She is to the home keeper, to take care of her husband, to provide for him and for the children, all that they need as they live in that home. Materially, she is to take the resources the husband brings home and translate them into a comfortable and blessed life for her children. She is to take the spiritual things that she knows and learns and to pass them on to her children. She is a keeper at home. God’s standard is for the wife and mother to work inside the home and not outside. For a mother to get a job outside the home in order to send her children even to a Christian school is to misunderstand her husband’s role as a provider, as well as her own duty to the family.
Godly women are to be content at home, and to be content to love their children and love their husbands and serve their families in their homes and serve the Lord. One of the most wonderful things that the church has ever experienced is the ministry of women. All of the tests and the studies and surveys indicate that about 60 percent of all church life is cared for by women. Evangelical churches are populated by women. They say about 37 percent of evangelical churches are men. The church has always benefited by godly women who work in the home, and when they have time they minister on behalf of the church. And as women abandon the home for the world, they also abandon the church.
I am not suggesting that the reality of death isn’t painful, but just because something is painful doesn’t mean it can be avoided, or even that it should be. I believe the promise of eternal life is a coping mechanism, and I don’t like it. Pascal’s famous wager posits that if there is even one chance in a million that God exists, you should bet your life on it, but to me those are terrible odds. Indeed, it may well be that the greatest mistake in this world is to live as if you have endless time…when in fact you don’t.
What would Evangelical Christianity be without the belief that humans are eternal beings that will either dwell in Heaven (God’s Kingdom) or Hell (Lake of Fire)? Evangelicals give up a lot of living in order to earn a room in Heaven’s Trump Tower. I say “earn,” because despite talk of grace, Evangelicals know that gaining a golden ticket requires work and effort on their part. There are sins that must be confessed and forsaken, and Christians who wallow in the cesspool of the “world” likely will end up in Hell with Adolph Hitler, Barack Obama, and Bruce Gerencser. Thus, Evangelicals religiously attend church, pray, read their Bibles, witness, give tithes and offerings, buy Christian literature, listen to Christian radio, watch Christian TV, support Evangelical political candidates, and fight against abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. These same Evangelicals try their damnedest to follow the sexual mores of the Bible. From the moment they awake in the morning until they fall asleep at night, Evangelicals focus their minds on God, Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, and making sure that the evil agenda of Satan and the Antichrist is defeated. (I am aware of the fact that not all Evangelicals are zealots; that many of them are nominal, in-name-only Christians, but millions of Americans are committed followers of the Evangelical God. It is these people who are the focus of this post.)
Those of us who spent much of our lives living and breathing Evangelical beliefs and practices often find ourselves lamenting the time wasted serving a mythical deity. I was fifty years old before I saw the “light” and divorced myself from Jesus. From the age of fifteen to the age of fifty — thirty-five years — I devoted my life to Jesus and did all I could possibly do to live according to the teachings of the Bible — failing miserably, by the way. None of my six children played sports or enjoyed many of the things “normal” children do because their Dad demanded that they, too, devote their lives to Jesus. My children, for the most part, were either educated in unaccredited private Fundamentalist schools or home schooled. Rarely were they given the opportunity to do something that was not connected to either school or church. My oldest son attended over three thousand church services and heard virtually every sermon I preached. The same could be said for Polly and the rest of my children. We lived and breathed God, the Bible, and the church. To what end? What did we gain from such a life? So much wasted time. Hours, days, and years squandered with no hope of a do-over or a second chance. Lost time is just that — lost. All the weeping and wailing in the world doesn’t change the fact that the time wasted in service of a myth is forever lost.
Ephesians 6:16 says, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. James 4:14 states, Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. And Proverbs 27:1 says, Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. For Evangelicals, these verses are reminders of the brevity of life and the importance of serving God while they have the opportunity. Amos 4:12 speaks of preparing to meet God. Evangelicals believe that this life is preparation for the life to come; that the pain, suffering, heartache, and loss faced in the here and now is meant to keep them from becoming attached to the world. 1 John 2:15-19 states:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
Evangelicals are implored to not love the world with its pride and lusts. Someday, according to the Bible, Jesus is going to return to earth and destroy the heavens and the earth, making all things new. Knowing this to be “true,” Evangelicals forsake the world, knowing that, in the end, they will be glad they did. And for those Christians who love the world and its fleshly desires? Their behaviors reveal that they aren’t True Christians®.
Evangelicals know that life is short. Psalm 90:10 says, The days of our years are threescore years and ten (seventy); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore (eighty) years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. All too soon, death will come knocking on their doors, thus it is crucial to live life in such a way that when Jesus calls their number he will say to them, well done thou good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of the Lord (Matthew 25:23).
It is too bad that Christians don’t live their lives according to Solomon’s book of wisdom, Ecclesiastes. Solomon reminds people of the brevity of life, and the best any of us can do is eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. And therein lies the point of the Bart Campolo quote at the beginning of this post. This life is the only one we will ever have. This is it. No re-dos. No second chances. No reincarnations. No coming back as ghosts or angels. Every breath, every heartbeat brings us one moment closer to death. I am sixty years old. If I live to age seventy, this means my life is six-sevenths gone. If I live to eighty, three-fourths of my life is in the rear-view mirror. I currently take drugs that prolong my life. Without them, I would have already gone up in the smoke of the local crematorium.
There are moments in the night when pain keeps me from sleeping, and I lie in bed listening to the tick-tock of the clock on the nearby nightstand. Tick-tock, tick-tock, two seconds of life is gone. Sixty tick-tocks and a minute is gone. Thirty-six-hundred tick-tocks and another hour of my life is dissipated into the night. Someday, sooner and not later, readers of this blog will be greeted with a post from my wife or one of my children. It will say that on such-and-such a date at such-and-such time, Bruce Gerencser drew his last breath. Cause of death? Life.
Knowing this to be true, I refuse to spend my time chasing ghosts, goblins, and gods. I refuse to offload the present in the hope that I might receive some sort of divine payoff from a mythical deity. Life is meant to be lived in the here and now, with no promise of tomorrow. Yes, it is okay to plan for the future, but not at the expense of enjoying the present. Campolo says belief in eternal life is harmful because it is, above all things, a lie; a lie based solely on some words written in an ancient religious text thousands of years ago. Believing this lie causes people to miss out on all that life has to offer. Believing this lie changes relationship dynamics, pitting believers and unbelievers against each other. If Heaven and Hell are real places, then it stands to reason that Evangelical concern for non-Christian family, friends, and neighbors is warranted. However, there is, based on all we know about the universe, no Heaven or Hell. The only heaven and hell any of us will ever know is that which is lived in this life. That’s why I want, with what little time I have left, to live and raise a little hell, and make earth as heavenly as I possibly can.
Let me conclude this post with the advice I give to new readers on my ABOUT page:
You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Some day, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven 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.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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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.
Terry Millender, pastor of Victorious Life Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and his wife Brenda, were convicted Monday of a “$2 million fraud scheme that stole from members of their congregation and investors.”
A former pastor and his wife were convicted of a $2 million fraud scheme that stole from members of their congregation and investors.
Terry Wayne Millender, 53, and Brenda Millender, 57, were convicted by a federal jury Monday and could face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, according to the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Terry Millender is the former senior pastor of Victorious Life Church in Alexandria.
Prosecutors said the couple operated a company called Micro-Enterprise Management Group, a Virginia company that alleged to help poor people in developing countries by providing small, short-term loans by working with a network of established micro-finance institutions.They recruited investors by emphasizing its Christian mission while promising guaranteed returns.
However, the jury found the Millenders used the money to make risky trades on the foreign exchange currency market, options trading, and payments toward the purchase of a $1.75 million home and other personal expenses.
When investors sought their returns, the Millenders blamed delays in repayment, in part, on the 2008 financial crisis, according to the complaint.
After the first scheme failed, prosecutors said they created another company Kingdom Commodities Unlimited, which they alleged specialized in the brokering of Nigerian oil deals. They were able to get more than $600,000 from investors and used the money to pay for rent, golf trips, a birthday party and other personal expenses.
The two will be sentenced on March 30, 2018.
A co-conspirator, Grenetta Wells, 56, of Alexandria, who served as chief operating officer at MEMG, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 12, 2018.
Millender’s bio on the It’s Time to Produce website (no longer active) states:
Pastor Terry Wayne Millender has been involved in Christian ministry for more than 27 years. He currently serves as Senior Pastor of Victorious Life Church located in Alexandria, VA.
As a Nationally recognized leader, author, radio and television show host of Victorious Life Today, he is sought after to conduct major conferences, in addition to equipping individuals through Citywide Prayer School and “It’s Time To Produce” Personal Growth Summits. Additionally, his international Pastoral equipping sessions have taken him to many nations around the globe.
A graduate of the International Bible Institute and Seminary and Hope Bible College, Pastor Terry is the founder of the Washington,D.C., based Power Unleashed Worldwide, Inc., an international missions and training organization established to help believers unleash the power and potential within them through Jesus Christ. His blockbuster new book, “IT’S TIME TO PRODUCE — Unleashing the Winner Within” is changing lives around the globe.
Pastor Terry is also the Chairman and CEO of Kingdom Commodities Unlimited, LLC and Millender Media & Communications Corp, LLC both based in Alexandria, VA.
He is committed to his family and has been happily married for 29 years to his wife Brenda. They have five children and six grand children. They currently reside in Alexandria, VA.
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.
Owen Robertson, education minister at First Baptist Church in Easley, South Carolina, has been charged with “nine counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.”
Mike Ellis, a reporter for the Independent Mail, writes:
Owen Robertson, a former education minister at Easley First Baptist Church, has been charged with nine counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.
Warrants allege that the images investigators found show minors “engaging in sexual activity or appearing in a state of sexually explicit nudity” and the incidents occurred at the same address as the church. Robertson has not been on staff at the church since approximately March, when the church became aware of “issues,” said Nelson Ponder, a deacon who spoke on the church’s behalf.
Ponder said he could not detail what issues led to the separation, but he said the church became aware Friday that Robertson had been formally charged. Robertson had been at the church for several years, Ponder said.
He said church leaders will be listening to their congregation for any reports of Robertson’s conduct, but he has not heard from anyone as of Wednesday morning.
The warrants indicate that the alleged crimes happened on or about Feb. 10, and the warrants were signed on DeC. 14. The warrants say the images were in Robertson’s possession.
….
According to Robertson’s bio on First Baptist’s website:
Dr. Owen Robertson grew up in Greenville, SC, where he attended Mauldin First Baptist. He graduated from Mars Hill College, Southwestern Seminary, and Southern Seminary. Owen loves acting, writing, reading, going to movies, and spending time with his family. He secretly dreams of one day owning a humongous television and a catamaran. Owen uses his gifts to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ in new and creative ways.
Picture of children on First Baptist Church’s Youth Page. I wonder if this is what Pastor Crawford’s photos looked like.
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.
Ryan Crawford, assistant pastor, choir director, Sunday school director, youth/teens director at First Baptist Church in Pineville, Missouri, stands accused of having “illicit and inappropriate photographs of a young female on his cell phone.”
KOAM-7 reports:
A 32-year-old Youth Pastor Pineville, Missouri, man is arrested after a report to the local police department alleging he had illicit and inappropriate photographs of a young female on his cell phone. Initially, the investigation of Ryan Crawford was conducted jointly by the Pineville Police Department and the McDonald County Sheriff’s Office.
The children were referred to the Children’s Center in Joplin, MO, and subsequent to those interviews, Crawford was interviewed by the investigator of the McDonald County Prosecutor’s office. During that interview, Crawford made statements that were corroborative of the allegations against him.
Prosecutor Bill Dobbs initially filed charges of child molestation in the first degree, a class A felony, and sexual misconduct in the first degree, a class E felony. However, based upon additional allegations, the initial complaint has been amended to reflect an additional four (4) counts of child molestation in the first degree, bringing the total number of felony counts to six. These acts allegedly occurred in Crawford’s home.
A Pineville man waived a preliminary hearing Monday on child molestation charges and was ordered bound over for trial.
Ryan D. Crawford, 32, waived the hearing in McDonald County Circuit Court on five counts of first-degree child molestation and a single count of sexual misconduct with a child. Associate Judge John LePage set Crawford’s initial appearance in a trial division of the court for Feb. 26.
The defendant was arrested on the charges in December following an investigation by Pineville police and the McDonald County Sheriff’s Department of a report that he had illicit photographs of a minor on his cellphone.
A probable-cause affidavit states that Crawford had told of having “had a porn problem” and that he had been “watching” porn on his cellphone. The McDonald County prosecutor later indicated in a news release that an unspecified number of suspected child victims were interviewed at the Children’s Center in Joplin before an interview of the defendant in December when he allegedly admitted having touched a child younger than 14 inappropriately while she was sleeping.
The affidavit states that the defendant further acknowledged that his addiction to pornography and related misconduct with children had been “going on for a long time.”
Reading Bruce’s recent post titled Evangelicals Say They Love LGBTQ People, But do They Really? made me start thinking about my experiences as a former evangelical Christian as well as my conversations with people whom I know are still in that community.
Most of us probably know someone in the LGBTQ community. Even fundamentalist evangelicals probably know someone, perhaps at work or at school, or perhaps even someone in their church who is struggling with how to reconcile the teachings of their religion with their true sexual identity. Evangelicals pay a lot of attention to other people’s sex lives, and there are rules surrounding “proper” expression of sexual activity. Basically, here are the rules – sex is only to be practiced between a married man and woman (and some sects teach that it is only for the purpose of reproduction). Everything outside that narrow definition is a sin, a choice, and forbidden. (Please read, Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?.)
Here are specific statements I learned while I was in evangelical Christianity.
Being gay is a result of a homosexual male molesting an underage boy. This was a common theme I heard, that boys were molested by homosexual men and then the boys would “turn gay” through learned behavior. The concept was that the boys would not have become gay on their own, but because they were forced to engage in homosexual acts with an adult male, then they started to like it or thought it was normal and continued engaging in homosexual activity throughout their lives.
This concept is wrong on so many levels. First, of course, is the concept that homosexual males are all pedophiles seeking out converts. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I remember the evangelical adults having quite an uproar over the group NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association). Evangelical adults believed that the existence and activity of NAMBLA proved that homosexual men were preying on people’s young sons in order to convert them to homosexuality. In fact, NAMBLA was a fringe homosexual group that was denounced by the majority of the homosexual community, and it later disbanded in the mid-1990s.
Another reason this concept is wrong is that it assumes that homosexuality is merely a learned behavior. There is no acknowledgement that people are born homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual or anywhere on the evangelical sexual spectrum.
Homosexuality is a choice. I heard a lot of evangelical people talking about homosexuality as a choice – that people choose whether they are going to be gay or straight. Their thought was that people were tempted to try sex with someone of the same gender, and that the sin clouded their vision of “God’s plan” for human sex. If someone were truly repentant of their sin of homosexuality and prayed for God’s forgiveness and guidance, then they could overcome the desire to have sex with someone of the same gender – in essence, “praying away the gay.”
Homosexuals should remain celibate for life. For the few evangelicals who might concede that maybe homosexuals were born that way (not because God made a mistake, but because something went wrong during gestation to cause someone to be born with gay tendencies), homosexuals should never have sex. I suppose this makes sense if your belief is that God only approves of sex between a married man and woman (for the purpose of reproduction); then all other sex is sin. This concept made it a little more palatable for Christians to “love the sinner but hate the sin.” As long as the person wasn’t having sex, then the Christians could pretend that he wasn’t really gay after all. And maybe God was curing homosexuals of their sinful, lustful desires.
(I had a huge argument with my mother about this one time. She became more involved in evangelical Christianity as she grew older, and she bought into the idea that homosexuality was a sin and an abomination. She believed, as her Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church taught, that homosexuals should remain celibate through life. She also had a problem with the idea that homosexuals were born that way. Our fight occurred when she said these things, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked her if she liked men or women, and she said, “you know I like men.” I asked her what if she was told that her liking men was a sin, that God ordained that she should like women. She said, “I would never like women.” I reaffirmed that in our hypothetical scenario liking men was a sin, so what was she supposed to do, as God ordained that she could only have God-approved sex with women, and she said, “Well, I don’t know.” I asked her if she thought it was right that because she liked men, and God did not approve of her having sex with men, if that meant that she MUST remain celibate for life? She got flustered and kept repeating that homosexuality is a sin. She did not like this argument, and she never brought up homosexuality again).
Lesbians were rarely, if ever, mentioned. I only heard evangelical Christians talking about homosexual men. I don’t know if it was just that they did not want to acknowledge that lesbians existed. Most white cisgendered heterosexual males I know find woman-on-woman sex tremendously arousing, so maybe these repressed evangelical Christian men secretly hoped to encounter women having sex with each other. Maybe they didn’t consider it “real sex” because a penis wasn’t involved. Maybe they just thought women didn’t have sex drives so therefore lesbian sex doesn’t actually happen except in pornography. Maybe evangelical Christian males only felt threatened by homosexual men because they feared being lusted after by homosexual men. I don’t have the answer to this question.
HIV and AIDS are God’s punishment for homosexual activity. While most people were careful not to necessarily utter this comment so succinctly, many evangelicals would dance around this idea. They would try to couch it in terms of “bad consequences can happen as a result of sin.” I heard many people say that they would not donate money towards HIV/AIDS research because they didn’t want to promote more homosexual activity. This is the same type of faulty reasoning in which parents do not want sexual education in schools because teaching kids about sex and sexual safety would promote kids having sex. But what can be expected from people who believe that all sex outside married sex between a man and woman (for the purpose of procreation) is sin? To them, participating in sex outside that strict parameter is sin, and sin has dire consequences (for the wages of sin is death – Romans 6:23). In their minds, it all makes sense: sin = death.
My experience is that people who aren’t bound by any religious exhortations about sexuality get to know people as individuals and are only concerned about the person’s sexuality if there is some sort of attraction between the parties involved. It seems that the people most concerned with other people’s sexual orientation are the ones bound by their religion’s rules. When I went to college and was shedding evangelical Christianity, I became friends with several homosexual men. One friend was the son of a Baptist minister, and his father cut him off until he “stopped being gay” (which of course never happened). Another friend came out during our friendship, and he said that he was afraid which friends were going to accept him and which were going to condemn him. Through the years, I have befriended many gay people, both male and female, and I work in the fragrance industry which draws a higher percentage of gay employees than some other industries do. People are just people regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation. Everyone wants to be treated with respect. Everyone wants to be loved and to find someone to love.
One of my gay friends put it well. He said, “I would never have chosen to be gay, it’s just who I am. Growing up in an era in which gay people suffered discrimination, were called horrible names, told that we were making a choice or that we were automatic pedophiles, that we were thrusting our “lifestyle” on others, that we were breaking down the concept of the nuclear family or of moral society, why would I have ever chosen this?”
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.
Wesley Lamb, youth pastor at Belton Assembly of God Ministries in Belton, Missouri, stands accused of having sex with a 14-year-old church girl.
A former youth pastor at the Belton Assembly of God Ministries is accused of two counts of statutory rape.
According to court documents, the 28-year-old former church worker, Wesley Ian Lamb, is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl who attended the church twice in early September.
The first alleged assault is said to have happened on Sept. 1 in a minivan. The victim told detectives she was too scared to tell anyone.
The youth pastor allegedly said it would not happen again. He had been tutoring the teen at his home on Fridays, according to both parties.
he victim told police it happened again, about a week later.
She said Lamb guided her upstairs, took off her clothes and she went into shock before he had sex with her.
The victim said Lamb’s wife walked upstairs and started yelling at her husband.
However, when police interviewed the wife, she said she did not see them having sex.
I heard today that Christopher Hitchens died on this date [December 16] back in 2011. I was technically still a Christian at that time. But today, I am very grateful for the impact that Hitchens made on me, my oldest son and the world. He is missed.
With this being an anniversary of sorts, I thought I’d share a little story that involves Christopher Hitchens, my son and the start of my journey.
The year was 2009. I discovered that my oldest son had bought and read Hitchens’ book entitled God is Not Great. As a Christian, I was offended. “What!? How dare this man write a book with such a title!” I also certainly didn’t like the notion that “religion poisons everything”.
After discovering the book in my son’s room, I lightly skimmed it but I was literally too scared to seriously read it. I feared for my soul and the potential influence of the book.
So what did I do?
Using a poor attempt at humor, I printed up a fake book cover entitled “Atheism, And the Morons who believe it” with a fictional author name of “I.B. Wright”. I put the fake cover over a Scott Adams’ book (probably a Dilbert book).*
I wrote something stupid on the back page cover too, a feeble attempt to support my revised book title. I left my creative work in my son’s room for him to admire.
So what happened?
My son took a picture of my handiwork and posted it to the atheism group on reddit.
His post got over 1000 points, which in the Reddit world, is quite a lot. I didn’t know about the Reddit posting for quite a while, but after discovering it and reading through the comments, I was skewered. Severely. And rightly so.
The text I put on my back cover said: “In Mr. Wright’s latest book, I.B. shows that God is truly good and that through His son, Jesus, the world was rocked by a mere three years of ministry that culminated in Christ rising from the dead, which skeptics have been unable to disprove or rationally dispute.”
I look back on all of this with embarrassment. Unfortunately, indoctrination shuts off critical thinking, and I was very indoctrinated during my early years. I’m just grateful now that my son didn’t hide his change in beliefs and that eventually, I broke the spell. And as Christopher Hitchens said so well, religion poisons everything.
Tonight I will raise a glass to the late Hitchens.
* It was ironic for me to use a Scott Adams book since Mr. Adams is an atheist (which I didn’t realize at the time).
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.
Fernando Maldonado, a pastor at Morello Baptist Church in Martinez, California and Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill, California, was convicted Wednesday of child sexual abuse. Maldonado jumped bail and apparently fled to Mexico with his wife and children.
A Contra Costa County jury convicted a Martinez pastor of 23 counts of child sexual abuse days after he failed to show up at his trial and apparently fled to Mexico with his wife and children — jumping $1.29 million in bail secured by relatives, prosecutors said Thursday.
Fernando Maldonado, 37, faces up to 34 years in state prison for crimes ranging from committing lewd acts upon a child to unlawful sexual intercourse and sodomy of a person under the age of 18.
A jury convicted him on all charges Wednesday after deliberating for 2½ hours. But the defendant was not present when the panel announced its decision.
A bench warrant was issued for him when he failed to show up for his trial on Monday. Maldonado was last spotted driving south on Interstate 5 near San Diego on Sunday, said Jordan Sanders, a Contra Costa County deputy district attorney.
“Based on this information, I am comfortable assuming he is driving to Mexico with his wife and children,” Sanders said.Shortly after his arrest in April 2016, Maldonado was released on $1.29 million bail secured by six relatives who put up to their properties as collateral.
Prosecutors said Maldonado had a sexual relationship between 2012 and 2016 with a young girl, beginning when she was 13 years old and while he was a minister at Morello Baptist Church in Martinez. The victim, whose name was not released, was a church parishioner, said Sanders.
Their relationship continued until the victim ended it in December 2014 when she was about 16 years old, Sanders said.
“At the time, he was married and had a newborn baby,” Sanders said, adding that Maldonado was also a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill.
The victim testified against Maldonado on Thursday and Friday, before he decided to flee, Sanders said.
Sanders said that during the trial he played the jury a recorded phone call, in which the victim confronted Maldonado about the sex abuse.
Additionally, a criminalist testified that Maldonado’s semen was found on a church couch, corroborating the victim’s testimony that they had sex inside the church, Sanders said.
….
Maldonado’s bio on Grace Bible Church’s website states:
An April 4, 2018 SF Gate news report states:
An East Bay pastor who was convicted of molesting a teenage girl has been caught in Mexico, where he fled during his trial, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office said Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Fernando Maldonado was deported from Mexico on Tuesday and flown to Los Angeles, which will send him to Contra Costa County for sentencing April 13. The Mexican government located Maldonado after county officers contacted U.S. marshals, said district attorney’s spokesman Scott Alonso.
Maldonado was charged in 2015 with sexual abuse of a girl in his parish at Morello Baptist Church in Martinez, starting when she was 13 and continuing until she was 16. Prosecutors said she broke off contact with him in December 2014.
Maldonado, who was also a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill, was released on $1.29 million bail, put up by six relatives who used their property as collateral. The trial began in December 2017, and after two days of testimony by the girl, Maldonado disappeared. The lead prosecutor said Maldonado, 37, had been seen driving south on Interstate 5 near San Diego, apparently headed to Mexico with his wife and children.
A Martinez pastor who fled to Mexico during his 2017 sexual molestation trial, only to be captured and extradited back to the U.S., was sentenced Friday to 34 years in prison.
A judge gave Fernando Maldonado, 37, the maximum sentence in a Richmond courtroom two weeks after he was captured in the resort town of Cancun.
Maldonado, in a yellow jail shirt, said nothing during his sentencing, according to Contra Costa district attorney spokesman Scott Alonso. He had been returned to the custody of the county Tuesday.
Maldonado was charged in 2015 with sexual abuse of a girl in his parish at Morello Baptist Church in Martinez, starting when she was 13. At the time of his trial, he was free on $1.29 million bail.
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.
Wayne Bean, bus pastor at Ada Baptist Temple in Ada, Oklahoma, has been charged with three counts of lewd molestation. Astoundingly, Bean was accused of similar crimes in 2005 — giving a teen girl “daddy” kisses — and not charged.
[It] hurt like scared for the kids,”Ada resident Bryan White said.
That’s how White felt after learning a member of the Ada Baptist Temple was charged with lewd molestation.
Ada Police say Wayne Bean inappropriately touched four girls while working as the bus minister.
Detective Brian Engel says he began investigating in May after an 11 year old girl refused to get on the bus.
“She started crying and the mother talked to her about why she didn’t want to get on the bus,” Engel said,”she disclosed to her mother that an individual from the church that rides the bus had been inappropriately touching her.”
Engel says the child’s mother contacted another mom, who’s 7 year old daughter also rode the bus he says, that girl also said she was touched by Bean.
“During my investigation I found out that there was a 13 year old that had also disclosed that this man had been inappropriately kissing her on the lips, when she got on and off the bus,” Engel said.
“It is actually disgusting and shameful that it actually happened with somebody that you actually trust,” White said.
….
He tells us Bean was investigated in 2005 for inappropriate acts with an 11 year old girl who says it started on the bus.
“He stated that [when] he met her, she was riding the church bus and they ended up developing a relationship and he would take her places in his own vehicle, and that in the interview he stated he would give her daddy kisses,” Engel said.
No charges were filed in the 2005 case.
Engel also says he found pornographic videos on Bean’s computer showing older men having sex with women were portrayed to be very young.
Bean has since been released from jail on a $250,000 bond, he’s due back in court in February.
“We just need to pray for our community because obviously we need it,” White said.
Ada Baptist Temple — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church — calls itself “The Friendliest Church in Town.” Their website also says the church’s services are “the most exciting services in town.” The church describes itself this way (link no longer active):
Ada Baptist Temple is an old-fashioned, independent, Baptist Church that takes a strong stand for the Word of God and against sin. Fundamental in her doctrinal stand and premillenial in her interpretation.
We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity should be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sex.
They left out child molestation and allowing accused child molesters to continue work with children.
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.
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