As I look back that whole period basically shaped a lot. of my thinking. My wife was part of the management team of an all news radio station in Chicago, I was working a split shift (6-10, 3-7) as a reporter for a traffic reporting service. Our 9 year old was basically a latch key kid. We had just moved there a few months before...
The church we had started to attend had midweek "study groups", nothing similar on weekends. As the Soviet Union began to crumble I received a call from one of the group leaders inviting us to attend. I explained our situation. His response, "I bet they are eating it all up", meaning what was happening in the news.
We never returned to that congregation..