Churches in the American culture — you know one of the largest expenses we have in buildings? The amount of handicap parking and handicap accessibility that we have in our churches. Now let me make you mad for a minute and I don’t really care. Why is it you pull up to a church that says they operate in faith, and you have fifty handicapped parking spots?
Aint no body lay hands on them handicapped folks yet? I don’t care what Twitter says. You can get mad all you want to. Fold your arms. Stick your lips out. Poot[?] your mouth. I don’t care. I’m so unafraid of what anybody in this tent thinks about me right now in my life, I could care less.
We just expect that people are going to leave church the same way they came to church. We ought to start having some signs out there, that don’t have like handicap accessibility … people in a wheelchair. We ought to start having signs of a wheelchair laying down and someone just walking up.
‘Well pastor, you are just being insensitive.’
I think you just don’t have any faith is what I think.
— Greg Locke, pastor of Global Vision Bible Church, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee
HT: Protestia
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.
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Well yeah Bruce, how are the lame and the halt supposed to get healed if they can’t get up the stairs to get hands laid? I mean come on. My Uncle regularly walked a couple miles on his crutches to an obscure little “miracle chapel” called “Our Lady of The Oaks” in Belgium. Like Lourdes, crutches hang there left by people who were healed. He regained his mobility and left his crutches there too. I heard it from his Brother, my Father., who for all his failings was not a liar or superstitious so I believe it. What healed my Uncle? Undoubtedly the same magic that healed me after being on crutches for a couple years, the body’s ability to fix itself. It’s a charming legend anyway and yes, I visited the little chapel myself. Like many churches in Holland and Belgium it’s kept locked as it’s rarely visited. Folks there seem to have lost interest in miracles.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about visiting Lourdes during a bicycle trip from France into Spain and back. My belief was all but gone by that time, but I kept an eye out just in case someone hobbled up to the grotto, took of the water, then tossed aside their crutches and skipped down Avenue Monsigneur Théas. I really try to keep an open mind.
Why stop there, oh ye of little faith!? Forget about your local grocery store, Biblical faith calls for your putting five loaves and two fish on the altar and coming back later and handing out the limitless salmon and baguette that has multiplied. Of course, you could freeze some. And paying taxes—just go fishing in faith!
🙂 🙂 🙂
It’s sad that someone as morally bereft as Locke is given any sort of platform for his hateful views, but that he cloaks it in religion is beyond contemptible. I suspect there will be many decent people in the area in which he preaches who are appalled by his rhetoric, but are afraid to speak out because of his frighteningly intimidating nature. Not to mention his supporters are likely to be similarly vicious.
‘….Aint no body lay hands on them handicapped folks yet?…’ I notice that the unspeakably odious pastor Locke doesn’t say that the 50 – or however many dozen it is -handicapped who attend his church just need to come down the front next Sunday where he’ll heal every one of them there faithless folks! Pastor, does the prayer of faith you claim will heal, stretch to making amputees or anyone who was born without lower limbs re-grow them?
Protestia ended their coverage of Locke’s sermon with this:
“Notably, in the decade that Locke led his church, he recorded no miracles where anyone in a wheelchair got up and walked.”
Yep.
Obviously when I had a broken ankle and couldn’t walk up the stairs I was not wanted.
The odious Greg Locke, that tracks…… I mean, if Christians really believed their religion, they’d all be healed, right?
Well, the Bible says pray for the sick and they SHALL be healed. Not ifs, ands, or buts about it. Of course when the healing fails, the ill person is told that they didn’t have enough faith to receive the healing. How convenient.
This is the biggest load of crap a preacher has ever said. I’m glad I quit going to church. The stupid hurts 🤯
Well, I AM glad that I quit American church a long time ago. Some of the worst people I ever met,in six decades, were churchgoers. It’s the culture itself that’s the problem. It’s a holdover from Europe during the Dark Ages, and Locke the Anglo is just continuing that tradition. I fell bad for his( captive) congregation. I don’t doubt that many of them would leave, but they fear he might place a curse on them. Those Fundie churches are big on that threat, because it makes fearful people stay put. The South is just infested with Locke types. That mindset is different from the rest of the country. Ugh !!
Thus saith the preachers: “You can get mad all you want to. Fold your arms. Stick your lips out. Poot[?] your mouth. I don’t care. I’m so unafraid of what anybody in this tent thinks about me right now in my life, I could care less.”
Zoe: Sounds a lot like God when he screwed up on his Omni-everthing and decided to drown everyone.
Good point. 🙂
Preacher: “We just expect that people are going to leave church the same way they came to church.”
Well, preacher man, that is not literally the truth. The truth is closer to the fact that everybody who attends the service leaves a bit lighter-weight than when they entered. The ‘exercise program’ called titheing sees to that… And if the preacher gets a holy stinger bee in his bonnet, then the service could go well past mealtime and into ketosis!
Funny, but, oh-so-sadly, true.
Just realized, churches DO a lot of “laying on hands.” Just look at the Black Collar Crime posts. Unfortunately, it helps no one.
Sad, but true. 🙁
The shirt on the guy on the left should be considered a crime against humanity. Hideous!