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Category: Life

Bruce, Were You Happy in the Ministry? — Part One

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bruce and polly gerencser 1978
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, in front of our first apartment in Pontiac, Michigan, Fall 1978, with Polly’s grandfather and parents.

When I write posts like Leaving the Ministry: Dealing with Guilt and Regret, I am always concerned that someone might conclude that I was unhappy while I was in the ministry or that I felt I was trapped in a job I didn’t want to be in. Neither of these conclusions would be an accurate assessment of the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry.

I was fifteen years old when I went forward at Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio, and informed the church that I thought God was calling me to the ministry. A few weeks before, I had made a public profession of faith and was baptized. I had no doubts about God’s call on my life. In fact, my desire to be a preacher went all the way back to when I was a five-year-old boy in San Diego, California. My mother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a preacher. Not a baseball player, not a trash truck driver, or a fireman. I wanted to be a preacher. Unlike many people, I never wondered about what I wanted to do with my life. God called-preacher, end of story.

In the fall of 1976, I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College, a small Fundamentalist college in Pontiac, Michigan. Polly Shope, my wife to be, started taking classes at Midwestern in the spring of 1976 while she was finishing her senior year at Oakland Christian School. At the age of fourteen, Polly went forward at the Kawkawlin River Baptist Church, Bay City, Michigan, and let the church know that she believed God was calling her to be a preacher’s wife. When Polly enrolled at Midwestern, she had one goal in mind: to marry a preacher.

polly gerencser, pontiac, michigan 1978
Polly in front of our apartment, Fall 1978

Polly and I were immediately drawn to one another. She was quiet, reserved, and very beautiful. I was outspoken, brash, with a rebellious spirit. According to Polly, I was her bad boy. We started dating in September of 1976, and by Christmas, we were certain that we were a match made in Heaven. Unfortunately, Polly’s parents thought we were a match made in Hell. My parents were divorced, and Polly’s mom thought that divorce was hereditary. Though she did her best to quash our love, in the spring of 1978, we issued an ultimatum: give us your blessing or we will get married without it (a few weeks earlier, we had seriously considered eloping). On a hot July day in 1978, Polly and I exchanged vows at the Newark Baptist Temple, Heath, Ohio. As Mark Bullock, the soloist for our wedding, sang the Carpenter’s hit, We’ve Only Just Begun, Polly and I had thoughts of the wonderful life that awaited us in the ministry. Little did we know how naïve we were about what being in the ministry really entailed.

Polly’s idea of the ministry was quite idealistic. In her mind, we would have two children, a boy named Jason and a girl named Bethany, and live in a beautiful two-story house with a white picket fence. She saw herself as the quiet helpmeet of her preacher husband.  My idea of the ministry was a bit more realistic. Preaching, teaching, winning souls, visiting the sick, all in a church filled with peace, joy, and harmony. No one had prepared us for what the ministry would really be like. I still remember a time when I was standing in a three-foot deep hole partly filled with sewage trying to repair a broken septic line. Polly came out to see what I was doing, and I said to her, Well, they certainly didn’t teach me this in college. No one told us that the ministry would be far different from our idealistic expectations.

Two months after we were married, Polly informed me that our use of contraceptive foam had failed and she was pregnant. Not long after her announcement, I lost my job at a Detroit-area production machine shop. Financially, things quickly fell apart for us. We went to see Levy Corey, the dean at Midwestern, and told him that we needed to drop out of college. He told us we just needed to trust God and everything would work out. While I was able to find new employment, it was not enough for us to keep our heads above water. In February of 1979, we dropped all of our classes and prepared to move to Bryan, Ohio. Several of our friends stopped by before we moved to berate us for not having faith in God. One friend told us that we would never amount to anything because God doesn’t bless quitters. Years later, at a preacher’s conference hosted by Newark Baptist Temple, Dr. Tom Malone, the president of Midwestern, mentioned that I was in the crowd. He said that I had left Midwestern before graduating, but if I had stayed, they (the college) probably would have ruined me. He meant it as a joke, but I took his comment as a vindication of our decision to leave college.

polly bruce gerencser cranbrook gardens bloomfield hills michigan 1978
Polly and Bruce Gerencser, Cranbrook Gardens, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Spring 1978, two months before wedding.

In February of 1979, we moved to Bryan, Ohio, the place of my birth and the home of my sister Robin. After living with my sister for a short while, we found a house to rent on Hamilton Street. I began working at ARO, a large local manufacturer of pumps and air tools. ARO paid well, but I still desired to be a pastor. As with every job, I viewed secular work as just a means to an end — me pastoring a church. My sister attended the Montpelier Baptist Church in Montpelier, Ohio. When we first moved to Bryan, we thought that we would attend First Baptist Church, the church I had attended before enrolling at Midwestern. Though I knew everyone at First Baptist, we decided to go to Montpelier Baptist, a young, growing GARBC church pastored by Jay Stuckey. This decision did not sit well with the people at First Baptist. One of the matriarchs of the church told me, “Bruce, you know you belong at First Baptist!”  At the time, First Baptist was pastored by Jack Bennett. Jack was married to my uncle’s sister Creta.

I had previously preached at Montpelier Baptist, so I knew a bit about Stuckey and his ministry philosophy. Stuckey was a graduate of Toledo Bible College, which later moved to Newburgh, Indiana, and became Trinity Theological Seminary. After attending the church for a few weeks, Stuckey asked me to help him at the church by becoming the bus pastor and helping with church visitation.

The church had one bus route. It brought in a handful of children every week, and little was being done to increase ridership numbers. Enter hot-shot, get–it-done, Bruce Gerencser. In less than a month, on Easter Sunday, the bus was jammed with eighty-eight riders. I vividly remember arriving at the church with all these kids and the junior church director running out to the bus and frantically asking me what I expected him to do with all the children. I replied, That’s your problem, I just bring them in. Needless to say, this man was never very fond of me.

A short time later, the church bought a second bus. I recruited bus workers to run the new route, and before long, this bus was also filled with riders. On the first Sunday in October 1979, Montpelier Baptist held its morning service at the Williams County Fairgrounds. A quartet provided special music, and Ron English from the Sword of the Lord preached the sermon. Five hundred people attended this service, and about 150 of them had come in on the buses. Less than two weeks later, I was gone. Polly and I, along with our newborn son Jason, packed up our meager household goods and moved to Newark, Ohio.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce, Is Polly Your Soulmate?

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soulmate

Bruce, do you have a “soulmate”? The short answer is “no.”

First, I don’t don’t have a “soul” and neither does Polly, my partner of forty-seven years. There’s no evidence for the existence of the soul, and without one, I can’t have a “soulmate” and neither can Polly.

Second, there are millions of females on planet Earth I could have married and been happy with. Am I really expected to believe that Polly was the only person for me; that if I had never married her, I wouldn’t be happy? This is absurd, to say the least.

That said, I am happily married. By all accounts, we have a good marriage, and we get along with each other 98.9% of the time. All I am saying is that had I met a different woman and married her, it is possible we could have been happily married too. Of course, we also could have had the marriage from hell. Life is a crapshoot, and that includes marriage.

Do you have a soulmate? How do you know that person is the only person out of eight billion people just for you? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Reclaiming the Music of Our Missed Youth

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bruce and polly gerencser 1978
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, May 1978, two months before our wedding

For those of us raised in high-demand religious sects, we know how much we missed out on while we were busy worshipping Jesus every hour of every day, week in and week out. I spent the majority of my life deeply immersed in the teachings of the Bible and the machinations of the ministry. All told, I attended over 8,000 church services, revival meetings, youth rallies, and Bible conferences. At least three times a week for the first fifty years of my life, I could be found within the four walls of Bible-believing, Bible-preaching churches. I was a committed, devoted follower of Jesus, as was my partner, Polly. When we married in 1978, we made a commitment to follow Jesus all the days of our lives. Our children were born into and lived in a home where Evangelical Christianity permeated everything we did. This is not to say that Polly and I were perfect Christians. We were not. Both of us sinned, and, on occasion, grievously so. That said, the bent of our lives was towards holiness, without which, the Bible says, “no man shall see the Lord.”

The Bible — my interpretation of it, anyway — was the foundation of our family. Thus, there were a lot of things we didn’t or couldn’t do because of our beliefs. This means we missed out on doing many of the things — good, bad, and indifferent — our peers did. Polly, in particular, lived a sheltered life, attending an Evangelical Christian high school. I was more worldly in the sense that I attended a large public high school and was more exposed to the world than she was. That said, Jesus, the Bible, and the church were the sum of our lives until we were in our late 40s.

Polly will turn sixty-seven in October, and I turned sixty-eight in June. Both of us are on the short side of life; I, in particular, with all the health problems I have. As we reflect on our pasts, we can’t help but regret missing out on so much of life. In recent years, we’ve decided to do some of the things we were forbidden from doing. Our only rule these days is this: we are free to do whatever we want to do. No God or Bible to consult. All that matters is whether we want to do something, and if we can afford it, off we go, experiencing and enjoying what little life we have left.

This is especially true when it comes to music. Over the past three years, we have attended numerous “secular” concerts, so much so that several workers at one venue know us by name. So far this year, we have heard (main acts):

  • Girl Named Tom
  • The Fray
  • Augustana
  • 1985 (a tribute band)
  • Fleetwood Mac Tribute Band
  • Buffalo Rose
  • Parmalee
  • Four Horsemen (Metallica Tribute Band)
  • Dorothy
  • Redferrin

In October, we plan to see Killer Queen (a tribute band) at The Clyde Theater in Fort Wayne and Seether, Daughtry, and POD at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre in Sterling Heights, Michigan. In November, a Blackstone Cherry concert is on the schedule, as is One Dark Night (a Halloween-themed concert, theatrical production). You might think that we are attending a lot of concerts — and we are — but consider how limited I am physically. I can walk short distances with a cane, but anything more than that requires a wheelchair. Fortunately, we have found three music venues that are ADA-friendly; places where we aren’t stuck in a back corner somewhere, out of sight, out of mind. Besides, we have eclectic music tastes. We love live music, so we are to be found at everything from country to heavy metal concerts.

Are you a former member of a high-demand religion that put onerous requirements on how you lived your life? How has your life changed? Have you experienced things now that you missed out on in your Christian days? Please share your experiences in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Short Stories: The Sleeping Squirrel Hunter

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bruce gerencser 1987
Bruce Gerencser, Somerset Baptist Church, 1987

I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in Mt Perry, Ohio, for eleven years in the 1980s and 1990s. Located in the Appalachian foothills, the church was surrounded by beautiful scenery, dusty country roads, stripper oil wells, illegal pot growers, and farms.

One family had a large farm a few miles away from the church. The mom and her three children attended church, but the dad did not. I was a hunter at the time. The dad gave me an open invitation to hunt on their land.

One sunny fall day, I decided to go squirrel hunting by myself on the aforementioned land. I walked the rolling hills for what seemed forever before finding a place to sit in the woods. My gun of choice that day was a bolt-action Mossberg .410 shotgun — a gun I bought for myself when I was twelve.

I plopped myself on the leaf-littered ground and leaned up against a huge tree. I thought that this would be a great spot for spotting squirrels. Long days and short nights had their way with me, and before long, I fell sound asleep. A while later, I was stirred by chipmunks running over and around me. As I lifted my head and looked off into the distance, imagine my surprise to see two foxes intently watching me. What a beautiful sight — breathtaking. Eventually, the foxes ran off, as did the chipmunks.

No squirrels were killed on this day or any other thereafter. I became increasingly uncomfortable with hunting, especially killing animals for no other reason than that I could. I no longer had the bloodlust necessary to kill wild animals. Photography became my new weapon of choice, “shooting” animals without killing them.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Short Stories: The Arizona Rattlesnake

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bruce gerencser arizona 1975 (2)

In the spring of my tenth-grade year, my dad packed up our meager worldly belongings and moved the Gerencser family to Tucson, Arizona. Three months later, I hopped a Greyhound bus and returned to my mom’s home in Bryan, Ohio. After spending the summer of 1973 with Mom, I decided to move to Findlay, Ohio, so I could attend the local high school. We had lived in Findlay for two and a half years — the longest I had ever attended one school, so I moved back, hoping to reconnect with my friends and church. I ended up living with two church families as I finished my eleventh grade of high school. In May 1974, I returned to my mom’s home, dropped out of high school, and six months later moved back to my dad’s home — which was now located in Sierra Vista, Arizona — after mom was committed to the state psychiatric hospital in Toledo (her second commitment).

I lived in Sierra Vista for nine months. I worked for a local grocery company, attended a Conservative Baptist church, and spent the rest of my time with a beautiful woman I met at church named Anita. (Please see 1975: Anita, My First Love) We hit it off, and our relationship quickly turned to talk of marriage. A few months later, Anita returned to college in Phoenix, our relationship soured, and I, once again, returned to my mom’s home in Ohio. I remained there until in left for college in August 1976.

Anita had a younger brother who was deaf. I wish I could remember his first name, but try as I might, I can’t recall it. One day, Anita’s brother and I were driving down the road near their home. I noticed ahead of us a large snake crossing the road. I said, “Let’s stop and catch the snake.” I got out of the truck and tried to catch it. As I reached for the snake, it recoiled and lunged at me, catching the fabric of my blue jeans. An old woman was standing in her yard, watching as I tried to corral the snake. Suddenly, she came running towards us, screaming, “Get away from that snake. It’s poisonous.” And with that, she smashed the snake with a rock.

I had no idea what species the snake belonged to. Come to find out, it was a rattlesnake that had dropped its rattle!

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Short Stories: The Day the Preacher Almost Killed a Drug Dealer

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somerset baptist church 1983-1994 2
Our hillbilly mansion. We lived in this 720-square-foot mobile home for five years, all eight of us.

I was the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church in southeast Ohio for eleven years. The church had grown rapidly in the mid-1980s, but by 1988, attendance had declined, we stopped our bus ministry, and started a tuition-free Christian school for church children. To save the church money, I bought a 12’x60′ trailer for our family to live in, and parked it fifty feet from the church building. This was the first home that was ours.

somerset baptist church 1983-1994
Our son Jaime, and our two girls, Bethany and Laura.

One day, we found out that a stray female dog had gotten underneath the church building and given birth to a bunch of puppies. The dog warden picked the mother and her pups. We kept one of the puppies and named it Bear. This was long before my view on animal care changed. Bear was primarily an outside dog. He loved to run free, and since we lived in the country, Bear was free to roam the countryside. One day, Bear came home bleeding profusely from his head. I found out that the drug dealer up the road from us had shot Bear with a .22 caliber rifle. (His children tattled on him.) Fortunately, thanks to the small caliber of the bullet, Bear survived. If I remember correctly, the veterinarian bill was $120. Cheap, compared to today. Our vet charges $90 for an office visit. One of our cats recently had an eye infection. Cost? $194.

gerencser boys 1989
Nathan, Jaime, and Jason Gerencser, Somerset Baptist Church, 1989

My young children witnessed all of this, including what happened next. Down the dirt road came the drug dealer in his car. In a fit of homicidal rage, I stopped him in the middle of the road, intending to beat the shit out of him. He was bigger than me, but that didn’t matter. He started to get out of his car as I was screaming at him. I was sure we were going to duke it out. However, because my wife and children were standing nearby, I stopped myself and walked away. At the time, I credited the Holy Spirit for keeping me from murdering my neighbor. Today, I know that reason overcame my irrationality; that the future beckoned me from the present. If I had acted on my rage, I would have either ended up in jail or left my children fatherless. If I learned nothing on that day, it is this: Walk away. Never let anger overcome me and determine what I do next. I have had to learn this lesson over and over and over again.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

After Death, Will We Finally Know the Truth?

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calvin afterlife

Evangelicals believe there is life after death. Every person who has ever lived will end up in either Heaven or Hell. Where you end up is determined by faith. Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior go to Heaven when they die. Everyone else goes to Hell and will be tortured forever for their rejection of Jesus.

Setting aside the fact that people do not go to Heaven or Hell after they die (no one does until the general resurrection at the end of time), most Evangelicals have extra-Biblical beliefs about the afterlife. For example, how many sermons have you heard where a preacher told you Nana or Grandpa is in Heaven, free from pain, suffering, and heartache? You are told your dead loved ones are having a wonderful time in Heaven, running, singing, and worshipping God. Life is marvelous, better than anything experienced in life before the grave. Most people will never experience this, but, bless God, Evangelicals will. Why? They are members of the right religion. They worship the right God. Their guidebook for life is the Bible, even if they rarely read it. By faith, they believe every word in the Bible is straight from the mind of God. This supernatural book says there’s an afterlife. The men who preach from this supernatural book say there’s an afterlife. Countless authors have written books about Heaven and what awaits the followers of Jesus after they die.

What Evangelicals NEVER provide is evidence for the existence of an afterlife, Heaven, or Hell. Not one shred of evidence is presented for these claims. Either you believe in life after death or you don’t. Either you believe Heaven and Hell are real places or you don’t. Either you believe that your landing spot in the afterlife is determined by believing the right things, or you don’t. All of these claims ultimately appeal to faith for justification. Any Evangelicals who tell you they died, went to Heaven or Hell, and came back to life on Earth are lying. Unless they provide a feature-length video of their time in the afterlife, their claims are not to be believed. Just because someone says something happened to them doesn’t mean their story is true. The same goes for the Bible. The Bible is a book of claims. Just because it says something doesn’t mean it’s true.

People wrongly think I am an anti-theist. I am not. I do, however, expect and demand sufficient evidence for religious claims. If you want me to believe your claims, you will have to do more than quote Bible verses or tell me to just faith-it.

I know that I will someday die, likely sooner than later. I am a sixty-eight-year-old man in poor health. My body tells me that my time on Earth is short. How I die remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: I will die. Rare is the person, especially in the sunset years of life, who doesn’t think about death from time to time. In the quiet of late nights, I will hear our clock ticking, reminding me of my frail mortality. Eventually, I fitfully fall asleep, hoping I will awake the next day. And I do, but one day the last noise I hear in this life could be the click-click- cl of our clock. And that will be it. Then what?

Since there is no evidence for an afterlife, I have no reason to believe that I will live on after death outside of whatever nutrients my ashes return to the dirt. When I die, that means the end of the only Bruce Gerencser on Earth. Yes, I am that special. 🙂 Do I fear death? No, not as far as it being the end of life. I know death awaits all of us, and since I am not immune to what afflicts us one and all, I’m confident that the way of all men will one day come calling for me. I do, however, at times, fear what may happen to me before I die; the pain, suffering, and loss that may come my way before my demise.

Most Evangelicals believe that after they get to Heaven, they will be given a resurrected body, one perfect in every way, including the brain/mind. Having a new brain/mind, Evangelicals think that they will know countless things they didn’t know on Earth, and they will NOT know many of the things/people they knew before death. You might think, as an atheist, “Who cares?” And I agree, except for this one point: Evangelicals are willing to offload knowing things to the afterlife. Who hasn’t engaged an Evangelical about this or that belief, only to have the believer dismiss your claims out of hand, saying, “One day, I will know everything in Heaven. Praise Jesus!” Sadly, Evangelicals won’t know everything. Knowledge and understanding are gained only in this life. Once dead, all learning stops. Better to have lived life seeking knowledge and passing that knowledge on to others than to make oneself deliberately ignorant, hoping that an invisible deity will one day fill you in on what you missed in this life.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Wise Words About a Well-Lived Life From Marcus Aurelius

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marcus aurelius

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

— Marcus Aurelius

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Does Suffering Make You Stronger?

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suffering and pain

I have been told countless times over the past twenty years, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Is this a true statement? Not from my perspective. Two-plus decades of chronic pain and suffering have not made me stronger. Over the years, I have been diagnosed with and treated for (in order of severity): degenerative spine disease, peripheral nerve pain, gastroparesis, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, osteoarthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure. I have also been treated for basal cell and squamous cell skin cancer three times, with another treatment forthcoming due to a cancerous growth on my left forearm.

My first battles with health problems date back to the 1980s. Primarily immune system problems, I ended up in the hospital with mononucleosis in 1991. What is called a “kissing disease” for teenagers, for adults, mono is a serious disease that can kill you. I was so sick that I had a 104-degree temperature, my liver and spleen were swollen, as were my lymph glands, and my adenoids and tonsils were pure white from infection. The internist treating me said that there was little he could do for me; that it was up to my body to fend for itself. I eventually recovered. All told, I lost over fifty pounds and was unable to preach for two months. One oddity to come out this is that my normal body temperature is now 97.0 degrees. (Good luck trying to explain to a nurse that 99 degrees is the equivalent of 100.6 degrees — you know, a fever.)

Suffering is part of the human experience. All of us will suffer at one time or another in our lives, and our suffering is unique to each of us. Can suffering make us stronger? Sure, it can, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily does. I know that for me, I don’t see anything redemptive in my suffering. I don’t have pain-free days — ever. I have bad days, less bad days, and days when I want to kill myself. My mobility is greatly diminished, and I am prone to nasty falls. Life is what it is, and I accept that this is life until I die. No magic surgeries or miracle drugs await me. What DOES await is life, and I do what I can to make the most of it.

Has chronic pain and suffering made me a better man? Maybe. I am more empathetic towards the suffering of others. As a fellow sufferer, I understand what they are going through. However, I am more inclined to think that pain and suffering have turned me into a broken man; a man who silently pleads for a day, just one day, without pain. I have found that the only pain-free times in life were when the anesthesiologist told me to count back from ten as I fell asleep.

Please don’t tell a chronic pain sufferer that their suffering is making them stronger. You can’t know this, so instead of pretending you are a mindreader, how about (gently) embracing their suffering with love, kindness, and compassion?

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

How Christian Fundamentalism Robbed Us of the Opportunity to Listen to the Devil’s Music

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devils music

My partner and I were teenagers in the 1970s — the heyday of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. Many of the largest churches in the United States were IFB congregations and numerical church growth across the movement was normal and expected. Exciting times, to say the least. People looking for certainty were drawn to IFB churches and their rules. Having been born into and schooled in the IFB church movement, Polly and I were obedient church members. Our morals, ethics, and worldview were shaped by what we heard from our pastors and Sunday school teachers, and later, at Midwestern Baptist College, our professors. While we, at times, chaffed against the rules, conditioning and indoctrination taught us that obedience to the rules was expected by God, and disobedience brought chastisement, punishment, and, at times, death. As a result, we didn’t experience many of the things — good and bad — that “normal” teens did in the 70s.

Take music. We were taught that “worldly” music was sinful; that listening to it would corrupt our minds and lead us to commit all sorts of sinful behaviors — mostly sexual, in nature. Rock music, in particular, was demonized. IFB churches would have preachers such as Bob Larson and David Benoit hold revival services focused on rock music and its influence on teens. These services were used to scare the hell out of teenagers, warning them that listening to rock music would corrupt them and lead to hellfire and brimstone. As a result, we rarely listened to rock music. Oh, we had AM radios in our cars, but the records (and later cassette tapes, 8-track tapes, and CDs) we owned were, without exception, southern gospel or choral music.

After marriage and having children, our approach to music “liberalized.” We added contemporary Christian music and Christian rock to the mix, but still no secular music. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that we started listening to “safe” secular music. Over time, our tastes and desires changed, but it was not until we deconverted in 2008 that we stopped regularly listening to Christian music. I will still occasionally listen to Christian music, but Polly has no interest in revisiting our music pasts.

Think of all the awesome music we missed out on from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. The good news is that post-Jesus we are free to listen to all sorts of secular music. I tell people that, in many ways, Polly and I are living our youthful years for the first time. Free from the IFB church’s oppressive rules, we are free to indulge in the Devil’s music — without guilt or fear.

In recent years, we have started attending secular concerts. Lots of fun, for the both of us. That said, we tend to be the oldest, or some of the oldest, people in attendance. Last Friday, we attended a concert in Fort Wayne by The Fray. We had an awesome time. Packed house, numbering 2,100 in attendance. We were surrounded by people ages 20-40. One thought I had during the concert was that the concert was a lot like a church or revival service. The excitement and raw emotions were palatable, and song after song spoke to our “hearts.” The difference, of course, was that there were no threats of judgment of Hell, no offering plates, no altar calls — just fellowship with people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs.

The opening act was a new band called Verygently. We laughed through their song, Jesus Girl, as only former IFB church members could do.

Video Link

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Got the preacher up front and I’m chilling in back
And I’m bored as hell
In a collared shirt that I got from the Gap
With the shoes as well
It’s been a few years and I feel real weird here
Free sip of wine ’cause they don’t sell beer here
Talking in tongues, I was just about to run
Then well, well, well

[Chorus]
I saw Jesus girl
A tall glass of holy water
Swear she had a halo on her
Jesus girl
With her cross necklace and braids
Holy shit, I think I’m saved
I still don’t believe in God
But I’ll give everything I’ve got
To Jesus girl

[Verse 2]
Now I’m back every Sunday thinking ’bout one day
Asking her out
Still chilling in the back, but I’m learning how to act
Like I’m into it now
I might get baptized just so she’ll see me
Bible verse tat, John 3:16 me
Sending up a prayer if you’re really up there
I’d love to get down

Chorus]
With Jesus girl
A tall glass of holy water
Swear she had a halo on her
Jesus girl
With her cross necklace and braids
Holy shit, I think I’m saved
I still don’t believe in God
But I’ll give everything I’ve got
To Jesus girl

[Bridge]
Na-na-na, na-na
Na-na-na, na-na
Na-na-na, na-na
Na-na-na, na-na (Jesus girl)
Na-na-na, na-na
Na-na-na

[Outro]
Yeah, my whole life turned around
I was lost until I found
Jesus girl

Compare this song to a Christian song also titled Jesus Girl.

She’s just fifteen, but she acts older, much older,
And she won’t listen to what all the kids told her, when they told her, 
She knows what they want, but she knows what she needs, and it’s not the same,
She won’t give in, you see.

She’s a Jesus girl, oh yeah, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
Well, she’s a J-J-Jesus girl, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
And she’s a Jesus girl.

She knows what’s right and what’s wrong, she knows what’s wrong,
She reads her Bible and she’s strong, she’s so strong,
She’s telling all her friends that there’s a better way,
No more broken hearts, no lonely nights or days.

And she’s a Jesus girl, yeah, yeah, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
Well, she’s a J-J-J-Jesus girl, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
Well, she’s a Jesus girl.

She jumps and shouts for Jesus, she loves Jesus,
She keeps her eyes on Jesus, on her Jesus,
And when she jumps and shouts, her eyes are on the Lord,
Well, she’s a Christian, yeah, but she’s never bored.

And she’s a Jesus girl, oh yeah, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
Well, she’s a J-J-Jesus girl, (oh yeah, oh yeah)
She’s a Jesus girl.

Polly and I plan to continue listening to the Devil’s music. How about you? Did your music tastes and experiences change post-Jesus (or post-Evangelical if you are still a believer)? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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