this table. That's exactly what the table is for.
David Bergsland describes himself as "a drug-crazed hippy saved by grace." He's been around a long time — an artist, a writer, a believer who has written somewhere north of fifty books and spent decades trying to understand what it means to live a spirit-filled life in a world that makes very little room for one. His work lives at biblicalreality.substack.com and across a fifteen-novel saga on what it actually looks like to walk with Yeshua in the present tense.
His theological location is its own category: pietist, holiness, charismatic, bondservant of Yeshua Messiah. He believes direct conversation with the Messiah is normal. He holds that the word of God in Ephesians 6 is not the Bible — it's an anointed, Spirit-breathed word given for a specific moment, a sword in the Spirit's hand, not a static text to be handled by the intellect alone. That's not a position most of his tradition would defend. He holds it anyway.
This is the thing I respect most about David: he's not protecting a system. He's following what he believes is true, wherever it leads, and he's honest enough to say so out loud.
He filled out the contributor form and checked Friendly Opposition. Not aligned. Not neutral. Friendly opposition. That tells you everything you need to know about the man.
The table grows stronger when the people at it are willing to push back. David has been doing that longer than most of us have been paying attention. I'm grateful he showed up first, and I'm glad he's still here.
Welcome to the table, David. Pull up a chair. You've earned it.
Shalom v'shalvah — Sergio
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