In 2006, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), had 16 million members. Today, the sect has 13 million members. In 2022 alone, the SBC lost almost 500,000 members. Membership is now at a fifty-year low, and the 2022 loss was the largest in a century. (Please see Southern Baptists lost nearly half a million members in 2022.)
The membership decline has led to all sorts of pearl-clutching and finger-pointing among denominational leaders. Unfortunately, these leaders cannot see the forest for the trees. They refuse to take a hard look at what, exactly, is eating the life out of the SBC: Fundamentalism, Trumpism, misogyny, extreme beliefs on abortion and homosexuality, and other hot-button social issues. A number of SBC leaders and pastors are more than willing to burn the denomination to the ground. Presently, some Fundamentalists within the SBC are trying to change the denomination’s constitution. These pastors want the denomination to expel any church that has female pastors. That’s right, the pressing issue for Southern Baptists is the sex of their pastors. Sigh, right?
Instead of focusing on the SBC’s membership decline, I want to focus on its alarming Sunday attendance numbers. Membership numbers tell us very little about the health of the SBC. Most churches have widely inflated membership rolls. I pastored an SBC congregation in Clare, Michigan in 2003. The church had over 100 members. However, 60 percent of them never attended church. They were members in name only. One of my first acts as pastor was to clean up the roll. I sent letters to every member, asking them to declare their intentions towards the church by attending its services. If they did not attend the services, their names would be removed from the roll. Several families got upset at me, saying “How dare I expect them to attend church to be a member.” Most of the people I sent letters to did not respond. I sent them a second letter, and after several months, those who didn’t respond were removed as members.
The practical effect of doing this is that it restricts voting to people who actually attend the church. People who don’t attend the church shouldn’t be making its decisions. Church business meetings are often fractious, with dissenting groups lining up non-attending members to support their causes. Cleaning up the membership put an end to this kind of behavior.
While the SBC may have 13.2 million members, on any given Sunday, only 3.8 million people attend church, down 2.6 million attendance from 2008. On any given Sunday, 70 percent of Southern Baptist church members are nowhere to be found. They may be at the lake, picnicking, or sleeping in, but they sure as hell ain’t sitting in an SBC church listening to the gospel.
The Lifeway Research study also showed that the SBC closed or lost 416 churches and 165 missions. I suspect these numbers will continue to increase going forward. The SBC is dying before our eyes, one church, one member at a time. Of course, this can be said for most Christian denominations in the United States. Mainline denominations have been dying for decades. SBC preachers used to point to the liberal beliefs of mainline churches as the primary reason for their decline. Now they are facing a serious decline too. Time to get some popcorn and enjoy the show.
Prediction: SBC leadership will announce a NEW, yes, really, really, really, NEW evangelism program that will result in thousands of people getting saved and joining SBC churches.
Good luck with that, preachers.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Several years ago, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Patrick faced public outrage over comments he made in a private forum about women, sexual assault, and the #metoo movement. His words made it out into the wild, and Patrick was forced to apologize several times for his offensive statements. I am sure that Patrick thought his words would be protected, but offensive words said in private often make their way to the Internet. Such is the nature of the digital age. I abide by the rule: don’t say anything privately that you wouldn’t want others to read on the Internet.
Evangelical pastors are noted for preaching sermons against gossip and crude speech. Growing up in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches, I heard numerous sermons about gossip, off-color humor, swearing, and even the use of bywords. (See Christian Swear Words.) My pastors told me that Jesus heard everything I said, and that come judgment day, he would hold me accountable for my words. What these men of God didn’t tell me is that when they were behind closed doors with their colleagues in the ministry, they routinely failed to practice what they preached.
Years ago, I was a participant in a Reformed Baptist discussion group. The group was private and had pastors and elders in its membership. It was common for group members to talk — Greek for gossip — about problems in their churches or the difficulties they were having with particular members. We talked about and said things that would have proved to be embarrassing had they been made public. This group, at that time, was the Reformed Baptist version of the Catholic confessional. What was said was considered sacrosanct.
One day, as I was searching the Internet, I came across the “private” discussions from the group. Evidently, a programming mistake had made the group’s posts public instead of private. Horrified, I immediately notified the group administrators, and they fixed the technical problem. I thought, at the time, if church members and non-group clerics ever saw what we said, why, there would be all sorts of outrage and calls for discipline. Fortunately, my find saved the group’s collective bacon.
I was a pastor for twenty-five years. During my teenage years and my years in the ministry, I attended numerous pastor’s fellowships and conferences. These events allowed men of God to hang out with their own kind, giving them opportunities to talk shop and air their grievances. Most of these events featured a meal, either lunch or before the evening session. It was during these meals that pastors would gather in smaller groups and “talk.” I have heard and shared countless stories about church problems. The gathered pastors were expected to commiserate with gossipers, and, if warranted, offer advice.
Thanks to being in the ministry for so long, I had a lot of preacher friends, including a few men I considered BFFs. I would often visit my friends at their church offices or we would arrange to meet somewhere for a meal. Without fail, our conversations would turn to this or that problem, this or that contrary member, or one of the never-ending problems facing IFB and Evangelical churches. These discussions were often chock-full of information disclosed in private counseling sessions by church members or things overheard on the grapevine. The thinking was that sharing private information with colleagues in the ministry was okay. Who’s going to know, right?
Of course, I would know, and when I would later be asked to preach at the churches of my friends, I would have thoughts of what they shared with me over lunch or at one of our fellowship/prayer times. One pastor friend kept a dossier on every church member he talked to. He had become the pastor of a church filled with conflict and strife. The previous pastor had been accused of sexual assault (he later left the church and pastored elsewhere) and his wife had been accused of dressing seductively. The deacons ran the pastor off, and in came my friend. As is often the case, when young, inexperienced pastors — it was his first and only pastorate — take on troubled churches, they become sacrificial lambs. There was so much lying and deception going on that my friend decided to write reports of every conversation he had with church members. Much like James Comey did with his discussions with President Trump, my pastor friend kept intricate records of every conversation. He would share some of these conversations with me. This, of course, colored my view of these people. I knew many of them by name, so when I was in the presence of such-and-such person, I thought of what my friend had told me about them.
Another pastor told me about a conversation he had with an engaged couple. They wanted to know if having anal sex was a sin. They wanted to “save” themselves for marriage, so they thought having backdoor sex would be okay. No hymen was broken, so the woman would still be a “virgin” when she walked down the aisle. My pastor friend told them that they had to stop what they were doing; that anal sex was indeed a sin against God. My problem, of course, was every time I saw this couple (they never married) I thought of them having anal sex.
I could spend hours giving anecdotal stories about private things I heard and said when I was in the safe circle of my ministerial colleagues. Some of these men would come and preach for me, so I am sure they had the same thoughts I did. Oh, there’s the couple Bruce said hasn’t had sex in five years. Oh, there’s the man who confessed to having secret homosexual desires. Oh, there’s the teenager who got caught getting drunk and having sex in a motel room.
Christian church members should be aware of this fact: most pastors are gossips; most pastors are going to talk out of school; most pastors think sharing secrets with colleagues is all part of effectively “ministering” to others. Unlike professional counselors, pastors are not prohibited from repeating what was said behind closed doors. Many readers of this blog have likely heard sermons that made use of what was said to their pastors in private. Their pastor might not name names, but there’s no doubt about who was the subject of his sermon/illustration. IFB preachers, in particular, are noted for preaching passive-aggressive sermons using information shared with them in private. Smart, attentive congregants know when the pastor in his sermon is talking to or about them. Going through a tough time in your marriage and pondering divorce, and you talked to your pastor about your feelings? If, on the next Sunday, he preaches a thundering sermon on the sin of D-I-V-O-R-C-E, who do you think he is talking to? Pastors often use their pulpits as whipping posts, attacking rumors, allegations, and private conversations. In the pastor’s mind, God is “leading” him to share the truth. In fact, he is a gossip or rumormonger sharing things said in private.
I hope you will keep what I have written here in mind the next time you think about unburdening yourself to your pastor. Your troubles may be gossiped about, talked about among his ministerial colleagues, or turned into sermon illustrations come Sunday. While not all pastors have loose lips, many of them do, and since there is nothing that prohibits them from “sharing,” people should weigh carefully what they say to a pastor, understanding that he may not protect their privacy or he may consider shooting the breeze with his pastor friends as a safe way to share secrets and get advice about how best to handle problems. It is on this issue that the Roman Catholics are right. What’s said in the confessional is privileged. When I first started seeing a counselor, I asked him about how he treated our discussions. He told me they were privileged, and he would never divulge what I said to him (and when several of my children saw him, he never divulged to me what they said).
Did you ever have a pastor use what you said in private as fodder for a sermon, or did you find out later that he gossiped about you to his pastor friends or other church leaders? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. (Romans 16:17-18)
Paul wrote the verses above to the Church in Rome, telling them that they should “mark” those who were causing doctrinal divisions and offenses. What does the word “mark” mean? The word means to point out or pay attention to; to make congregants aware of those in their midst that do not serve the Lord Jesus Christ; those who with good words and fair speeches deceive simple people.
Two thousand years later, these verses have taken on a different meaning, especially among Evangelical Calvinists.
In Genesis 4, we find the story of Cain and Abel, especially the part where Cain murdered his brother Abel. In verse 15, God tells Cain that he was going to give him a “mark” to keep people from killing him. Some Evangelicals believe that God gave Cain black skin to differentiate him from others. Other Evangelicals believe the mark was some sort of birth defect or tattoo. Regardless, the mark was meant to make him highly visible to others.
Modern-day Evangelical Calvinists “mark” disobedient, heterodox, or heretical congregants and preachers by invoking church discipline:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:15-20)
There are four disciplinary steps detailed in this passage of Scripture:
When a person commits a trespass against you, go to him alone and discuss the matter
If he doesn’t hear you, take two or three witnesses with you and discuss the matter again
If he still doesn’t hear you and the witnesses, tell the church
If he refuses to hear the church, then the man must be excommunicated and considered a publican and heathen (an unsaved man)
When pastors and churches have disagreements with members whom they deem rebellious, out of the will of God, or otherwise doing or saying things that are considered contrary to what is right, some Evangelical churches initiate the church discipline process. I say “some” churches because most Evangelical preachers these days just marginalize and demean “rebellious” congregants, hoping they will leave and join a different church. None of the churches I grew up in ever exercised church discipline against an erring member. Only two churches I pastored disciplined disobedient church members. One church, Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, used church discipline as a cudgel to beat members into submission. I witnessed people being excommunicated for everything from failing to attend to church to having beliefs considered heretical. When I resigned after seven months and returned to Ohio, my fellow co-pastor brought me in absentia before the church and kicked me out of the church. (But not Polly and our children because they were under the control of demons and not accountable for their behavior.) Why? I didn’t ask the church’s permission to resign. From that moment until today, Community Baptist considers me marked, a publican and a heathen. You can read more about this in the series I Am a Publican and a Heathen — Part One.
I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio for eleven years. We only disciplined one church member the whole time I was there: a married man who was having an affair. He denied the charges against him, and after following the procedure laid out in Matthew 18, I called a church meeting, laid out the verifiable evidence against him — i.e., catching him in the act making out with the woman in a grocery store parking lot and seeing his car numerous times at her home all night — and called for a church vote. The congregation, including his wife, voted him out of the church. He was, from that day forward, a “marked” man; someone that should be avoided.
In retrospect, I regret kicking him out of our church. All I saw was the act of adultery instead of the “why” behind the infidelity. What the man needed was counseling. What he got was ostracization and abuse. He and his wife later reconciled. I had the privilege of conducting his funeral a few years ago. A good man, a flawed man — aren’t we all?
When churches and pastors “mark” fellow Christians, they do so to marginalize them and limit their influence over others. Far too often, church discipline is used by authoritarian preachers to keep congregants in line. When the church is your “life,” it can be devastating to lose the most important thing in your life. Sometimes, only one family member is disciplined, causing untold harm to marriages and families. Imagine having a disagreement with your pastor, only to find yourself under church discipline, cut off from the church, your friends, and even your family. While practitioners of church discipline will tell you that it is meant to be “restorative,” more often than not discipline is punitive. It causes harm, not healing. And who is always blamed for this failure? The disciplined church member. If only he had obeyed, repented, and bowed a knee to the church’s and pastor’s God-given authority all would be well. Instead, he will wander the earth as a “marked” man; a publican and heathen, doomed for the fires of Hell.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Twice in the past week, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers have told me that I am demon possessed; that I never was a Christian; that I was a deceiver and false prophet. Today, in an article for The Christian Post titled Can Christ-worshipers turn into demon-worshipers? Evangelical Calvinist John Piper had this to say about people like me:
No genuinely called and justified Christian ever falls away into demon worship — not permanently, anyway.
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[Piper said the question pertained to people] who’ve been in the church for years and are outwardly identifying as Christian and yet are not truly born again and end up being swept away into the teaching of demons.
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The danger of seduction by deceitful spirits and teachings of demons is always present throughout this fallen age, from the time of Jesus till Jesus comes back. They’re always there. But there will be a greater temptation as the end of the age approaches and the Lord draws near.
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Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
In other words, the mystery of lawlessness will have a huge impact on nominal Christians, whose love for Christ is shallow and unreal. They will grow cold. Their resistance to the deception of demons will give way and they will not endure to the end.
Devout followers of Jesus are leaving Evangelicalism in droves; people who were pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth leaders, worship leaders, and college professors, to name a few. These folks dedicated their lives to worshipping and serving Jesus. Everything in their lives said to the world, “I am a born-again child of the living God.” When critics are asked for evidence to justify their harsh criticisms, none is provided. Instead, unsubstantiated accusations are leveled against former servants of the Most High.
The root problem is theological. The IFB preachers mentioned above believe that once a person is saved, he can never, ever lose his salvation. Piper, a Calvinist, believes this too, but with this caveat: a believer must endure (persevere) to the end (death) to be saved. The first fifty years of my life testify to faith in Christ; to devotion to God, the Word, and the church. Years ago, a family member said to another, upon hearing of my deconversion, “If Butch isn’t a Christian, nobody is.” I have had former congregants tell me that they could no longer be friends with me; that they find my story disconcerting, causing them to doubt their own salvation. Fourteen years ago, a dear preacher friend of mine begged me to keep quiet about my loss of faith. He feared that some people upon learning of my deconversion, could become so troubled that they too would lose their faith.
People who knew me are left with an irreconcilable conundrum. They listened to my preaching and observed my behavior. They know I was a Christian in every way. Yet today, I am an outspoken atheist; an enemy of God; a mocker of all things holy and true. My writing repudiates everything I once believed. Some former associates believe I am still saved — just backslidden; that I will either one day return to the faith or God will severely chastise or kill me. Other associates, those of Arminian persuasion, believe I have fallen from grace; that I once was saved, and now I am not.
Preachers such as the aforementioned IFB pastors and John Piper take a different tack. Instead of acknowledging my past devotion to Jesus and the testimony of scores of people about my love for God, they dismiss my story out of hand, saying that I was never what I and others say I was. These critics only know me from afar, yet they feel more than qualified to render judgment. What they are, in effect, saying is that I am lying about my past and that the people who speak glowingly about my preaching and love and care for others are misinformed or deceived. In their minds, I have always been a deceiver, someone who, at the very least was and is influenced by the Devil and demons, or actually possessed by demons.
I get it. My story and those of other ex-preachers and church workers are troubling and challenge the assumptions many Evangelicals have about people who leave Christianity. “How can these things be,” they say to themselves, and instead of taking a hard look at their theological beliefs and presumptuousness, they take the easy way out by calling former believers names or claiming they are demon-possessed. Anything except wrestling with why an increasing number of devoted followers of Jesus are exiting the church stage left, never to return.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is It Ain’t Necessarily So by Cab Calloway. Originally performed and written by George and Ira Gershwin.
It ain’t necessarily so, (repeat) De t’ings dat yo’ li’ble To read in de Bible, It ain’t necessarily so.
Li’l David was small, but oh my! (repeat) He fought big Goliath Who lay down an’ dieth! Li’l David was small, but oh my!
Oh, Jonah, he lived in de whale, (repeat) Fo’ he made his home in Dat fish’s abdomen. Oh, Jonah, he lived in de whale.
Li’l Moses was found in a stream, (repeat) He floated on water Till Ole Pharaoh’s daughter She fished him, she says, from that stream.
It ain’t necessarily so, (repeat) Dey tell all you chillun De debble’s a villun, But ’tain’t necessarily so.
To get into Hebben don’ snap for a sebben! Live clean! Don’ have no fault. Oh, I takes dat gospel Whenever it’s poss’ble, But wid a grain of salt.
Methus’lah lived nine hundred years, (repeat) But who calls dat livin’ When no gal’ll give in To no man what’s nine hundred years?
I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show, It ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa, Ain’t necessarily so.
—Music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin (1935)
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Have you ever wondered about how to become an online Evangelical Christian apologist? Tim Sledge, a former Southern Baptist pastor, shares how anyone can become an expert apologist.
Above all else, remember this: You are right. They are wrong. You are coming from a superior position. You have God on your side. They don’t.
Never, never think about the possibility that you might sound arrogant and condescending when you keep asserting that God has led you to the real truth.
Accept uncritically and parrot the answers well-known Christian apologists give about challenges to belief. Never check these things out for yourself.
Do not listen to ex-Christians when they tell you why they left and how life feels after leaving faith. Turn off all curiosity about an ex-believer’s life experiences. Listen only to what the Bible tells you about why people leave and how it feels to them when they leave. This enables you to know more about how their lives feel than they do.
Always assume that individuals who never believed will be immediately convinced when you quote Bible verses as proof of your beliefs.
Ignore the feedback of ex-believers when you are quoting Bible verses to convince them, and they tell you you’re quoting verses they memorized or quoted when they were believers.
When someone surprises you by responding with a Bible passage that disagrees with your position, tell them they are not interpreting the passage correctly.
If you find out that an ex-believer has studied the Bible more than you, confidently assert they were never a true believer and consequently all their study was in vain.
If all your arguments fail, attack the character of the person who disagrees with you! Tell this individual that there’s no way his/her life can have meaning, and there’s no way s/he can live any kind of moral life. Top it off with the warning: “You’ll be sorry when you burn in hell!” And be sure to convey that you see that destiny as a just reward.
Remember that you’re not just an apologist for Christianity, you’re also an apologist for your brand of Christianity. Confront Christians whose theology is different from yours with the same intensity that characterizes your confrontations with atheists.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home. While living in California in the early 1960s, my parents got saved at Scott Memorial Baptist Church (now Shadow Mountain Community Church) in El Cajon. Tim La Haye was the pastor of Scott Memorial, at the time. LaHaye is best known for co-authoring the Left Behind books and The Act of Marriage. After a couple of years in California looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Dad packed his family up and moved them back to Bryan, Ohio — his birthplace. I was eight years old.
We lived in a small brick home on Mulberry Street. Down the street was the Southern Baptist church we attended at the time, Eastland Baptist Chapel. Dad had an 8 mm movie camera. He was quite proud of his video masterpieces. One weekend night, Dad set up the movie screen so the Gerencser family could watch movies. We watched several movies about our move to and from California and various family events. As time crawled on, I became bored, so I started going through Dad’s titled movies, hoping to find something a bit more exciting than travel clips. I came upon a movie titled Dreamy Lips.
I pulled Dreamy Lips out of the box and asked Dad what it was about. Embarrassed, he quickly said “None of your business,” and quickly grabbed the movie from my hand. Movie night was officially over. It would be years later before I learned that Dreamy Lips was a stag film; that Dad had a collection of pornos.
While I find this story amusing today, it is a reminder that my parents lived a double life — as all Christians do. There was the church life, the oh, how I love Jesus life; and then there was the private life behind closed doors, one filled with contradictions and, at times, pain and heartache.
Most of Dad’s movies have been lost to time. I have one that was converted to a VCR tape. I hope to have it put on DVD so my grandchildren can “enjoy” one of Bob Gerencser’s famous movies.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Not-a-Real-Doctor David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, has returned to his previous ways, writing posts about me and using my writing without proper attribution. His latest post titled, The Bible IS What it Claims to Be — 2 is his latest attempt to smear my character. Before I address what Thiessen wrote, I want to point out Thiessen’s post title; particularly his use of the word IS in ALL CAPS. Every time Thiessen does this, I think of this:
YES, IT IS! YES, IT IS! YES, IT IS! All caps is how people shout digitally, hoping to make a point. Thiessen has spent his entire life in Christian Fundamentalism; a movement where shouting and pulpit pounding is used to say “BLESS GOD, I AM ABSOLUTELY, 100% RIGHT! CAN I GET AN A-M-E-N? So when Thiessen uses ALL CAPS, he’s just screaming, with index fingers in each ear, I’M RIGHT!
To be frank, who is Bruce anyways? What has he accomplished that anyone, including unbelievers, should listen to what he says? he quit on just about everything in his life except his marriage and what does a quitter have to offer anyone?
When Simone Biles quit on her Olympic team you should have read the comments under every article about her. They were not nice and most dismissed her and her opinion, etc. Quitters do not get the brass ring nor do they get any influence.
The moment former Christians quit the faith, they lose access to the truth and help from the only person who can get them to the truth and explain it correctly to them Also, when people quit the faith, they are not moving from an inferior god to a superior one.
Nor are they moving to a better religious faith that actually stops people from committing crimes or sinning, and they are not moving to a greater moral code. What they have done is moved from a faith that has all of those elements and moved to NOTHING.
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We do not care what the owner of that website says nor do we care what any atheist or unbeliever says. They have nothing to offer anyone because they either reject something and stay in nothing or moved from something to nothing.
They are not correct and never will be. Plus, they have no hidden information that shows that God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, the Christian faith, and so on is a hoax. They have nothing.
Thiessen “frankly” asks, “Who is Bruce, anyways?” Who I am can easily be ascertained by reading my autobiographical writing. Thiessen’s question is rhetorical. What he is really saying is that Bruce Gerencser is a nobody. Why would anyone listen to a “nobody”? I am sixty-six years old, yet he dismisses my entire life. Why? Well, in Thiessen’s mind, I am a “quitter.” I have “quit” everything in my life, except my marriage. This is rich coming from a man who is no longer a pastor; a man who divorced or left his wife; a man who abandoned his baby. Talk about a quitter. Of course, I would never disparagingly call him a quitter. Shit happens. Things change. Jobs, ministries, and marriages come and go.
Thiessen, of course, knows these things. Why he beats the “quitter” drum over and over and over again is beyond me. I have tried through this blog to give an honest account of my life. Thiessen has made no attempt to do the same. He hides in a foreign country, using several aliases over the years. His readers, all ten of them, know little to nothing about him. He parades around proud as a peacock as a “Dr.” yet refuses to say where he earned his degree or make his doctoral thesis available to the public. He is free, of course, to do these things, but personal attacks on me and my honest telling of my life carry no weight. I really wish he would stop with the quitter” schtick. He won’t because he knows it bothers me. Color me human, but I don’t like it when people lie about me.
Thiessen uses the horrible abuse Simon Biles received after dropping out of the Olympics as justification for attacking my character. As a quitter, I shouldn’t expect to be treated nicely by others. According to Thiessen, quitters such as Simon Biles and I shouldn’t have any influence over others, nor should we get the brass ring — whatever the Hell that means. In other words, leaving Christianity undoes everything I have done in my life. Nothing I do going forward will have meaning and value. Since Thiessen delusionally thinks his words = God’s words, all I can say is this: Derrick Thiessen worships a horrible God.
According to Thiessen, on the last Sunday of November in 2008 — almost fifteen years ago — every bit of knowledge and truth in my brain disappeared. From that day forward, I could no longer know and understand “truth.” Why? Because all “truth” comes from Jesus, an uneducated traveling preacher who died 2,000 years ago. It is Jesus alone who can explain truth to us.
Thiessen says he doesn’t care what I say, yet he has written almost one hundred posts about me or in response to something I have written. I’d say based on this fact that Thiessen has an unhealthy obsession with me. I’ve repeatedly offered to send him my Stripper Santa Pole Dancing® photo, but so far he refuses to provide me with his mailing address. His loss. 🙂
Thiessen ends his harangue about me with a number of personal attacks, all meant to belittle and demean me.
Perhaps Thiessen has forgotten that Jesus told him how to treat the atheist Bruce Gerencser and others like him:
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. (Luke 6:27-38)
Jesus said it, Derrick, I didn’t.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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In the late 1980s, while I was the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church, I purchased a 1984 Chevy Cavalier for $2,900. It had 19,000 miles on the odometer. The car was spartan in every way: crank windows, vinyl mats, AM/FM radio, and no air conditioning. I used the car for my ministerial travels, and we also used it to deliver newspapers for the Zanesville Times-Recorder and the Newark Advocate. If this car could be resurrected from the junkyard, it would have stories to tell about Bruce and Polly Gerencser zipping up and down the hills of Licking, Muskingum, and Perry Counties delivering newspapers. All told, we put 160,000 miles on the car without any major mechanical failures. Tires, brakes, and tune-ups were all the car required.
If the car could talk it would certainly speak of being abused:
Polly hit a mailbox, denting the hood and cracking the windshield.
Polly hit some geese, damaging the air dam.
Bruce hit a concrete block that had been thrown on the road on a dark fall night.
Bruce hit a black Labrador retriever who was sleeping on the road, causing damage to the front of the car.
Bruce hit a deer, causing damage to the bumper and radiator.
A tree limb fell on the car, further damaging the hood.
A woman drove into the back of the car while it was parked alongside the road in Corning, Ohio. We found out later that this accident broke the rear frame member.
By the time we were finished with the car, it looked like it had recently been used in a demolition derby. We carried personal liability insurance on the car — no collision — so no repairs were performed after these accidents. We certainly extracted every bit of life we could out of the car. It went to the happy wrecking yard in the sky knowing that it faithfully served Jesus and the Gerencser family.
Our Chevy Cavalier is a perfect illustration of our life in the ministry. Unlike Catholics, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers don’t take a vow of poverty. That said, the eleven years I spent as pastor of Somerset Baptist can be best described as the “poverty years.” I put God, the ministry, and the church before my wife, children, and personal needs. We did without so the church could make ends meet, thinking that God would someday reward us for our voluntary poverty.
Pastoring Somerset Baptist was a seven-day-a-week job. I was always on call, with rarely a day off. And as a workaholic, I liked it that way. During the late 1980s, for example, I was preaching on the street two days a week, teaching Sunday school, preaching twice on Sunday and once on Thursday. On Wednesdays, I would preach at the local nursing home. On Saturdays, I would help visit the homes of bus riders and try to round up new riders. I also helped start a multi-church youth fellowship. We had monthly activities for church teens. And then there were revival meetings, special services, Bible conferences, watch night services, pastors’ conferences, and the like. Throw in visiting church members in their homes and when they were hospitalized, and virtually every waking hour of my day was consumed by the work of the ministry. And lest I forget, we also took in foster children, many of whom were teenagers placed in our home by the Perry County Court. I believed, then, I could “reach” these children and transform their lives through the gospel and regular church attendance. I was, in retrospect, quite naïve.
But, wait, there’s more! — I am beginning to sound like a Billy Mays commercial. In 1989, I started a tuition-free private Christian school for church children. I was the school’s administrator. I also taught a few classes. Polly taught the elementary-age children. Many of these children have fond memories of Mrs. Gerencser teaching them to read. Students have no such memories of me, the stern taskmaster they called Preacher.
Our hillbilly mansion. We lived in this 720-square-foot mobile home for five years, all eight of us.
For the last five years at Somerset Baptist, we were up at 6:00 AM and rarely went to bed before midnight. When I started the church in 1983, we had two children, ages two and four. Eleven years later, we had six children, ages fifteen, thirteen, ten, five, three, and one. Our home was patriarchal in every way. Polly cared for our home — a dilapidated 12×60 trailer — cooked meals, and changed thousands of diapers — and not the disposable kind either. Polly used God-approved cloth diapers with all six children. She also breastfed all of them.
Why did Bruce and Polly live this way? The short answer is that we believed that living a life of faith on the edge poverty was how Jesus wanted us to live. After all, Jesus didn’t even have a home or a bed, so who were we to complain? If God wanted us to have more in life, he would give it to us, we thought. Much like the Apostle Paul, we learned to be content in whatever state we were in — rich or poor, it mattered not.
I left Somerset Baptist Church in 1994. I am now a physically broken-down old man. Some of the health problems I now face were birthed during my days at Somerset Baptist. There’s no doubt, had I put my family first and prioritized my personal well-being above that of the church, that we would be better off financially and I would be in better health. As it was, I spent years eating on the run or downing junk food while I was out on visitation. I know we surely must have sat down to eat as family, but I can’t remember doing so. Of course, I can’t remember us having sex either, and our children are proof that we at least had sex six times. 🙂 All I know is that I was busy, rarely stopping for a breath, and so was Polly. It’s a wonder that our marriage survived the eleven years we spent at Somerset Baptist. It did, I suppose, because we believed that the way we were living was God’s script for our marriage and family. We look back on it now and just shake our heads.
I am sure some readers might read this post and not believe I am telling the truth. Who would voluntarily live this way? Who would voluntarily sacrifice their economic well-being, health, and family? A workaholic madly in love with Jesus, that’s who. A man who believed that whatever he suffered in this life was nothing compared to what Jesus suffered on the cross. A man who believed that someday in Heaven, God was going to say him, well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord. I viewed life as an endurance race, and it was my duty and obligation to keep running for Jesus until he called me home. No one can ever say of Bruce and Polly that they didn’t give their all — all to Jesus I surrender, all to him I humbly give.
$200 beater. Polly HATED this car. What’s not to like, right?
Of course, my devotion to God, the church, and the ministry was a waste of time and money. One of the biggest regrets I have is that I wasted the prime of my life in service to a non-existent God. While certainly I helped many people along the way, I could have done the same work as a social worker and retired with a great pension. Instead, all I got was a gold star for being an obedient slave. I am not bitter, nor is Polly. We have many fond memories of the time we spent at Somerset Baptist Church. But, both of us would certainly say that we would never, ever want to live that way again. We loved the people and the scenery, but the God? No thanks. We feel at this juncture in life as if we have been delivered from bondage. We are now free to live as we wish to live, with no strings attached. And, there’s not a dilapidated Chevrolet Cavalier sitting in our driveway. No sir, we have electric windows, electric seats, air-conditioning, and the greatest invention of all time for a back ravaged by osteoarthritis — heated seats. We may be going to Hell when we die, but I and misses sure plan on enjoying life until we do.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As Polly and I wrapped up our twenty-five-year tour of duty pastoring churches, we began looking for a new church home. I had pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio from 1997 to 2002, and after leaving the church, we attended — for a short time — an Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA) church in Butler, Indiana. The congregation itself was not much to write home about, but we dearly loved the pastor, Jim Glasscock, and his family. After attending for a few months, we decided that we would join the church, only to find out that we couldn’t do so because we weren’t Dispensational and Premillennial. That’s right, we couldn’t join because of our amillennial, posttribulational, non-dispensational eschatology. Such is the fracturing nature of Christian Fundamentalism. We soon left, looking for friendlier confines. The pastor and his wife — by now friends — were, as we were, disappointed. We felt, at the time, that we couldn’t in good conscience attend a church that wouldn’t accept us as members. The church later closed its doors and the pastor and his family moved on to a new ministry.
While I could tell many stories about our time at this church (good, bad, and funny), one stands out above all others. One Sunday morning we were sitting around a table in the fellowship hall swapping stories. Somehow, the subject of cats came up. Now, I am a cat lover. We have always had at least one cat, and have had as many as three. Currently, we have a fat, lazy yellow sixteen-year-old cat named Joe Meower and a year-and-a-half-old stray we took in named Socks. We regularly feed the neighborhood’s feral cats, hopefully providing them a bit of respite from the cruelty inflicted upon them by thoughtless humans.
As we talked about cats, an aged farmer decided to share a story about his barn cats. One of his cats had recently given birth to a litter of kittens. I thought, how nice, this man is going to take care of these feral cats and their offspring. I quickly learned, however, this man was anything but nice. Not that he was peculiar. Lots of Jesus-loving, God-fearing locals are quite cruel to animals. Some of the most cruel people I know are local Amish farmers. I asked the man how the kittens were doing. Oh, he chuckled, I killed them. I got a hammer out and smacked each one of them in the head! I quickly felt my face becoming flush as rage filled my mind. I thought, you could have given the kittens away, or better yet, you could have had your female barn cats spayed. Instead, your cruel hands picked up a hammer and beat them to death.
I quickly exited the fellowship hall, fearing that I was going to have a “Bruce moment.” My rage passed, but I have not forgotten that people who speak of the love of God can often be cruel and violent; that God commanding them to have dominion over the earth means that they can indiscriminately kill. In an anthropocentric world, man rules the roost. All other life only has the value given to it by its overlords. This is why this farmer could, as if he was telling a story about his grandchildren, share his murderous rampage with his fellow church members.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
