This is the two hundredth and ninth 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.
I took a walk in the rain one day on the wrong side of the tracks
I stood on the rails till I saw that train
Just to see how my heart would react
Now some people say that you shouldn’t tempt fate
And for them I would not disagree
But I never learned nothing from playing it safe
I say fate should not tempt me
I take my chances, I don’t mind working without a net
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I sat alone in the dark one night, tuning in by remote
I found a preacher who spoke of the light but there was brimstone in his throat
He’d show me the way according to him in return for my personal check
I flipped my channel back to CNN and I lit another cigarette
I take my chances, forgiveness doesn’t come with a debt
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I’ve crossed lines of words and wire and both have cut me deep
I’ve been frozen out and I’ve been on fire and the tears are mine to weep
Now I can cry until I laugh and laugh until I cry
So cut the deck right in half, I’ll play from either side
I take my chances, I pay my dollar and I place my bet
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I take my chances, I don’t cling to remorse or regret
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I take my chances
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In May 2018, Cameron Giovanelli, the president of Golden State Baptist College — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution operated by Pastor Jack Trieber and North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, California, was accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a church teenager when he was the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Dundalk, Maryland. Giovanelli denied the allegations and exited stage right to points unknown. ( Please read the previous post titled, Black Collar Crime: IFB Preacher Cameron Giovanelli Accused of Sexual Assault)
Today, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Giovanelli is now the associate pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. Giovanelli also plans to help Immanuel Baptist’s pastor, Greg Neal, start a new unaccredited IFB secondary institution called North Florida Baptist College. Neal, himself, was caught up in a sex scandal in 2011 when he was accused of video voyeurism. You can read more about Neal’s brush with the law here and here. Neal, unfortunately, escaped prosecution.
I have no doubt that a number IFB pastors and churches will recommend North Florida Baptist College to its students. Neal is a graduate of Hyles-Anderson College. Deeply influenced by disgraced pastor Jack Hyles, I am sure that both Neal and Giovanneli subscribe to the Hyles rule: If You Didn’t See It, It Didn’t Happen. (Please see Sexual Abuse and the Jack Hyles Rule: If You Didn’t See It, It Didn’t Happen)
Cameron Giovanelli was born on June 29, 1977. He was saved on September 20, 1990, while living in Rohnert Park, CA. In 1994, he surrendered to preach while attending a youth conference in Santa Clara, California. Following his graduation, he attended Golden State Baptist College where he met his wife, Sarah, and they both graduated in 2000.
After graduating from Bible college, Cameron Giovanelli served as a youth pastor for several years in Napa, CA; as an associate pastor in Manteca, California; and then, as a pastor in the fall of 2003. He pastored a growing church on the east coast for eleven years before accepting a position at his alma mater as the president. In 2018, he and his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and began serving as an assistant pastor at the Immanuel Baptist Church under the leadership of Pastor Greg Neal. Now, with the announcement of North Florida Baptist College, Cameron Giovanelli has been asked and has accepted the role of president.
Cameron and Sarah Giovanelli have three children. Together, the Giovanelli family has seen the Lord work in remarkable ways, and they are excited about this next phase of their ministry life. Cameron Giovanelli is a seasoned servant and soldier of the cross, and it is with great excitement that North Florida Baptist College has called him to lead the way of training up the next generation of church leaders.
No mention of the allegations against him. I wonder why? Sadly, the IFB church movement tends to be a shameless lot, and the latest escapades of Neal and Giovanelli only reinforce that notion. As I perused North Florida Baptist College’s twitter account, I noticed that IFB luminary Bob Gray, Sr. is a follower. No shock there. Gay is a Hyles loyalist, and has stood by several IFB preachers accused of sexual misconduct. I followed North Florida Baptist, and it took less than sixty-seconds for them to do the following:
They also reported my account and got it temporarily blocked. I wonder what Giovanelli, Neal, and Company are trying to hide?
Sorry boys, but I ain’t going away.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Fred Shipman and his son Whitney, both pastors of Winners Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, are facing lawsuits that allege they were part of a ponzi scheme that bilked people out of millions of dollars.
The pastor of a megachurch in West Palm Beach, Fla., is refusing to hand over $1.7 million despite claims by federal prosecutors that the funds belong to people caught up in a $30 million Ponzi scheme run by a former church director.
According to the Palm Beach Post, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg ordered $1 million in assets belonging to Winners Church, a suburban congregation in West Palm Beach, and to church pastors Fred Shipman and Whitney Shipman frozen.
Those assets will remain frozen until Rosenberg issues a ruling on their disposition.
The dispute is part of the fallout from an alleged Ponzi scheme run by Canadian financial commentator Harold Seigel and Florida resident Jose Aman. The duo allegedly convinced hundreds of people to invest millions in Argyle Coin, LLC, which claimed to be a cryptocurrency business related to diamonds.
According to a dozen lawsuits recently filed in Florida and elsewhere, the men were actually running an elaborate scam. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Tuesday (May 21) it was shutting down the operation, describing it as a Ponzi scheme.
Some of their money turned up at Winners Church, which boasts a congregation of more than 2,000 and had listed Aman as a “director” on state records.
According to a new lawsuit, Aman gave $1 million to the church from 2014 to 2018 and gave church founder Bishop Fred Shipman $700,000. He also allegedly gave Fred Shipman’s son, Winners Church senior pastor Whitney Shipman, around $40,000 during that same time period.
On Thursday, Amie Berlin, an attorney for the SEC, told U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg that the church and the Shipmans should return the funds, given that the SEC can retrieve money for victims of the scheme.
But Carl Schoeppl, the lawyer representing the Shipmans and the church, argued Winners Church can’t be forced to turn over the money because it’s a nonprofit religious institution.
He pointed to a Florida statute that allows religious organizations to accept funds “received in good faith,” noting that neither the church nor the Shipmans were aware of Aman’s operation.
Bishop Shipman has called the funds “God’s blessings” and told the judge that giving them up would have “a ripple effect in everything we do from this point on.”
Lawyers for the U.S. government argue federal law supersedes the state-level statute, although churches have been spared incidentally in the past from different clawback situations.
The telling of my deconversion story brings all sorts of responses from Evangelical Christians. Some of my critics comb through my life with a head-lice comb, hoping to find something that invalidates my past life as a pastor. If they can find doctrinal error or heresy, this allows them to declare that I was a false prophet, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, someone who never was a True Christian®. These interlocutors bring me before the tribunal of their peculiar beliefs, asking questions meant to suss out my true spiritual nature. If they can determine that I was never saved, it allows them to dismiss my life out of hand. People wanting to discredit me in this manner almost always find sufficient evidence to warrant them saying, Bruce Gerencser was never a Christian. (Please see Gone but Not Forgotten: 22 Years Later San Antonio Calvinists Still Preaching Against Bruce Gerencser.)
Other Evangelical Christians, unable to square my past devotion to Jesus with their once-saved-always-saved soteriology, critically examine my life inside and out, looking for signs of trauma. I often get emails from Evangelicals apologizing for whatever psychological harm was caused to me by churches and other Christians. They wrongly think that I am not a Christian today because of some hurt in my past; that I left the ministry and Christianity because of hurtful things done to me by mean-spirited Christians. These “loving” critics — armchair psychologists — view me as they would an abused puppy. I pee all over the carpets of my life because someone or a group of someones repeatedly beat me with a rolled-up Columbus Dispatch. My deconversion is the result, then, of the harm caused to me by these unloving, unkind Christians; and that what I really need is to find a church congregation that will scoop up my broken spirit and sweetly love me back to Jesus. Ack! Gag me with a spoon!
Early on, I framed my loss of faith in purely intellectual terms. I knew that admitting that there was an emotional component to my deconversion would give people cause to say that the only reason I wasn’t a Christian is that I got my feelings hurt. I wanted people to see me as an intellectual who weighed the claims of Christianity and found them wanting. And of course, that’s exactly what I did. The primary reason I am an atheist today is because I came to believe that Christianity was false; that God, Jesus, and the Bible were not what Christian preachers and apologists claimed they were. (The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) Once the Bible lost its authority and hold over me, I was free to rationally and skeptically examine, analyze, and judge its teachings. I owe much to Dr. Bart Ehrman for showing me that what I had been taught about the Bible and what I had preached for decades was a lie. Once the Bible was rendered human and errant, the slide down the slippery slope of unbelief was quick, leading to a sixty-six-car pile-up at the bottom of the hill. Try as I might to find solace in Christian liberalism or Christian Universalism, I found these way stations intellectually lacking. In the end, agnosticism and atheism were the only labels that honestly and adequately explained my beliefs or lack thereof.
Today, I can look back over the past two decades and I can see that there was certainly emotional harm caused to me by fellow Christians, colleagues in the ministry, and Evangelical family members. The twenty-five years I spent in the ministry brought me in contact with numerous Jesus-loving abusers and sociopaths. By the time I left the ministry in 2005 — three years before I divorced Jesus — I was burned out. I was tired of having to deal with hateful, mean-spirited, self-centered church members. I was more than tired of church business meetings and board meetings that were little more than bloody, violent boxing matches sandwiched between invocations and benedictions. By the time I reached the end of my career, all I wanted to do was show up on Sundays and preach and then go home. The ministry had extracted a tremendous amount of emotional capital from me, a debt that has taken almost a decade of secular counseling to recover from. That said, I am not an oft-beaten puppy cowering in the corner of life. I embrace and own the past damage caused by Christianity, and I, with weeping and lamentations, bemoan the psychological harm I caused to my family and church congregants.
Today, I now know that the reasons I am not a Christian are legion. To focus on the psychological aspects of my loss of faith alone paints an incomplete picture. For those determined to view me as an abused puppy, all I can do is try to explain through my writing how and why I left my marriage to Jesus and became an atheist. It’s my story after all. Who better to tell it than I, right?
Are you an Evangelical-turned-atheist? Do you have former Christian friends and family members who attempt to psychoanalyze your deconversion? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.
Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.
Someone might ask me, “Why make things so unpleasant by arguing? Why not go on with your life and let people believe as they do? Why can’t we all have mutual respect for each other?”
Mutual respect sounds pretty good to me, and it would be a great starting place. We could all be quiet and let everyone have their own thoughts.
So how about this:
I’ll get quiet when the Evangelical Christians do. When they stop their global campaign, I’ll stop writing and talking. I’ll stop speaking up when they stop trying to condition the minds of little children with songs, stories, and threats. When they quit trying to force the schools and the government to carry their message for them, I’ll stop protesting.
Many Christians accuse atheists of having a hidden agenda, which I think takes a special blend of nerve and insanity, considering that their highest priority is to convert the entire world.
By the way, there’s nothing secret about the atheist agenda. Simply stated, we won’t be forced to believe in God.
Anything that is divine and not chained to the affairs of this world is dear to secularism. There is an obsession with everything worldly, with living for itself, with the idea that this world is the only world worth living for. This is the basic idea that has mushroomed into a great number of ideas that are far more threatening and far more harmful than the core belief.
It began with the Renaissance, wherein a renewed interest in humanism called for a greater interest in human achievements—achievements in this world. Since then, this movement has gained traction and has always been evolving and growing—and not harmlessly either.
By calling for turning away from the sacred and the spiritual, secularism heralds a desolate time wherein humans will obsess over their mortal lives. Fending for oneself will become the code of life, and the complex mesh of humankind will be reduced to base survivalist living. Christian values will doubtless be lost, awash in the typhoon of secular urban “welfare.”
In short, everything that is rotten and pathetic about humanity will surface as part of a bigger problem in the near future, all because man decided to break ties with faith and break bread with secular.
….
Secularists seem so intoxicated on their own notion of “freedom” that they are blind to what unfolds in front of their very eyes: such as just like homosexuality, pedophilia is now being touted as a “sexual orientation.” How long before incest hits the road? How much longer before all concepts of decency and decorum are lost to the wild whims of secular ideas?
….
One of the basic ideas connected to secularism is that religion and religious doctrine is archaic and deserves to be no longer followed. Secular governments and a “freedom” to do as you please is presented as the alternative, and perhaps on paper everything is as unicorns and rainbows.
However, one should not forget that the loss of religion and religious values comes with the loss of moral values, and of shame. When a society loses its collective notion of shame, it loses the capacity to feel regret, guilt, or apprehension. Crimes become more fervent and widespread, more violent and aberrant.
Everyone who names the name of Christ should depart from anything that goes against His standard of holiness. Do we really think that movies featuring nudity, violence, wizards, the occult and so on are not going to affect us or our children? Do we really believe these are simply fun, entertaining shows with no spiritual ramifications? God’s Word says otherwise. For example, 2 Chronicles 33:6 says that those who use enchantments and witchcraft, and who deal with familiar spirits and wizards, provoke the Lord to anger. There is no gray area here. If enchantments, witchcraft, familiar spirits and wizards are entertaining, something is clearly wrong. Darkness should not entertain. We must be pure vessels that God can use (2 Tim. 2:19-21.) A pure vessel cannot come from a polluted mind. Years of feeding the flesh will leave us spiritually weak.
This message is not a small recommendation, it’s a call to a life-changing decision—what goes in the mind ultimately comes out in our actions. Of course, watching these programs now and then may not lead someone astray, but how can a child of God truly enjoy them? Why walk willingly into the enemy’s camp? Why quench and grieve the Spirit of God? It’s impossible to develop a deep respect and desire for God if we repeatedly fill our mind with things that oppose Him.
Several days ago, the local newspaper reported that a police officer under investigation for perjury was dead. While the cause of death has not yet been released, rumor abounds to its cause. His death is currently under investigation by law enforcement and the county coroner’s office. [update: his death was ruled a suicide, death by a single gunshot to the head] Regardless of the cause of death, this man died way too young, leaving behind his wife, two married children, and his mother. It’s his mother I want to focus on with this post.
Janice — not her real name — attended a non-denominational Evangelical church I pastored in West Unity from 1997-2002. Janice was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Every time the doors of the church were open, she was there. Any time we needed help in a particular ministry, Janice volunteered. She was what I call a one-percenter; the one-percent of church members who do ninety-nine percent of the work. Every church has a few Janices, and without them, the church would grind to a halt.
Janice’s husband, while a faithful attendee, was not as committed as she was. He was what I called a good-old-boy, a congregant who always had a story to tell, even if most of the tales were lies. Several years ago, Janice’s husband died of cancer. I believe he was 60 years old when he died. Janice remarried — her fourth. Today, she actively continues to serve Jesus with her new husband at a nearby Evangelical church.
During the seven years I was privileged to be Janice’s pastor, she went through three traumatic events.
I met Janice for the first time at a local restaurant which she and her husband operated. The restaurant was a greasy spoon and, thanks to its low ceiling, was often filled with cigarette smoke. This was in the days before No Smoking laws went into effect in Ohio. The smoke was so pervasive that after eating there, your clothing had the distinct odor of burning cigarettes (and greasy food). After Janice and her husband started attending our church, she asked if I could advise them about their business. She knew I had a business background, and had managed several fast-food and full-service restaurants. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Janice and her husband were drowning in debt with no way out. Owning a restaurant was Janice’s dream. Sadly, it was left to me to destroy her dream. No matter how I worked the numbers, it was clear that the restaurant would continue to lose money. Worse yet, Janice had stopped paying business and payroll taxes in the hope that the business would turn around. I finally told Janice that there was no possible way her business could survive, that throwing more money at it was a waste. This broke Janice’s heart, but I think she knew, deep down, that I was right. Several months later, she closed the restaurant.
One evening after church, I heard the office phone ring. Janice answered the phone. It was her youngest son, calling to say that he had just murdered his girlfriend while she worked at a nearby convenience store. In a fit of rage over being dumped, her son butchered his ex-girlfriend with a knife, leaving her young son motherless. Janice ran into the auditorium and asked for my help. I told her that her son needed to turn himself in before the police arrested him. I went with her to where her son was hiding and encouraged him to go to the sheriff’s office and surrender. He did and later pleaded guilty. Janice’s raised-in-church son is currently serving a life sentence in an Ohio penitentiary.
Janice had one daughter who loved Jesus, but loved having a good time too. She was quite the character, and would frequent our church off and on. Not long after getting married, Janice’s daughter came down with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She died ever so slowly, finally succumbing to the disease in her 20s. I had the sad privilege of performing her funeral.
And now, her son is dead. Four marriages, a failed business, a dead husband, two dead children, and a child behind bars for life. Yet, despite all of these things, Janice still lovingly and blindly worships, serves, and follows Jesus. (The day of and days after her son’s death, her Facebook wall was littered with dozens of memes extolling the wonders of Jesus.) And for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Yes, Jesus supposedly saved Janice from her sins and promised her a mansion in Heaven after she died, but outside of that, her God has been a piss-poor father, friend, and lover. What is it, exactly, that God has done for Janice? Look at all she had suffered in this life. Yet, despite the abuse, she loves Him still.
Perhaps, believing in God and holding onto his promises is what helps Janice get through life. If so, I get it. That said, I want to scream, JANICE, LOOK AT YOUR LIFE! WHERE IS GOD? From my seat in the atheist pew, it’s clear the “friend that sticks closer than a brother” abandoned Janice long ago; that the deity — much like an abusive husband — who says “I love you” is a violent abuser; that Janice’s Heavenly Father is a child abuser, and is unworthy of her love, commitment, and devotion.
I am sure Janice hopes for great reward in Heaven after she dies. Sadly, what she won’t know is that her suffering came from the cruel roll of fate’s dice; that sometimes shit happens to good people; that time spent hoping and expecting God to come through is a fool’s errand. I wish Janice nothing but the best in the years that lie ahead. I wish most of all that she would tell her abusive deity to fuck off and spend her remaining days enjoying life without thoughts of worship, devotion, and commitment. Sadly, I suspect Janice will ride her God’s black train until the end.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.
Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.
Americans who love America cannot afford to put an unapologetic and unrepentant homosexual in the White House.
The stakes are far too high to make a mistake of this magnitude. Christians who express this point of view must be prepared to endure a withering blast of hatred and Christophobia. But endure it we must. We will need to hold firm against the onslaught in conversations with our families, our friends, our neighbors, the folks in our churches, and the editors of our local newspapers.
….
Our regressive friends on the left are consumed with outrage that an adulterer now sits in the White House. But we should point out kindly but firmly that if somebody makes that point, they have made our argument for us. By their own admission, they are agreeing with us that what a would-be president does in his private life does matter and is a valid concern for voters.
We’re at an odd place in our culture right now in which the very same people who are blasting the president for sordid sexual conduct 12 years ago are lionizing and swooning over someone who is engaging in sordid sexual conduct repeatedly and proudly today.
And while adultery is sexually deviant – because it deviates from the Creator’s design for human sexuality — homosexuality is just as (if not more) deviant,since it puts body parts [mouth, anus?] to sexual uses never intended by nature or Nature’s God.
It’s got to be unthinkable for us even to consider putting a homosexual in the White House as our next president. If you’re an American and you love America, you cannot afford to put an unapologetic and unrepentant homosexual in the White House.
I wonder if Fischer is aware that the United States has already had a gay president — James Buchanan? (1857-1861)
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
My view was (and still is) that for personal religious reasons Rev. Firth [an Evangelical pastor Dr. Ehrman was debating on whether the Bible had contradictions] is committed to the idea that there can be no contradictions in the Bible. He believes the Bible is the completely inspired and inerrant word of God with no mistakes of any kind whatsoever. This is a religious view grounded on theological principles. The view is beautiful in a way, in its simple elegance. If there can’t be contradictions in the Bible, because God would never contradict himself, then there won’t be contradictions in the Bible. And so anything that may “on the surface” (as Rev. Firth indicated) appear to be a contradiction is not actually one. There is a way to explain everything.
— Dr. Bart Ehrman, The Bart Ehrman Blog, Do My Biases Mean I Have to Find Contradictions?,May 20, 2019
Someone might ask me, “Why make things so unpleasant by arguing? Why not go on with your life and let people believe as they do? Why can’t we all have mutual respect for each other?”
Several days ago, the local newspaper reported that a police officer under investigation for perjury was dead. While the cause of death has not yet been released, rumor abounds to its cause. His death is currently under investigation by law enforcement and the county coroner’s office. [update: his death was ruled a suicide, death by a single gunshot to the head] Regardless of the cause of death, this man died way too young, leaving behind his wife, two married children, and his mother. It’s his mother I want to focus on with this post.
