Bruce “Butch” Gerencser and his younger brother and sister, 1960s, San Diego, California. First time I noticed that my pants are unzipped, underwear is above my waist, and no shoes. I was quite the fashion statement.
In the early 1960s, my dad packed up his family of five and moved us to San Diego, California in the hope of finding the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Dad never found his dream, but while there the Gerencser family found Jesus and became members of a large Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church. I attended kindergarten and first grade in California. My memories, as to be expected, are spotty, but one moment in time stands above all others, one I have not forgotten sixty years later.
Most of my time in California was spent living in a small single-story home on Columbine Street. The house sat across the street from a canyon that would provide my siblings and me with countless hours of fun. That said, I can’t imagine letting a 6-year-old, 5-year-old, and 3-year-old play by themselves without adult supervision. Such were the times, I suppose.
In our backyard was a courtyard of sorts, with three other homes closely situated to ours. One day, I heard a bunch of screaming in Spanish. Always a nosey little boy, I went to the courtyard to see what was up. Much to my fascination — at the time — a Mexican man was savagely beating his wife. Adults stood by and did nothing — out of fear, I suspect — as the man inflicted such damage on his wife that one eye popped out of its socket on her blood-soaked face. The man’s white T-shirt was covered with his wife’s blood. As I think about this event decades later, it’s clear that the man intended to murder his wife.
By the time the police arrived, the man had fled the scene, and could be seen attempting to escape via a water pipe of sorts that traversed the canyon. Soon apprehended, he was placed in the back seat of a police car. As the car began to pull away, the man turned to look out the back window. Still filled with rage, his mouth was foaming.
Little children should never have to experience such things in their lives. I am not sure where my mother was at the time, or why she didn’t shield us from the carnage. Perhaps she tried to do so, but my curiosity won the day. Regardless, this event made a deep mark on my life. When confronted with circumstances later in my life, I chose to intercede instead of standing by and fearfully doing nothing as those adults in the courtyard did over half a century ago. I refuse to stand by and do nothing when people use physical strength or power to psychologically or physically harm others. Yes, that means putting myself in harm’s way, but imagine if all of us stood up to bullies and those who use violence to make a point or get their way. If we don’t, who will?
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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Gary Keen, Bruce Gerencser, Mike Fox, Greg Wilson, Midwestern Baptist College, 1978
Last Monday, I tested positive for COVID, as did my wife and our oldest daughter. Thanks to vaccines — we are triple-vaxxed, having received our last vaccination in May — and, in my case, Paxlovid, an anti-viral drug, we avoided hospitalization and possible death (a likely outcome for me without the vaccines). While Bethany is back to her ornery self and Polly is mostly recovered, save for a nagging cough and sinus drainage, my recovery, as expected, has been much slower. I still have a good bit of congestion and I am quite weak. Much better? Absolutely! All praise be to science! But, I suspect it will take some time before I return to my normal sickly self where pain is my biggest problem.
I have spent a lot of time in bed over the past nine days trying to combat weakness and fatigue. Of course, spending time in bed doesn’t necessarily lead to sleep. Pain often precludes me from sleeping, and when it does, I try to “rest,” watching YouTube videos, catching up on recorded TV programs, and surfing the Internet. Sometimes, resting eventually brings sleep, other times it doesn’t. I learned long ago to not fight my body when it comes to sleep.
Last night, I stumbled upon the Facebook profile of a man I knew back when both of us studied for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s. This man, a megachurch pastor’s son, was an usher for my wedding. After perusing his Facebook wall, I took a look at his friend list. (Yes, his list was public, a really bad idea.) I noticed that he was friends with lots of people who were also students at Midwestern back in the day. With lots of time on my hands — after all, how much time can you spend reading the Bible and praying 🙂 — I started stalking my former college friends, looking at what they had posted on their Facebook walls. Click, scroll, click, scroll, click, scroll . . . and as I did so, I found myself becoming increasingly depressed. After looking at three dozen or so profiles, I concluded that I had made a mistake; that knowledge wasn’t power.
Every person — and I mean EVERY — was still either an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian, or, at the very least, a right-wing Evangelical. The hatred and vitriol toward the “world,” atheists, liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama was on full display. To the person, they were Trump-loving, gun-loving, forced birthers, anti-LGBTQ Republicans. And proudly so. I looked in vain for anyone who was a Democrat, a member of a mainline Christian denomination, or who had lost their faith altogether. Taken together, what I found was a monoculture, a cult-like enclave where fealty to rigid, narrow, unbending beliefs was required for admission. What troubled me the most was the devotion to Trump. Even after two impeachments and the January 6th hearing, they still supported the disgraced immoral ex-president.
This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. If I could break free from IFB thinking, why can’t others? What is it that insulates Fundamentalists from reality? Is there nothing that can change their minds? I recognize that I am, for whatever reason, an exception to the rule, as is my wife. Sure, scores of IFB congregants exit stage left, moving on to friendlier confines, but it seems that few pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and professors are willing to do so, especially once they have been in the ministry for decades. Why is that?
While I found myself depressed over what I saw, I also felt gratitude. I escaped. I found a way to break free. Am I special? Nope, I am lucky. While I continue to struggle with guilt and regret over the harm I caused my family, my counselor reminded me that life could be a lot worse for me and my family had I remained Pastor Bruce Gerencser, the family patriarch. Imagine how life might be for Polly and our children had I remained in the ministry; had I maintained my rigid Fundamentalist beliefs and practices? I can’t think of any way in which that would have been a good thing. So, while it depresses me that my former college friends have matured very little from the days we roamed the hallways of the Midwestern dormitory, I am grateful that I escaped.
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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When you meet a man you may be interested in and he wants to go out with you, go out for a few coffee dates to see if he may be marriage material. Find out if he is even interested in marriage and having children. If not, he’s not for you! Find out his beliefs and if they’re compatible with God’s Word. Keep it on this level for the first date.
If he wants to keep dating you and you feel the same way, let him know soon that you want to be sexually pure. If he does too, then this is a good sign. If not, you probably want to stop dating him.
You both need to be honest about your pasts. This should all be out in the open but details do not need to be provided IF either of you have a promiscuous past. But each of you have a right to know of any addictions, porn usage, fornication, etc. A solid marriage must be built upon trust.
If a man is still struggling with an addiction, I would encourage you to stop dating him. If he hasn’t struggled with an addiction for several years and still is being held accountable, then this is a good sign.
Does he attend a solid, Bible believing church? Does he want children? Is he a hard-worker and willing to provide for you to be home with the children? Discuss vaccinations, family bed, circumcision, education for children, and all of the other topics that can cause division. Once married, you are going to need to submit to his decisions, so it’s good to know what he believes about everything.
Meet his family and have him meet yours. Ask for your father’s blessing if you continue to move forward. Men are usually better judges of the character of another man than women are. Trust your father’s judgements. Get to know his family. How does he treat his mother? Does he have a good relationship with his father? Know that those who come from divorced families often have deep-seated problems with anger. Watch for signs of this. You don’t want to marry an angry man.
The most important things to know about a man you are considering marrying is that he is a strong believer in Jesus and is willing to work hard. Everything else will fall in place if he has these two important qualities
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.
Does the Christian God use pain to draw people to himself? Assuming for a moment that such a God exists, does he use human suffering to make followers for himself?
There is no evidence in the Bible to suggest he does. To be sure, the Bible has a fair amount to say about pain. It claims that suffering is a means by which God either chastens Christians (Hebrews 12.7) or strengthens them (Romans 5.3-5), but this is exclusively for people who already believe. The Bible does not say non-believers are afflicted as a means of drawing them closer to God; the idea is unbiblical.
Let’s assume then that while this notion finds no support in the bible, Christians have learnt over the centuries, perhaps though extra-biblical revelation, that God does use pain in this way. What does this tell us about God? That he’s a being whose principal way of making human beings pay attention to him is by causing (or allowing) them to suffer frequently unbearable pain and anguish.
What sort of God is this? Not one who loves the world and cares for humans far more than he does mere sparrows (Matthew 6.26). He’s more an unpleasant, sadistic bully: the jock who backs you up against the wall, grips your balls and squeezes hard.
Maybe that’s how it is. The God who created the universe is just such a being; a moral monster, as Richard Dawkins described him. It’s easy to see how he might be: human beings suffer, yet there’s (supposedly) a God who loves them; therefore, pain and suffering must at the very least be sanctioned by God, or, more likely, delivered by him. This, after all, is the story of the Old Testament. The God so arrived at, though, is a thoroughly human creation, a means of minimising cognitive dissonance by reconciling human suffering and a God who supposedly cares.
One more assumption is needed. Let’s assume this time that despite the odds, this character really exists. Does his strategy work? Does inflicting pain and anguish on people make them, as Lewis suggests, cry out to the One doing (or allowing) the inflicting and compel them to love him? It seems unlikely; I can’t find any evidence online of anyone claiming that pain or anguish brought them to God. From a personal perspective, I can honestly say that in times of distress or suffering I have never, post-deconversion, called out to God or any supernatural entity for help. I’ve never interpreted my suffering as his calling me closer and have never, since escaping Christianity, succumbed to his malicious charms. (What I did do occasionally, following my deconversion, was to convince myself that my suffering was a punishment from God – for leaving him behind, being gay or something I’d done. These feelings disappeared when I embraced fully the fact that the Christian God isn’t real.)
Where does this leave the Christian with, as Lewis puts it, ‘the problem of pain’? How do they reconcile a loving God who allows or even causes human beings to suffer? They can’t. Instead, they spout empty platitudes that they think let their indifferent, imaginary God off the hook. Just look at the meaningless theo-babble religious leaders came up with in 2004 after a tsunami hit Indonesia, killing 227,898 people.
Leave God out of the equation, however, and there are far better explanations for why humans suffer. ‘Shit happens’ is far more convincing than anything the religious have to offer. Physical pain is the body’s reaction to damage. It is an imperfect system that frequently overreacts or fires up even after damage is repaired (I know this, having fibromyalgia). That’s what it is to have, to be, a physical body. Anguish comes from random acts of nature, the violence and cruelty we inflict on each other and the death of loved ones, much of which is beyond human control. ‘Thoughts and prayers’ are useless in ameliorating this kind of suffering. Measures to restrict people’s access to weapons undoubtedly helps, as it has in countries with politicians with sufficient strength and intelligence to enact gun-control legislation. Without it, as in Uvalde recently, more children will die, more parents will experience terrible anguish and another massacre is inevitable. God won’t stop it.
Suffering is not symbolic of something else; it is not ‘God’s megaphone’ or an opportunity for others to point those afflicted to Christ’s light (or any other bullshit that involves the supernatural.) Pain simply is. It is our lot as physical bodies to endure or alleviate it as best we can.
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.
Proponents of chronic Lyme essentially just dismiss the scientific evidence, and instead resort to anecdotal evidence of a subjective response to treatment in some patients. As would be expected, when a group has a persistent belief that experts reject due to lack of scientific evidence, or even evidence of lack of efficacy, conspiracy theories proliferate. In this case the usual “Big Pharma” conspiracy won’t work, because the treatment being offered is pharmaceuticals. So a new enemy was invented, insurance companies. They were made the bogeyman for not wanting to pay for multiple courses of IV antibiotics.
Today, I received the following email from an Evangelical man named Jacob. Jacob read two posts on this site, How Dare I Badmouth IFB Evangelist CT Townsend! Says Fundamentalist Christian and the About page. Jacob spent nine minutes reading my writing before emailing me. He read none of my autobiographical material, nor did he bother to perform searches on the subjects mentioned in his email. No need, right? I am sure Jacob felt led by God to email me. After all, he knows exactly what is wrong with me physically and psychologically; that both my doctors and I are one hundred percent WRONG!
My response to Jacob’s email is indented and italicized.
Hello brother,
I am not your brother. I did learn last year that I have half-brothers and half-sisters, but I doubt you belong to my newfound family. I suspect you are using the word “brother” in a Christian sense; as in a “brother in Christ.” In what way am I your brother? I am an atheist. I am an enemy of Christ. I reject the central claims of Christianity. I am an apostate and a reprobate. I believe your religion is a cult. According to your true “brothers,” I am a tool of Satan, used by the Evil One to lead many people away from Jesus.
You spent less than ten minutes on this site. You don’t know me at all. So, let’s dispense with the familial language, okay?
First, I came to your page from your topic on CT Townsend. I just finished a 5 day youth camp and even though I am a Christian, I know much of what you had to say to be true. It’s sensationalism. They intentionally get people in their emotions and then pounce.
Yet, you are still a part of this. Why?
With that said, I only contacted you to share something with you that I’m certain you will toss aside and ignore: Many of your mental and physical ailments are caused by one thing: Lyme+ I understand the denial that comes when I say this, and I understand why. However, I am 100% certain that this is the truth.
Jacob is an evangelist for chronic Lyme disease, a diagnosis that has no scientific foundation. Please understand that lyme disease and chronic lyme disease are two different things. Please read the following for more information:
I have been reading the work of Gorski, Novella, and Hall for years. Proponents of science-based medicine, I find them to be credible experts on a wide array of medical issues. I have had the same primary care doctor for twenty-six years. I also regularly see specialists for the various diseases that afflict me. I have had extensive work-ups at the University of Michigan, the Toledo Clinic, and Parkview Medical Center in Fort Wayne. I have been poked, prodded, and scanned. CT and MRI scans from head to toe. Blood draws 3-4 times a year. Down the mouth and up the ass, doctors have looked at the internal workings of my body.
Yet, Jacob, who has no medical training outside of the ability to do a Google search and read feels duty-bound to offer a complete stranger on the Internet unsolicited, unwanted, unneeded, and most certainly, not appreciated medical advice.
I recommend listening to videos from the doctors studying this stuff like Dr Dietrich Klinghardt PhD. There is an excellent documentary called “Under Our Skin”. Please don’t just dismiss what I’m saying, but instead dig into it.
I will leave it to readers to do searches on the things mentioned by Jacob. I spent a few minutes doing so. I read enough to lead me to conclude that I am not going to waste my time. I’m confident that my doctors are doing the best they can for me. Yes, I wish they could magically heal me, but that’s not in the cards. I refuse to chase after woo and nonsense, only to be disappointed in the end. Years ago, I chased the fibromyalgia rabbit down numerous trails. I ended up in some crazy places. Who doesn’t want to feel better, right? My doctors do what they can to ease my suffering; to maintain or improve my quality of life. At this point in my life, that’s fine. I expect my doctors to do all they can to help me, but I know they aren’t miracle workers. Believe me, they would LOVE to fix me. Imagine the medical journal article they could write if, through their expertise, all my symptoms went away! This, of course, ain’t going to happen.
I went from early onset dementia(among many other things) at 28 years old, to feeling great and living my life again. There is no such thing as “fibromaylagia”. It is a blanket term used to describe symptoms of a chronic bacterial infection. DNA connexions has a wonderful test that will pick up these infections unlike the CDC guideline test that looks for an immune response. These infections infiltrate our body and essentially turn off our immune system to themselves. So, the test will always show negative if not caught early enough.
I have had fibromyalgia for almost as long as Jacob has been alive. I know this disease inside and out. And I know how to spell the damn word. 🙂 Jacob has been convinced by peddlers of woo and anecdotal evidence that fibromyalgia (and chronic fatigue syndrome) is not a real disease. Twenty-five years ago, this sentiment was more common in the medical community, but no longer. I haven’t been treated by a fibro-denier in years (and once I find out they are, I fire their asses).
Jacob thinks I have chronic Lyme disease, not fibromyalgia. Never mind the fact that I have been tested several times over the years for Lyme disease (especially when I first started having symptoms). Jacob is an Evangelical, so much like resolutely believing the Bible is inerrant and infallible, he believes the gospel of chronic Lyme disease. No amount of evidence will convince him that it is wrong — not even a peer reviewed double-blind study. He once was lost and now he is saved; he once was sick, and now he is healed. Here an anecdote, there an anecdote, everywhere an anecdote, JUST BELIEVE!
Good luck and I know you don’t believe in God, but I’ll pray for you, just in case you’re wrong:)
Fuck you, Jacob. You refuse to accept any of my story at face value. You stupidly and ignorantly — not really knowing anything about my medical conditions — reject my health claims. Then, you conclude your email by saying that you are going to pray that I get saved because you know that I am wrong about that too. Evidently, in Jacob’s world, no part of my story is my own. He, alone, is the arbiter of what is true. Imagine if I did the same to Jacob, trashing his beliefs and experiences? Why, he would be outraged. But, I don’t do such things. I accept the stories of others at face value. And I most certainly don’t question the medical care of others. If asked, I will answer questions and give practical care advice. After all, having fibromyalgia (and gastroparesis) has taught me a few things about the disease. I read the relevant literature when new reports and books are released. It would be impossible for me not to do so. When news headlines scream NEW TREATMENT FOR FIBROMYALGIA, GASTROPARESIS, OR CHRONIC PAIN, I am going to get a shitload of texts, emails, and social media messages.
I am sure Jacob thought he was doing me a favor by sharing his medical “expertise” with me. I am sure he thought I would be “grateful.” Hopefully, this is a lesson well learned for the young man. Don’t email strangers on the Internet; especially cranky curmudgeons; especially someone who has been seriously ill from COVID -19 and is currently bedfast; especially someone who was two weeks into topical chemotherapy treatment for cancer on his nose when he tested positive for COVID; especially someone who battles nausea, vomiting, and unrelenting pain every day of his life; especially someone who hasn’t seen his grandkids or gotten laid lately. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
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.
On Monday, I tested positive for COVID-19. Polly and Bethany also tested positive. While both of them have relatively mild (bad cold-like) symptoms, I, on the other hand, am very, very sick.
My doctor prescribed me Paxlovid. I have been bedfast since Monday. The goal is to avoid the hospital. Well, that and not dying. 😇
I will not be doing any writing in the short term. If you’ve been sitting on guest post, now would be a good time to send it to me.
Recently, Bev Babcock Gunter, an ex-friend of my wife, Polly, left a comment on my YouTube channel. Bev and Polly became friends back in the 1960s when they attended Kawkalin River Baptist Church in Bay City, Michigan, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church pastored by Bev’s father, Bob Babcock. (The church later changed its name to Emmanuel Baptist Church. It is now defunct.) Over the years, Bev, a graduate of Tennessee Temple, and Polly stayed in contact, trading letters, emails, and phone calls. Bev was one of Polly’s bride’s maids. Their relationship waned over the years. After we deconverted, Polly received a Facebook message from Bev that basically said, “tell me it isn’t true!” Polly did not respond, as is her custom. We hadn’t heard anything from Bev for several years until her comment on my YouTube channel over the weekend.
What follows is Bev’s comment and my brief response:
I suspect Bev thinks I have led Polly astray. Given no credit for thinking for herself, Polly often finds that others suspect that it is big, bad Bruce who led her to walk away from Jesus. They couldn’t be more wrong.
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.
Fake Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, has been on a roll lately. Earlier this year, Tee said he was going to stop writing about me and Ben Berwick. Having written dozens of posts about me over the past three years, Tee concluded that I wasn’t listening to him; that there was no chance that I would see the light, relent, and return to Christianity. Over this time period, I have featured Tee in the “Christians Say the Darnedest Things” a few times. The rest of my posts featuring him were responses to articles he wrote about me; articles littered with lies, distortions, and attacks on my character.
Tee is known for his defense of child molesters, rapists, and sexual predators. By all accounts, Tee is not a good person. I’ve seen nothing in his behavior that suggests that he is a Christian. Tee shows no evidence in his life of the fruit of the Spirit, nor does it seem that he has ever read the Sermon on the Mount.
Recently, someone with a personal, intimate connection to Tee contacted me to share documents that show he has a secret past, that he fled the United States years ago, and he is now living in the Philippines under an assumed name. I have seen these documents firsthand, so any suggestion by Tee that they are third and fourth-hand information is not true. I know Tee is familiar with these documents and the person providing them to me, but has made no effort to defend himself. Instead, Tee claims that he is just like the soon-to-be-crucified Jesus standing before the Sanhedrin.
What follows is an excerpt from a recent post written by Tee titled We Worry About It Too. My response is indented and italicized.
BG [when writing about preachers who commit crimes, sexually assault children, rape teenagers, and take sexual advantage of vulnerable women (and men)] takes the low road and tries to embarrass, harass, and do many other negative things.
It makes him look bad when he puts out his red and black collar articles. As if Christians need his help in spotting bad preachers. But it is not his call (nor MM’s) who gets to minister in any given church.
BG = Bruce Gerencser and MM = Meerkat Musings, AKA Ben Berwick. Tee refuses to address us by our names. I suspect he’s too lazy to do so or it’s his way of showing disrespect. Either way, doing so is unprofessional.
After all, BG quit on God and MM never tried to be a believer. Both of these people and many others like them should learn to mind their own business They just do not have a better alternative to offer anyone. In fact, they have nothing to offer anyone and they have no real spiritual advice to say to anyone.
Tee continues to assert that I am quitter; that I quit on God; that I quit on the ministry. Evidently, no one is allowed to change his or her mind. Tee refuses to accept my story at face value, even though he has allegedly read numerous posts on this site. I have published over four thousand posts since 2017. The reasons I deconverted are clearly shown in post after post, yet Tee deliberately ignored these explanations. Instead, he continues to attack my character and smear my name. Such behavior is contrary to the teachings of the Bible; the book Tee says he loves, believes, and practices. I have pointed out these things to Tee over the years. His response? Self-justification or silence.
We [I] do not embarrass, belittle, judge, attack, or publicly humiliate anyone. We [I] write what we [I] feel God wants us [me] to write and leave the conviction to him. We [I] are [am] not judges, jury & executioners. Nor do we [I] call for anyone to fire these people. Not our [my] place.
Readers of this blog are likely on the floor laughing as they read Tee’s description of his behavior. None of what he writes here is true.
[BG wrote] Can any of us say that Tee is a good person?
It won’t be BG or MM, that is for sure. They do not know us [me], never met, talked, or spent time with us. Their big problem with us [me] is that we [I] will tell the truth and won’t join them in leading children to sin and disobedience to God.
LOL 🙂 No, I haven’t met, talked, or spent time with the fraud David Tee. Nor would I want to — ever. I have, however, been reading his writing for at least three years. His writing, along with information provided to me by people who personally know him, tells me all I need to know about Derrick Thomas Thiessen.
The reason I don’t think Tee is a good person is this: he is an arrogant, nasty, vicious, hateful, self-righteous liar. You are the problem, David, not your beliefs. I interact with Evangelicals all the time who have beliefs similar to Tee’s. Few of them spend an inordinate amount of time attacking me on their blogs. Tee fashions himself as some sort of prophet. On several occasions, Tee has compared himself to Jesus. It’s hard not to conclude that Tee has some sort of God complex. He has no church, and few readers, yet he sees himself as the conscience of Evangelical Christianity. He has spent years on the Internet courting persecution. Tee is known for leaving caustic comments on atheist and Christian blog alike. When he wears out his welcome — and he always does — owners of these sites ban him. Of course, Tee never considers what he might have done. Much like he does on this site, Tee blames others, claiming persecution.
They get 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand information, think it is the gospel truth, and then form their opinions about us [me]. We understand they do not like our [my] message and that is understandable. We [I] are [am] in two different worlds and unbelievers, as the Bible tells us [me], will laugh and scoff at the truth.
Tee is referring to recent information I received about his nefarious past. This information comes from first-hand and second-hand sources, particularly a sworn deposition in Thiessen’s own words. Tee continues to say, without justification, that the real issue is his beliefs. Nope, on this issue, it’s YOU, Derrick. Certainly, Tee has horrendous beliefs, i.e., his recent posts about forcing a ten-year-old rape victim to carry her baby to term. Even worse, Tee said that even if the child was five-years-old, he would force them to have her baby. I can’t think of a more vile belief than this one. And since you cannot separate a skunk from its smell, I have concluded that Tee is a despicable man; a man who would rather see a rape victim die if it meant he was being true to his Fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Then, the Bible says that no one is good and by no one, it means us as well. So technically, without Christ, we [I] are [am] not good people. We [I] do our [my] best to live the Christian life and we [I] are [am] not perfect. however, unbelievers and even Christians will hold your [my] mistakes over your [my] head forever and refuse to forgive even though the offense did not happen to them.
Much like many Fundamentalist Christians, Tee uses his theology to hide bad behavior toward his family. He fled the United States to hide, hoping he could start over without anyone ever knowing what he did. Well, the chickens have now come home to roost. Tee wants people to forgive him and move on, yet he refuses to own his behavior, both in the past and present. Much like serial sexual predator David Hyles, Tee hides behind the unconditional love of God and the blood atonement of Jesus. Jesus has forgiven him, so should everyone else. Until Thiessen admits that he has been living a lie and makes things right with those he has harmed, I’m not inclined to give him a pass. Confession, David, is good for the soul.
We [I] have written about how tough it is to be a Christian. BG should know that, he could not handle the Christian life and quit on Jesus. He and MM have no moral or other foundation to cast the stones they cast. Nor do any other unbeliever or former Christian.
Tee continues to assert that it is “hard” to be a Fundamentalist Christian. It’s not. After all, you don’t have to think, you just have to do. Instead of owning his behavior, Tee continues to disparage me and Ben Berwick, along with every non-Evangelical (the only true Christianity according to Tee) who reads this blog.
Instead of hanging in there, they all gave up and then blame or blamed other Christians for their decisions. Christians can be as tough or tougher than unbelievers and really make it difficult for some believers to succeed.
The more BG talks about his ministerial experience, the more we [I] understand why he failed and left the faith. He lacked a lot of wisdom and understanding. he didn’t realize that taking a sabbatical was not quitting on God.
It was a biblical thing to do as one needs to wait for the Lord to renew their strength. A sabbatical is just one way to be obedient to those words. We [I] see this time and again when BG talks about his ministerial life. He didn’t follow God during his ministry, he followed his own ideas of what he thought God wanted.
Tee concludes his screed by going all MMA on my ass. I am a quitter, a failure, weak, I lacked wisdom and understanding, and I followed my own ideas instead of God. Refusing to accept my story at face value, Tee has constructed a caricature of me in his mind, a straw man that bears no resemblance to the real Bruce Gerencser. Such is the nature of the Internet.
I don’t plan on having a renewed battle with Tee. That said, when he attacks me by name, I will respond. In time, Tee will return to his lair, lamenting that no one would “listen” to him; that he is being persecuted for his beliefs. All he is really doing is harming the cause of Christ. Based on Thiessen’s behavior, who would ever want to follow in his steps and become a Christian?
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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I do a lot of writing about preachers who have no business being in the ministry. Way too many preachers are lazy, indolent, predatory, authoritarian, and dishonest. If the Black Collar Crime and Red Collar Crime series’ tell us anything, it is that there are a lot of bad apples in the proverbial barrel, men who commit crimes, psychologically abuse church members and their spouses, and take advantage of vulnerable people. Just because someone says he is a pastor/evangelist/missionary/youth leader/ worship leader doesn’t mean he is a good person. Think about all the vile, hateful, disgusting comments you have read on this site from preachers. Not good people, to say the least. Ponder the beliefs of Dr. David Tee (whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen), especially his recent posts about forcing a ten-year-old girl (and a five-year-old child) to have a baby after she had been raped. Can any of us say that Tee is a good person? I daily read scores of blog posts and social media comments written by Evangelical preachers. Many of these men are assholes in every sense of the word, unable to tolerate and respect anyone different from them. Their churches may love them — after all, pastors often attract people just like them — but to the “world” they are people you want to steer clear of.
That said, there are a lot of good pastors (even if I disagree with their beliefs); men who genuinely love people and want to help them. Dick was one such man.
In the 1980s, Dick became the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in New Lexington, Ohio. The church was a split from a nearby American Baptist congregation, New Lexington Baptist Church (the church is now affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention). The pastor of the American Baptist congregation left with a large group of people and started Cornerstone. Several years later, the church was once again embroiled in controversy. Rumor had it that the pastor had tried to have an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law. He resigned and moved on to a church in the south. Numerous members left the church, landing at other local Baptist churches. Two dozen or so of them came to Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio, a congregation I pastored for eleven years. Two years later, all of them either returned to their former church or moved on to other Baptist churches. Most of them had well-paying jobs. Their departure severely crippled our church financially.
Dick was a recent graduate from an Evangelical seminary. Cornerstone was his first pastorate. What the church needed was a firm-handed, straight-shooting seasoned pastor, a man with a lot of experience pastoring churches. Instead, the church hired Dick, a passionate, mild-mannered, affable man. I would later say that Dick was a lamb to the slaughter. It was not long before past (and new) conflicts boiled over, causing Dick untold heartache and pain. We often got together for prayer, fellowship, or lunch, spending hours talking about our churches. I learned a lot from Dick.
Cornerstone, of course, ate Dick alive. He finally had enough and resigned. Sadly, this was the only church Dick would ever pastor. Cornerstone had so misused and abused him, he wanted nothing to do with the ministry.
Dick and I tried to keep in touch, but over time we lost touch. The last letter I received from Dick (1997) was one pleading with me to take a break from the ministry. I was on my third church in three years. Dick feared I was going to crash. He gave me good advice, but I ignored his plea, saying “God has called me to be a preacher!” I pastored my next church for seven years, but I have often wondered if it would have been better for me to take a sabbatical. Instead, I heeded the words of Dr. Tom Malone, the chancellor of the college I attended. NEVER QUIT! GOD DOESN’T USE QUITTERS! Wanting to be used by God, I would not, dare I say, I could not, quit.
Dick’s story is a reminder that some churches don’t deserve to have a pastor. Far too many churches go through one pastor after another, mauling them and destroying their lives. Maybe Dick wasn’t well-suited for the rigors of the ministry. Maybe his seminary professors and mentors didn’t school him in the realities of pastoring people who, despite saying they were Christians, were more like demons from Hell; selfish, judgmental people who saw their churches as their personal fiefdoms. Sadly, such people eat men like Dick alive. Quite frankly, there are a lot of churches where the best thing that could happen to them is that they die. No more sacrifices of good men and their families to their selfish whims and ambitions.
Dick moved to Cincinnati. Thirty-five years later, I still wonder what happened to him. I wonder if he knows if I finally heeded his advice and took a sabbatical, albeit a permanent one from God and the ministry.
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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There are roughly 600,000 clergy in the United States — one clergyperson for every 550 Americans. In many rural areas, there are more preachers than doctors. I live in rural northwest Ohio. There are 300+ churches in a four-county area. We have plenty of clerics to go around — full-time, part-time, and retired.
As a five-year-old child in the early 1960s, I told my Fundamentalist Baptist mother that I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up. From that moment forward, I never wavered on what I wanted to be. Not a baseball player. Not a truck driver, like my dad. Not a policeman. A preacher. I have no idea why I want to be a preacher. What was it that drew me to the ministry? Regardless, at the age of fifteen, I stood before fellow members at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, and professed that God was calling me to be a preacher. Two weeks later, I preached my first sermon. I would go on to preach 4,000+ sermons, preaching my last sermon in 2005 (at a Southern Baptist church in Hedgesville, West Virginia).
I spent twenty-five years pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Every church I pastored was given full-time attention from me, even when they paid me part-time wages with no benefits. To supplement my income I worked secular jobs. I sold insurance, repaired cars, pumped gas, managed restaurants, delivered newspapers, started a computer business, worked in factories, and worked as a grant administrator and manager for a local village. Working these secular jobs kept me in the world, so to speak. In a moment, I will explain why EVERY pastor should get a “real” job, one that exposes him to people and experiences outside of the church.
Many pastors are honorable men (and women). They work hard, serving their congregations to the best of their ability. Some pastors, however — let me be blunt — are lazy-ass grifters who wouldn’t know an honest day’s work if it bit them in the face. Pastors have very little oversight. They don’t have a supervisor, except God, but he never seems to be on the job. Pastors don’t punch time clocks. Their churches expect them to manage their time. The problem, of course, is that some pastors are lazy. Oh, the stories I could tell about preachers who gave part-time effort for full-time pay; men of God who spent more time playing golf or going to preacher’s meetings than they did ministering to their flocks.
The pastorate allows men to insulate themselves from the “world.” They get paid to study the Bible, read books, and pray. Their lives revolve around the work of the ministry, which is expected, but far too often pastors have no connection to the outside world. The people they pastor have to go out into the “world” every day for work. Far too many pastors have no real connection to how their congregants live. Even though I worked secular jobs, it took me years to appreciate the work lives and challenges church members faced. In my early days, I would harangue people for not showing up to every church event. All hands on deck, right? I had little patience for people who were too tired or too busy to attend every service, clean the church, help with work projects, and “serve” in one, three, or five ministries. It wasn’t until I understood that they had lives too; that I was being paid to do the things I expected them to do for free or without adequate rest, that I stopped berating people for being human; for not working as hard as Pastor Bruce.
The best way I know for pastors to reconnect with the “world” is for them to get a real job. Doing so will allow them to see and understand how everyday people live. I am not talking about treating the job as a “ministry,” or an opportunity to evangelize people. In fact, I encourage pastors to not tell secular employers and co-workers that they are preachers. Just be one of the guys. Don’t be the Holy Spirit or someone people are afraid to be themselves around. You know what I mean. People who apologize to you when they swear or tell a racy joke. As one Christian Union missionary told me years ago, pastors need to get “dirty,” and not be afraid of being tainted by the “world.” Leave your Bible at home, put your tracts in the glovebox, and don’t wear Jesus/church-themed hats and shirts. Just be a normal Joe. When asked by your co-workers to go out with them after work on Friday, do it. Enjoy a beer with them. Enjoy their company, with no ulterior motives. Years ago, a dear pastor friend of mine was the chaplain at a local sheriff’s department. One day he came to work and there was a picture of him (photoshopped) with his pants partially down and a gas grill connected to his ass. Funny stuff. Guy stuff. He was alarmed by the photo, but I told him that it was just the deputies saying to you, “hey, we accept you as one of us.” In my mind, the photo was a compliment, a statement that said they were comfortable around him. If my friend had gone all preacher-man on these officers, he never would have been able to befriend (and help) them. Frankly, a lot of pastors go through life with a stick up their ass, tolerated, but not respected.
Some pastors have to work outside of their churches, but many pastors are well-paid. It is these pastors, in particular, who are most often disconnected from the day-to-day lives of not only their congregations but the lives of the people who live outside the doors of their churches. The best way to remedy this is for pastors to get a real job, employment that allows them the privilege and opportunity to wallow in the dirt of the world. You will be a better pastor in every way if you do this.
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.
