Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
It is no longer in my best interest to write any further posts about Dr. David Tee, who is neither a doctor nor a Tee. Tee’s real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen.
My posts referencing Thiessen are typically responses to something he has written about me, but I’ve decided I am no longer willing to provide him the attention he needs and craves. I will leave him to his own devices, choosing to not cast my pearls before swine.
Thiessen will try to provoke me to respond, but those days are over. While I despise the man and his incessant attacks, lies, and mischaracterizations, nothing I say will change his mind. He is pathologically unable to play well with others.
Rage away, Derrick, but I will not respond to you. I am removing your site from my RSS feed reader, so I will no longer see or read your posts.
Bruce
I restarted this blog in December 2014. Before that, I had several other blogs, such as Bruce Droppings (my all-time favorite), NW Ohio Skeptic, Restless Wanderings, Hungarian Luddite, and Fallen From Grace. I first started blogging in 2007. Because I was an Evangelical-pastor-turned-atheist who used his real name to write, my blogs attracted much attention from the get-go. In 2007, I was still a Christian — barely. I operated blogs such as Rethinking Church Life to flesh out my increasingly post-modern, emerging/emergent views.
Initially, I attracted a lot of Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) and Evangelicals who were anti-emergent church. As I blogged through the evolution of my beliefs and eventual deconversion, the comments and emails I received increased in volume and hostility — so much so that I would stop blogging. I thought then that if I just told my story and honestly and openly shared my beliefs, that people would, at the very least, understand and treat me as Christ commanded them to do in the gospels and Paul did in the Epistles. Boy, was I naive. Nasty, hateful comments and emails wore me down after a time, so I stopped blogging and deleted all of my writing. With the help of my therapist, I would eventually get back on the proverbial horse and start riding again.
Time and therapy helped me learn how to deal with unChristian Christians, so in December 2014, I decided to restart blogging. One last time, I told myself, and if I can’t make it work, I will give up. Here we are ten years later, I am still writing — 5,203 posts. Have I wanted to quit, at times? You bet. The reasons are mainly health-related these days, but I will have moments when I think I am done or that I don’t have anything more meaningful to say. When such low moments come, instead of quitting, I stop, taking time off to mentally regroup. And then I start writing again. I can’t promise that my health will not one day win this titanic struggle, but for now, I have enough strength and energy to keep pecking away on my laptop keyboard. I no longer make promises, but I will say that I hope to keep writing as long as physically possible.
Blog traffic numbers somewhat leveled off in 2023, but this site did, once again, surpass 1,000,000 page views. And for that I am grateful. 212,000 people came to this site for the first time in 2023 via Google, making up 95% of the searches. Social media plays a small part traffic-wise. 14,000 people came to this site via Facebook, 12,000 from Twitter, 3,200 from Reddit, and 2,500 from WordPress. Somewhat surprisingly, YouTube only generated 400 clicks. The most-read post on this site is the same as last year: The Scandalous Life of Jack Hyles and Why it Still Matters.
Over 45,000 comments have been left since 2014. I appreciate everyone who comments, even those who disagree with me. I am especially grateful for those of you who are frequent commenters. I find your comments encouraging, and they add measurably to the life of this blog.
Currently, only a handful of people are banned from commenting on this site. Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, is NOT banned from commenting, despite him saying otherwise. In 2023, I lost several commenters due to my trans-friendly posts. A handful of other readers exited stage right over my liberal political and social views. I learned long ago that I can’t please everyone. All I know to do is to be open, honest, and transparent in my writing. If that offends people, there’s not much I can do about it. I am who I am. 🙂
Currently, I am spending $125 a month to host this blog through Flywheel — a managed WordPress company — and pay for the various software and plugins I use on the site. Thanks to loyal readers who make monthly donations through Patreon or contributions through PayPal, site costs are covered with a little bit of money left over. With the leftover money, I was able to buy a brand-new Lear Jet! 🙂 Thank you for your continued financial support.
I still hope to complete my book and get my podcast up and running soon. Of course, I hoped in 2023 that the Cincinnati Bengals would make it to the playoffs. Sadly, life (and torn tendons in your team’s quarterback’s wrist) gets in the way of hope. No promises outside of “I will do what I can, Loki-willing.”
Have a blessed year.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Update: The feeds have been fixed, I accidentally turned them off when checking out some new features in the Yoast Premium SEO plugin.
The RSS feeds (posts and comments) for this site are not working, and haven’t been since November 17, 2023. According to Flywheel, my managed WordPress provider, the Yoast Premium SEO plugin I’m using is causing the problem. I am waiting to hear back from Yoast.
Thank you for your understanding.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
I have a Facebook account, one that I treat as a place to hang out with like-minded people. I don’t use my personal Facebook account to debate politics or religion. I am more interested in personal photos and cat videos. These days, I rarely post on Facebook, but I like to peruse my friends’ stuff as time and health allow. I reserve my religious and political writing for my blog and my public Facebook page. As a result, I only have 200 or so Facebook friends. This is by design. Currently, I have twenty-five pending friend requests. The problem I have is that I don’t know who these people are. They may be readers or they may be stalkers, trolls, and hot chicks. I have no way of knowing.
If you send me a friend request and I don’t know you, please send me an email or message telling me who you are or how we are connected. Say nice things about me. 🙂 If not, I won’t approve your friend request.
Thank you for your understanding.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Once a year, I clear the email addresses of readers who are moderated, giving them another opportunity to comment again. You may see comments from people that you haven’t seen in a while. More often than not, given the opportunity to play by the rules, these commenters — all of whom are Evangelicals — will take the rope given to them and hang themselves all over again.
Currently, thirteen readers are permanently banned from commenting on and reading this site. When they try to access my blog an error message is returned. This means they can’t read my writing, comment, or send me emails. Of course, my writing is published to other venues, so if someone is determined to read it, they will find a way.
Elliot leads the pack in failed attempts to access this site. As of today, he has tried to read my writing and comment 2,230 times — four times a day, on average. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Dr. David Tee, whose real name in Derrick Thomas Thiessen, is a Christian Missionary & Alliance preacher without a church to pastor; a man who abandoned a child years ago and fled to the Philippines to avoid legal accountability; a thief who regularly uses content from this site without giving proper attribution; an obsessive-compulsive man when to comes to my writing and that of my British friend Ben Berwick. He cannot and will not stop molesting us.
Tee has written more than one hundred posts about me, and a substantial number of articles about Ben. Over the past six weeks, Tee has written a post that mentions me every few days. Ben has figured out how to completely block him from accessing his site, but I’ve been unable to do so. There was a time when I would respond to his attacks, lies, and mischaracterizations, but I no longer do so. I only respond now when he says something so egregious that I feel compelled to reply.
As you know, I’ve taken a break from writing. (We are going to a baseball game in Cincinnati on Monday.) I’ve been trying to catch up on a few things, especially emails and the Black Collar Crime Series. My goal this coming week is to get my podcast up and running. Imagine my surprise, then, to read this from Tee:
They [Ben Berwick and Bruce Gerencser]are never honest. The owner of the BG website [The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser] said he was taking a break from writing, yet aside from 3 guest posts, he has published more articles since that notice went [where?] than any other given week he was writing.
He then goes on to say this about Ben:
Honesty and integrity are two things we do not expect from unbelievers. But we can call them cowards as their actions are just that, cowardly. The MM [Meerkat Musings] website owner [Ben Berwick] is exactly like the little boy who didn’t get his way and takes his ball and goes home.
He wants to call the shots even though he has no credibility, or legitimacy to call the shots. We laugh at him and his actions because he has not grown up but likes to bully those who are different from himself.
He is supposed to be an adult yet acts in the most childish manner. he should change the name of the website to chicken little. If we are being harsh it is because his actions exemplify everything we have just written.
We are getting more of a laugh than anything else and write this in a lighthearted manner even though he will make false accusations about us. He always does.
What a prick. Tee says he is a follower of Jesus, but his behavior says that he is anything but.
Most of the readers of this blog understand that I took a break from writing. The posts that have been published recently, don’t fall into that category. Sounds of Sacrilege, Sounds of Fundamentalism, and the Black Collar Crime Series? These series’ require very little work on my part. I use templates that allow me to push out content quickly. I have a big backlog of potential posts for these series. So, during my time away from writing, I’m trying to clear this backlog.
Of course, all Tee cares about is calling me a liar.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
I will not be posting for the next seven to fourteen days. I am quite exhausted, falling farther and farther behind. I need to take care of some personal things, along with catching up on my email, making a podcast, thanking financial contributors, and working on my book project. I am becoming increasingly frustrated over my inability to keep up, catch up, or even stand up some days. I need to take some time to lessen my frustrations. I hope to return to writing sometime after my birthday on June 19.
If you have a guest post you would like to write, this is a good time for you to submit it for publication.
See ya soon! Thank you for your continued support.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
If you have emailed me in 2023 and not received a response, please know that I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m way behind on answering email and social media messages.
I hope to take several days soon to catch up on my correspondence.
Thank you for your patience.
Since 2007, I have done a lot of writing. Millions of words in various formats. One well-received format is my short stories. I am in the process of writing new short stories, rewriting past stories, and putting them in a book format. I hope to have this project done by mid-summer. Readers should expect more short stories than normal as Carolyn and I work to bring this work to fruition. Once all the stories are collated, I will need a handful of readers who have professional writing, editing, or proofreading skills to read my manuscript, checking for grammar and spelling errors. If you are interested in helping with this project, please let me know. Carolyn will be the gatekeeper, or maybe the pitbull at the end of the lane. 🙂 Regardless, she knows my writing style inside and out, so she will have the final say on edits. When Carolyn offered to do my editing years ago, I promised her a book. Well, here we are. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
