Menu Close

Did Evangelical Sara Witten Mistake a Hearing Aid Whistle for God?

Bruce Gerencser 12 Comments
hearing aid whistle

I spent the first fifty years of my life attending church. During my Independent Fundamentalist Baptist days, I attended or led four church services a week, plus revivals, mission conferences, Bible conferences, and sundry other meetings. Over the years, I have heard fellow church members speak in tongues, audibly praise Jesus, fart, belch, snore, or say AMEN (for the fart)! 🙂 One of the more annoying sounds I heard in church was the high-pitched sound made by improperly adjusted hearing aids. This whistle can be quite annoying, especially when the person wearing the hearing aids can’t hear it. Not once did I mistake this sound for the presence of God in our midst.

Yesterday, CHARISMA News, the official record for all things Charismatic, published an article by Sara Whitten titled Year of the Whistle. Whitten’s bio states she is an:

author, speaker, equipper and founder of Arrows of Zion Ministry. She and her husband are pastors for the youth at Impact Christian Fellowship in Kerrville, Texas. Sara is a prophetic writer that has been featured on Elijah List, Spirit Fuel, Charisma and more. She hosts Hear God Everyday on Charisma Podcast Network, a podcast with tools to help amplify the voice of God amidst the noise of everyday life. Sara also co-founded One Spark International, an organization that sponsors Bible-based training and education in unreached and restricted nations in order to see the gospel reach all people groups. She is also an active part of groups that train and invest in professionals wanting to use their business or marketplace skills to transform unreached nations for the kingdom.

Last Sunday, Witten was attending church when she “heard” the Christian God:

As I was worshipping at church last Sunday, the presence of the Lord felt heavy in the room. I felt the Lord whisper, “Blow! I am breathing now.” I pursed my lips and exhaled. To my shock, from somewhere else in the room came a loud whistle. For a moment, I even stopped to make sure it wasn’t me.

Throughout the rest of the worship set, even over the loud music, an intermittent whistle would sound. God said, “This will be known as the year of the Lord’s whistle.” The word “whistle,” as we know it today, actually is derived from an old Norse word “hvīsla” meaning “to whisper.”

I cannot hear the word “whisper” without thinking of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. He was hunkering in a cave, waiting to meet the Lord. First, a wind that literally shattered rock whipped through the mountains. Then the earth quaked. Then a raging fire broke out. Through all of these, Elijah waited.

Then came a whisper and, at the sound of a whisper, Elijah came out. In America, amidst the spiritual ripping winds, earthquakes and fires, God is about to release a “whisper” to call the Elijahs out. This year, the new level of warfare that has kept people in their caves is going to usher out a group of Elijahs that have been in the hidden place, waiting for the word of the Lord.

….

A new level of knowing His voice and returning with a passion to His written Word is going to break out like a whistle.

….

In a rapid movement of God, there is going to be a “pushing past” obstructions and a spiritual opening. God is summoning and decreeing, and He is “blowing the whistle” on the enemy. Enough is enough. As I turned to the Scriptures for references to whistling, I was stunned. Zechariah 10:8 (NIV) reads, “I will signal (whistle) for them and gather them in. Surely I will redeem them: they will be as numerous as before.”

This verse occurs amidst a chapter that is a resounding call to prayer. Their world, at the time, was riddled with confusion as people worshipped idols, wanted to choose their own truth and morality and squandered their potential at fruitfulness. In response, God said, while crying out in prayer, that He would answer them, give them back the governing authority they had lost, help them overcome their enemies and restore peace and faith in their own country.

As this same thing happens in our world today, God’s promises are the same. Isaiah 5:26 also mentions whistling, saying, “He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, he whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Here they come swiftly and speedily!” This verse is somewhat unsettling. The people in this passage were “wise in their own eyes,” not wanting to listen to the Lord but thinking their own way was best.

Just as mayhem ensued and the Lord whistled to the nations, God then raised up Isaiah to be a source of clarity and for his own people. Just as with Elijah, the calamity came with a new prophetic release. Psalm 9:2-7 also speaks of whistling and reads in the Message translation: “I’m whistling, laughing, and jumping for joy; I’m singing your song, High God. The day my enemies turned tail and ran, they stumbled on you and fell on their faces. You took over and set everything right; when I needed you, you were there, taking charge. You blow the whistle on godless nations; you throw dirty players out of the game, wipe their names right off the roster. Enemies disappear from the sidelines, their reputation trashed, their names erased from the halls of fame. God holds the high center, he sees and sets the world’s mess right.”

We see in this passage both a whistle for joy and a whistle of justice. With one whistle, injustices that have been allowed to continue are called out and taken down. As I prayed into this year, I see a year of shaking as “whistles” are blown to bring justice where there has been neglect for the Lord. I also see a year of “whistles” awakening and quickly moving people out of places of hiddenness or immobility and into new, individual roles, as they prophetically carry the voice of the Lord into all sectors of society.

….

In this next year, God is pouring the oil of anointing and healing on the mountains of society. Media, government, family, entertainment, ministry, education and business are going to receive anointing and healing where the thief has beaten and stripped them. Just as in 1 Kings 19, don’t fear when the “wind rips through the mountains,” the earth quakes or fires rage. Wait for the whistle. Then listen for the prophetic whisper of the Lord.

Throughout the worship service, Witten heard a “whistle,” even when the band was banging out the latest “Jesus is your Boyfriend” praise and worship song. Witten immediately assumed the “whistle” she heard was God speaking to her. Not feedback from the church’s AV equipment. Not from a hearing aid. Not from the HVAC system. Nope, G-o-d. The creator of the universe took time out from his sovereign rule of the universe to intermittently whistle to a woman with “supernatural” hearing.

simpsons worship god

Witten provided no evidence for her claim. All she would need to do is provide a recording from the church service. Of course, Witten will likely say that God was “whistling” to her alone, not the congregation, so no such evidence exists. Of course not . . .

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Youth Pastor Vincent Stites Convicted of Sexually Assaulting Church Teen

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
vincent stites

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 February 2021, Vincent “Vince” Stites, a youth pastor at Friendship Assembly of God in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the owner of Hellscream Entertainment, was charged with sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust.

Fox-21 reported at the time:

Vincent Stites, 49, was arrested Wednesday on charges of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust. Stites previously acted as a volunteer youth pastor at Friendship Assembly of God Church, according to police. His wife at the time was employed as a children’s minister at the church.

Stites was also a part owner of Hellscream Entertainment, which runs several popular haunted attractions in the Colorado Springs area. According to his LinkedIn page, Stites began that role in January 2009. He stepped down after the arrest, according to Hellscream’s co-owners.

….

According to arrest papers, the victim called police in September to report that she had been sexually assaulted by a person in a position of trust about 15 years prior.

The victim told officers that Stites, who is about 19 years older than her, had sexually assaulted her starting when she was about 14 years old, when she had aged out of a church program she was involved in. Stites was one of the adults in charge of the program, the victim told police.

The victim told police she had known Stites since she was 9, attending the church with her family.

The victim told police Stites first got physical with her around 2005. About seven months later, when she was 15, he manipulated her into having sex with him, according to the victim.

The victim told police Stites took her virginity and told her that she could not tell anybody, because he could lose his children.

The victim told police the sex continued for the next three years, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, and then quarterly, until she turned 18 and it stopped.

Police conducted a pretext phone call with Stites in December. During the call, Stites told the victim she was the first person he fell in love with, and acknowledged he thought they were going to get married, according to arrest papers.

“I want to be brutally honest with you,” he said during the call. ” I don’t want to end up in jail.”

Last week, Stites pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in jail.

The Gazette reported:

Vince Stites, a former volunteer youth pastor and haunted house owner who pleaded guilty to repeatedly sexually assaulting a teenager over 15 years ago, was sentenced to 90 days in prison Thursday.

Stites, who’s already spent 110 days in custody after confessing to the crime, will also have to serve at least 10 years of probation for sex offenders, which means he’ll have to register, and won’t be allowed to use the internet or be around anyone under the age of 18 until his supervisors allow him.

The sentence, harsher than Stites’ attorney hoped for, was handed down by district judge Marla Prudek, who said she’d taken his lack of a criminal record into consideration among other things, but questioned whether Stites, 49, was sincere in his confession or remorse.

Stites’ attorney, Allen Gasper, argued that Stites wasn’t a threat to the community, adding that the sexual assaults had happened almost 16 years before.

….

During Thursday’s hearing, the woman spoke about Stites, telling him and the court that he’d taken advantage of an impressionable teenager, and that she’d carried his secret, along with trauma from his assaults, well into adulthood.

“Every aspect of my life has been affected — my mental health, my job, my marriage,” the woman tearfully said Thursday. “But there could be other girls at risk of falling into his manipulative hands. That’s where I found my strength to call police.”

In a plea deal reached in June, Stites confessed to having an inappropriate sexual relationship with the woman, adding that he’d known how old she was at the time.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Voting Democrat is Evil in the Sight of God

Bruce Gerencser 8 Comments
mark shepard

Is voting Democrat an evil act in God’s eyes?

….

The question raised is a most serious question, especially for those who seek to follow Jesus.

….

Today’s Democratic Party completely rejects Biblical teaching on morality and human nature – that man’s fallen nature cannot handle great power. Rather, it embraces pagan ideas, including the state being supreme. As such they work to shift power (responsibility and control) away from the smaller governing spheres of individual, family, church, community, etc. to higher and higher governing levels, including unaccountable international bodies.

The Democratic Party platforms and actions present an agenda that includes:

  • Abortion with no limits.
  • Doctor-assisted suicide for those deemed as not worthy of normal legal protections.
  • Rejecting of God’s design of marriage and creation of male and female, thus exploiting and indeed creating sexual and gender confusion.
  • Destructive life-altering hormone and surgical procedures in children of all ages.
  • Creating destabilizing unrest and divisions among Americans, with current efforts dividing by wealth, skin color, gender and sexuality.
  • Disenfranchising legal voters through weakening voting laws
  • Greater state control of individual healthcare decisions.
  • Suppressing the Christian-informed conscience.
  • Producing godless citizens through public schools where children are essentially drafted into the front lines of their war against God.

….

While some may claim that this column advocates for a theocracy, a theocracy goes much further than using a religious book as a guide for morality and good governing practices. A theocracy dictates religious beliefs and practices. The fact is it is the Democratic Party that is all too eager to force and coerce its pagan beliefs and practices on the entire population.

— Mark Shepard, Renew America, Is voting Democrat an evil act in God’s eyes?, October 7, 2021

How I Missed Hale-Bopp

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Ian

I recently discovered a podcast called Here Be Monsters. I was trying to find a funny story I had heard a couple of years ago on public radio. The story involved someone dressing up as a Sasquatch and a dog called Motley Crüe Jon Bon Jovi. It’s an entertaining story that you can find here.


I really enjoyed re-hearing the story and thought there might be some other stories I’d enjoy, so I started listening to random episodes. I enjoyed some, while others didn’t really catch my interest. But the presentations were excellent and I loved the audio quality. The sounds are very crisp and the music is relaxing.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I’m listening to an episode about Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate cult.

In the story, they talk about the Hale-Bopp comet. For those who don’t remember, or who weren’t born then, Hale-Bopp was a new comet that was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, and it was visible for 18 months. This was during 1996-1997. The Heaven’s Gate cult thought a spacecraft was following the comet and most of them committed suicide, thinking that was the way to leave their bodies behind and join the spacecraft.

Eighteen months is a long time to be able to see a comet, but I never saw it, because I didn’t know about it. The only time it came into my small world view was when the members of Heaven’s Gate committed suicide. You see, at that time, my family didn’t have a TV, get the newspaper or listen to the news on the radio. The only time I heard news was when something big happened. Usually, the pastor would mention something he heard about on the news, or another member of the congregation, who had a TV, would say something, and then it was always filtered through the lens of Calvinistic philosophy. The big news stories were always talked about with the smug assurance that God had ordained everything that happens and that sinners were always getting their just rewards. I look back and find that disgusting. There was no compassion and no understanding, just black and white judgment. Heaven’s Gate was mentioned because they were “lunatics” who were preordained to this fate and further proof that we were the only ones with the true gospel. What I have come to realize over the years is that I missed out on so much news, which becomes information, from my mid-teens through my mid-30’s. Admittedly, a lot of the news was bad, but it was news. All of it was information that I could have learned from. I might have made better choices in my life, if I had more knowledge of the world around me. I watch Netflix documentaries now, and I can’t believe all that passed me by. Granted, I have lived my whole life in Alaska, so many national news stories didn’t always make big headlines here, but the stories were there. I just had no clue. Sometimes, when I discover a missed story, I feel like an explorer finding a new ocean or mountain. I’ll be amazed that this huge thing was here, and I just now found it.


And, the little bit of news I did follow was always looked at through a very critical lens. All news had to fit into my church’s narrow view of the world. Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzalez, these were huge things talked about in my church, but the focus was always on the wrong thing. We feared the government because we thought they were going to put us all into concentration camps due to our beliefs. Maybe too many of us had watched the A Thief in the Night series, because we were all describing the kinds of scenarios shown in the films. The bigger picture was that ego and bad decisions ruled the day in these tragedies. The government didn’t care what we believed; the church I attended then still exists, although it has moved locations and is much smaller. In the early and mid-90’s though, we were sure Janet Reno had her personal eye on each of us.

By downplaying the news and filtering what we did know, the church was able to keep us uneducated. If I’m uneducated, how can I know to question anything? I felt stupid, because I would get to work, and people would be talking about things that I had no clue about. (For the younger generation, the Internet was in its infancy in this time. I couldn’t just Google it.) And, by constantly bashing the government and “taking a stand,” how many churches brought unnecessary federal, state, and local attention to themselves? If you complain the government hates you long enough, you’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So many IFB/Calvinistic/Southern Baptist-type churches get by right now by just being quiet. The federal government knows they don’t follow all the rules, they know tax evasion is going on, they know church board members use offerings as their own personal incomes, etc. The government just doesn’t care. It has too many other things to worry about, until they become something to worry about. Meanwhile, church members are being fed the story the pastor wants them to hear and never question anything.

Because of the church, I had warped views of events that happened, and it has taken years of looking into things for myself to figure out what the real tragedy in the stories was. Because of the church, I missed an 18-month chance to see a historic comet. a comet that will be forever linked, in my mind, to tragedy and not to how cool it would have been to see with my naked eye. Because I missed so much, I made sure I talked about current events with my kids, even when I was still a believer. I don’t want them to turn 40 and find out about a major event that they missed while watching Netflix.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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 The Rocket, The Church Flamed Out

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by MJ Lisbeth

Maurice “Rocket” Richard is revered by people whose grandparents weren’t born when he played his last National Hockey League (NHL) game in 1960. (That is a pivotal year in this story.) Possibly the only US athlete to attain iconic cultural status in his own country—and the world—as Richard enjoyed in Canada, especially in Quebec, is Muhammad Ali.

His younger brother Henri—“Pocket Rocket,”–while not as much of an idol or even as prolific a scorer, nonetheless followed his skate-tracks (is that the hockey equivalent of footsteps?) into the captaincy of the Montreal Canadiens and the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Four Hall of Fame goaltenders played behind “Pocket Rocket” during his twenty-year career. One of them was “Rogie” Vachon.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you might think that my longtime fandom of hockey—and, in particular, the Canadiens—is incongruous. How I came to that is the story of another article, which I may or may not write, altogether. But that, or the fact that the NHL season begins this week, is not the reason I’m writing this article. Rather, the three players I’ve just mentioned are emblematic of another development I’m about to describe.

Henri “Pocket Rocket” played his first Canadiens, and NHL, game thirteen years after Maurice “Rocket” first donned la sainte flannele. Thirteen-and-a-half years passed—and six other siblings were born to Mme. Richard—between the days Maurice and Henri first opened their eyes to the world. Vachon was called “Rogie” by everyone he knew because his birth name was a mouthful for almost everyone else, whatever language he or she spoke: Rogatien Rosaire Vachon.

Now tell me, how many people do you know named Rogation Rosary? For that matter, unless you’re, say, about my age and were raised in a Catholic community, how many families have you known with eight children?

In the milieu in which the Richard brothers and Vachon were born and raised, however, such things were normal.

In the 1950s—when Rocket’s career was at its apogee, Pocket Rocket’s was being launched and Vachon was idolizing them—the province of Quebec, which includes its capital city of Quebec as well as Montreal, was probably the most Catholic part of North America. An older co-worker on one of my first jobs described Quebec City as “the second Vatican” because he saw so many priests and nuns walking its streets. And two of Montreal’s nicknames were the “la ville au cent clochers” and “la cite des saints”: the city of a hundred spires and the city of saints.

In that sense, Montreal, Quebec City, and the province of Quebec hadn’t changed much since French settlers first arrived in the 16th Century. The French royal family and aristocracy were Catholic, as was most of France, so charters to set sail for, and claim, the New World, were given only to Catholics. The Huguenots, Protestants who were about 15 percent of France and were more educated than most French people—and who thus comprised most of the merchant and professional classes as well as most of the country’s technocrats—were not allowed to claim lands for the French crown. So, from the day French colonization began, Quebec, like other French colonies, was a Catholic stronghold.

Because most of Quebec outside of the eponymous city and Montreal was rural and agrarian until the 1950s, the language and culture didn’t change much as it did in, say, Paris, Marseille or Strasbourg. Quebecois who didn’t live in the capital or in Montreal were unlikely to encounter, much less marry, anyone from outside their culture or church. That meant that the province remained culturally and religiously conservative, even by the standards of the Pre-Vatican II church and McCarthyite America.

It also meant that the Church exercised control over institutions, and the daily lives of people, in ways that are unimaginable to most contemporary Canadians or Americans but would be familiar to the Irish of a generation ago. The church was in charge of everything from schools at every level, nurseries, orphanages, and most social services. That meant, among other things, that young people who defied the Church’s prohibition against pre-marital sex used “Catholic birth control.” It also meant that girls were discouraged from pursuing more than the most basic education unless they were going to be nuns or serve the church in some other way.

The type of education offered, and its unavailability to girls, dovetailed with the Quebec church’s ideology of la revanche des berceaux—the revenge of the cradles. Encouraging people to have lots of kids was not new to Quebec: the Church has done it from the day it began. In Quebec, though, as in Ireland, it came to be seen as a way to keep French language and culture—and the rural way of life—from being subsumed by their British conquerors. The Church itself also served this purpose, as it did for the Irish and Polish, as it was one of the few institutions that had help from the outside world.

As a result, Quebec’s population grew far more rapidly than the population of its neighboring provinces. Further fueling that centuries-long baby boom, if you will, was immigration—mainly to Montreal, and most of it Catholic: Irish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish. One notable exception to this pattern was the Jewish immigration from central and eastern Europe which, as in the United States, came at around the same time as the Italians.

In the 1920s, when Maurice Richard was born, rural areas of his native province had some of the highest birth rates in the world: around 7.5 per Quebecoise, or about 39 per 1000. Today, such fertility in industrialized countries is found only in some ultra-orthodox religious communities like the Hasidim. Birth rates in Quebec, and the rest of Canada, fell somewhat until the 1950s but remained higher than in the developed countries of Europe. At the end of the decade, however, events would conspire to change the size and structure of families, and Quebec society, as quickly and dramatically as would happen in Ireland a generation later.

In 1960, Quebecois elected a new Liberal provincial government headed by Jean Lesage. By that time, Quebec had fallen far behind neighboring Ontario in economic as well as egalitarian terms. Furthermore, the province’s economy was dominated by English-speaking Quebecers. Lesage believed that modernizing Quebec’s economy would not only make it more competitive with that of Ontario and other provinces, but would also help to preserve the distinctive culture of la belle province by freeing it from Anglo domination.

What Lesage initiated is often called “The Quiet Revolution.” It included not only economic reforms, but social ones: The Church would no longer have control over schooling. Instead, the government would take over and modernize the curriculum and methods while expanding the education system. With these changes came perhaps the most significant development of all: for the first time, females would be entitled to the same education, including post-secondary, as males. In 1961, 4.7 percent of women aged 20 to 24 had a university education. Three decades later, that figure had jumped to 27 percent. With that change came greater female participation in the paid workforce: from 15 percent of women of childbearing age in 1961 to 74 percent in 1991.

The most dramatic change of all, however, is one that’s inevitable whenever women have access to education: They have fewer kids and have them later. By 1987, Quebec’s women, whose mothers might have given them five or six siblings, were giving birth to, on average, 1.37 children. That is even lower than the birth rate in Scandinavian countries and on par with Italy, where there are fears of a “demographic crisis.” While fertility has crept up somewhat in recent years, it’s still below the accepted “replacement” rate of 2.1.

With that decrease in childbearing and rearing came another inevitable development. In 1958, two years before Lasage’s election, 85 percent of Quebec’s people identified as Catholics, and 88 percent of them attended mass every Sunday. While approximately three-quarters of Quebecers still identify themselves as Roman Catholic, as we have seen, such a number tends to be high because people continue to identify themselves, out of habit, by the religion in which they were brought up even though they no longer participate or believe in it. Also, sometimes the responses of people, especially children, are filled out for them by other people.

Church attendance rates give a truer picture: From 1986 to 2011, the proportion of Quebec’s Catholics who reported attending church monthly dropped from 48 to 17 percent. Today, the weekly attendance rate is estimated at 4 percent: even lower than in European countries like the Czech Republic and Estonia, which have some of the lowest rates of attending worship services in the world. And barely a third of the people say religion—any religion—is “important” to them.

And it doesn’t take a demographer or religious scholar to see that this decline in religiosity is a “feedback loop”: As women become more educated and less religious, they have fewer and less religious kids, who in turn have fewer and less religious kids.

So what does that mean for my favorite hockey team? Well, large, often impoverished families with few economic opportunities provided a steady stream of aspiring players. Even for the vast majority who didn’t get to don the uniform of Les Habitants, or any other NHL team, their salaries, meager as they were, earned on junior or minor league teams nonetheless helped their families. That immediate “fix” was a disincentive, in much the same way tips from a good night of waitressing or bartending are, from furthering their education, which could do more to help them and their families in the long run.

Now, with a drastically decreased birth rate, Quebec has a smaller talent pool to offer the hockey world. Moreover, young men in Quebec, no doubt influenced by parents who spent more time in school than their grandparents, are opting for more education. And new media, including the Internet, have introduced them to a world of possibilities beyond hockey rinks, where they would compete, not only with other Quebecois and Canadians, but with hockey players from the US, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Czech Republic, and other countries.

It is little wonder, then, three Montreal Canadiens legends, all of whom are enshrined in the Hall of Fame, had sons who didn’t become NHL players. And, chances are, their kids and their peers probably aren’t attending church. After all, there’s so much else to do in Montreal or Quebec City, even on Sunday morning!

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Black Collar Crime: Southern Baptist Pastor David Jones Accused of Drunk Driving and Attempted Murder

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
arrested

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.

David Jones, pastor of Hilton Oaks Baptist Church in Ferndale, Michigan, stands accused of drunk driving and attempted murder. This is the ninth drunk driving charge against Jones.

ABC-12 reports:

An Oakland County pastor is accused of trying to murder two Arenac County sheriff’s deputies by ramming his car into theirs.

The scary situation happened earlier this week just off I-75 at the Alger exit in Arenac County.

The pastor, who we’ve learned has had eight prior drinking and driving offenses, is in jail tonight facing up to life in prison if convicted.

The deputies were called to a convenience store for a suspicious situation involving a man in a car, but when they got there, they say the man would not cooperate, drove off, smashed into a building, and then into the deputies SUV.

The Arenac County deputies were called to the Forward’s Convenience Store near Alger at around one o’clock Wednesday morning where investigators say 57-year-old David Jones sat in his car.

“Not wanting to cooperate with the deputies who could tell he was intoxicated, refusing to roll down his window, refusing to do anything,” says Arenac County Undersheriff Don McIntyre.

They say Jones then drove off, across the highway, into the parking lot of the store across the street, eventually ramming the backside of the business.

“Struck their building, turned his vehicle towards deputies, accelerated, smashing our patrol car, luckily our deputies were not injured.” says McIntyre.

Deputies had to break the windows on Jones’s car because he still refused to get out after the crash. Jones faces ten charges in all, including attempted murder.

“You turn your vehicle around and intentionally collide with a police vehicle, you are going to be charged with attempted murder on police,” McIntyre says.

Jones has told an attorney that he is a pastor and a website indicates he’s the pastor at the Hilton Oaks Baptist Church in Ferndale.

Court papers indicate he has previously been arrested eight times for drinking and driving offenses, his most recent in August in Oakland County. He is suspected of driving drunk in the Arenac County incident. McIntyre credits his deputies for possibly saving lives.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor Anthony Stickland Accused of Rape

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
pastor anthony strickland

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.

Anthony Strickland, pastor of Freedom Center in Bono, Arkansas (no web presence), stands accused of raping and assaulting two women.

In June 2019, Strickland was charged with felony rape and second-degree battery.

The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported at the time:

Jonesboro police said a Memphis hospital contacted the department last week after a 43-year-old woman came in with several injuries. She told police that 53-year-old Anthony Lee Strickland had attacked her, the affidavit said.

She said Strickland was intoxicated, and she gave investigators a “detailed account” of him hitting her at least two times in the face before raping her, according to the affidavit.

Officials said officers found three guns in Strickland’s car seat when they arrested him during a Wednesday traffic stop.

Authorities charged the Jonesboro resident with felony rape and second-degree battery.

Strickland is a pastor at the Freedom Center, a congregation he started in 2003, according to police and business records filed with the Arkansas secretary of state.

Phone numbers and social media accounts listed under the church’s name appeared to be deactivated on Friday.

Strickland was free on a $125,000 bond that he posted Thursday evening, according to the Craighead County sheriff’s office.

A judge set a no-contact order with his alleged victim and required Strickland wear an ankle location monitor.

According to the Jonesboro Sun:

The rape charge was dropped in July 2019 by then-Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington, and Strickland pleaded guilty to second-degree domestic battery and was sentenced to 60 months of probation.

Today, October 8, 2021, KAIT-8 reported:

A former Craighead County pastor faces up to 60 years in prison following his arrest for rape.

Jonesboro police arrested 55-year-old Anthony Lee Strickland of Bono on Oct. 6 on suspicion of rape and second-degree sexual assault.

According to the probable cause affidavit, the two victims claimed Strickland sexually assaulted them at his home.

On Friday, Craighead County District Court Judge Tommy Fowler found probable cause to arrest Strickland and set his bond at $150,000. The judge also ordered he have no contact with the victims.

According to the Jonesboro Sun, Strickland has now been officially charged with rape:

A former pastor has been charged with rape and second-degree sexual assault in a case involving a then-11- to 13-year-old girl and her 11-year-old sister.

District Judge Tommy Fowler found probable cause to charge Anthony Lee Strickland, 55, of Bono on Friday. Fowler set Strickland’s bond at $150,000.

According to the probable cause affidavit, the older girl, now 18, told her parents that when she stayed over about five to seven years ago with Strickland, who was a friend of the parents for 20 years and pastor of their church, he watched a movie with her. She said Strickland began rubbing her privates and asked her if it felt good.

The victim said she was able to get away and run downstairs.

After the victim’s mother was made aware of what happened with the older daughter, she sat down with her other children and asked them to tell her and her husband if anyone had touched them inappropriately and not be afraid to tell them.

The older girl briefly told her siblings what happened to her, and her 11-year-old sister broke down crying and said, “Momma, he did that to me, too,” the affidavit states.

The younger girl said Strickland began rubbing her private parts and she attempted to yell and scream. She said Strickland covered her mouth and said “shhhh.”

She said Strickland digitally penetrated her. She told him she needed to go to the bathroom and ran and got into bed with her brother.

According to news reports, Strickland no longer pastors Freedom Center.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

UPDATE: Black Collar Crime: Charges Against Methodist Pastor Stan Thompson Dismissed

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
pastor stan thompson

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.

Earlier this year Stanley “Stan” Thompson, pastor of Toms Brook United Methodist Church in Toms Brook, Virginia, was accused of sexually assaulting a child under the age of thirteen.

The Northern Virginia Daily reported at the time:

Stanley Alvin Thompson, 63, of 168 Cliffside Drive, Edinburg, was charged with aggravated sexual battery of a victim less than 13 years old. He is being held without bond at Rappahannock-Shenandoah-Warren Regional Jail and due in Shenandoah County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on Thursday.

Thompson was appointed the pastor of the Toms Brook United Methodist Church, 3263 S. Main St., Toms Brook, at the 2015 Virginia Annual Conference. He resigned from the church on March 18, according to Paul Steidler, a spokesperson for the church.

“Toms Brook UMC is fully cooperating with law enforcement on this important matter,” Steidler said in an emailed statement. “The church urges anyone with knowledge about this situation to immediately contact law enforcement. Our fervent prayers are with the child and the child’s family.”

According to a 2015 Northern Virginia Daily report:

Thompson, of Eugene, Oregon, is a graduate of Northwest Christian University in Eugene and Emmanuel School of Theology in Johnson City, Tenn., where he received a master’s of divinity degree. He also received a doctor of ministry degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

According to a news release, prior to joining the Toms Brook church, he served at Crenshaw United Methodist in Blackstone, Virginia.

Yesterday (October 7, 2021), charges against Thompson were dismissed.

The Northern Virginia Reporter Daily reports:

Stanley Thompson, 62, no longer faces the charge of aggravated sexual battery of a child less than 13 years old after Judge Chad Logan dismissed it in Shenandoah County Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court at the end of a preliminary hearing.

The Northern Virginia Daily could not listen to the child’s testimony due to a state statute that protects the child.

….

But closing arguments indicated that the charge stemmed from Thompson playfully tickling the juvenile in a room with three other witnesses and briefly touching the top of the child’s genital area over clothes.

The child then went outside the residence of where the incident occurred in October 2020 to tell one of the other witnesses what happened, according to testimony and closing arguments.

Thompson had an established playful relationship with the child, and they didn’t see anything inappropriate the day of the incident, one of the witnesses testified.

The witness had told the child, but not Thompson, to stop the tickling a few months prior to the incident because the witness had become uncomfortable.

Only the child and the one witness testified during the hearing.

Attorney Beau Bassler, who represented Thompson, said Logan made a decision that was correct and tracked with the statute.

….

Logan explained during the hearing before dismissing the charge that evidence for the charge must prove an intent to molest the victim, according to state code. That wasn’t present in this instance, Logan said.

The touching was for a period of no more than two seconds, Bassler argued during the hearing. The child did do the right thing in telling somebody about being touched where a person shouldn’t have been touched, Bassler said after the hearing.

Shenandoah County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Collins argued that the reaction of the child should be considered, which involved them immediately telling one of the witnesses in the room what had happened after it did.

While being disappointed in Logan’s decision, Collins said after the hearing that he respected it.

“I can’t say that his analysis of the law is wrong,” Collins said.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office could seek a direct indictment against Thompson, bringing the charge back at the circuit court level. Collins said that action will be evaluated as Bassler said Thompson would fight the charge at any time, anywhere.

“He’s not guilty, hundred percent,” Bassler said.

Thompson declined to comment after the hearing, except to say that he was glad about the result, is digesting it, and then will decide what his future plans may be. Thompson retired from the church in the days prior to his arrest and was confined to house arrest where his family lived in Blacksburg for a period of time while he was on bond.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Domestic Violence in the IFB Church Movement

Bruce Gerencser 23 Comments
god domestic abuse

Let me begin by giving readers the definition of domestic violence. The National Domestic Violence Hotline defines domestic violence as follows:

Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.

Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure or wound someone.

Domestic violence can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion or gender. It can happen to couples who are married, living together or who are dating. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels.

Does the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement have a domestic abuse problem? The short answer is Yes!

The IFB church movement is built on a foundation of psychological manipulation and abuse. This is seen in how parents discipline their children and how husbands lord over and control their wives. These behaviors are often modeled by IFB pastors, deacons, and church leaders as they manipulate, control, and dominate church members.

I know IFB readers of this blog are howling over what I have written here. How dare I suggest that the IFB church movement has an abuse problem. How dare I suggest IFB pastors and church leaders emotionally and mentally manipulate and control people. Child abuse? Domestic violence? Where do such things happen? says the IFB church member. I have never seen it.

And therein lies the problem. The abuse and violence are institutionalized to such a degree that it is considered normal. People are so used to seeing it that they never consider whether such behavior is appropriate. IFB church members are familiar with having their “toes stepped on.” They are accustomed to fire-and-brimstone, naming-names, calling-sin-“sin,” sermons. They are used to aggressive behavior from their pastors. It seems quite “normal” to them. Those of us who were raised in the IFB church movement understand this. It took us getting away from it to see how manipulative and abusive our churches, pastors, and families really were. The waiting rooms of mental health professionals are crowded with people whose mental wellness and self-esteem were ruined by Fundamentalism.

For those of us who spent decades in the IFB church, we know that the deep psychological scars left by our time in the IFB church will never go away. We learn to come to terms with our past and try to do the best we can going forward. We are marred, even broken, yet somehow, we find a way to pick up and move forward.

This is why some of us speak so openly about the IFB church movement and its manipulative and abusive tendencies. We don’t want ANYONE to experience what we experienced. When we see someone gravitating towards Fundamentalism we try to warn them as we would warn a person who is driving towards a cliff. Stop! Turn around!  Sadly, many people ignore these warnings and often pay a heavy price, emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically, as a result.

Domestic violence in the IFB church movement is widespread. Unfortunately, it is often not seen as domestic violence by those who are devoted church members. Instead, the use of domestic violence is often seen as being “true to the Bible” or being “a faithful follower of Jesus.” To understand this, we must first understand the theological underpinnings of such violence. Domestic violence often happens because husbands (it is almost always husbands who perpetrate domestic violence in the IFB church) want to be obedient to the Bible, Jesus, and the pastors’ dictates. Remember, in the IFB church, the voice of God sounds an awful lot like the voice of the Pastor.

Here is what many IFB pastors preach to their church members:

  • Christ is the head of the church and pastors are ordained by God to lead (and control) their churches.
  • The Bible is an inspired, inerrant, infallible text that should be interpreted literally and explicitly obeyed.
  • Husbands are the head of their homes.
  • Wives are to submit to their husbands.
  • The highest calling for women is to bear children and to be a keeper of the home. Many IFB pastors discourage women from working outside the home or getting college educations (unless they go to an IFB college to get an MRS degree).
  • Husbands are the authorities, disciplinarians, and the kings of their homes. God holds them, like he did Adam, responsible for everything that goes on in their homes.
  • The Bible sanctions using violence when children disobey. If parents don’t spank, whip, or beat their children, it  means they are not willing to obey the teachings of the Pastor and the Bible. The rod of correction is meant to be used to drive wickedness out of the hearts of children.

Now, none of these things necessarily lead to domestic abuse. However, add to this the IFB church’s preoccupation with sin and the portrayal of God as a violent deity who will whip them if they disobey, and you have a recipe for not only domestic abuse but also child abuse. I have watched more than a few IFB church members and pastors beat the living hell out of their children with a belt, switch, or paddle. I remember hearing of one parent who picked up a 2×4 and beat his two teenage girls with it. Why? The teens deliberately disobeyed him by riding the church bus home instead of going home with him.

I have admitted my own violent, abusive methods of correcting my three oldest children. Fortunately, I abandoned these practices with my three youngest children. My oldest sons routinely got thrashed for disobeying their parents. I corrected them this way because I thought that is what God wanted me to do. The books I read said this was the proper way to discipline children, and every big-name preacher I heard preach said I was doing right by my kids when I whipped them. Is it any surprise then, with Bible-sanctioned brutality against children and a violent God who uses violence to chastise disobedient IFB church members, that violent behavior spills over into the relationships between husbands and their “submissive” wives?

I can’t say that I know of more than a few instances where IFB husbands physically beat their wives. I know of a few pastors’ wives who were physically abused by their pastor husbands. The pastors were men of God in the pulpit, but at home they were violent disciplinarians who ruled over their wives and children with a rod of iron. Most of the abuse I saw was more of the mental and emotional type. If their wives weren’t submissive enough or didn’t put out sexually, they would pay for it. If they dared to have ambition, wanted to work outside the home, or go to college, these “rebellious” wives would be brought to heel, reminded of God’s divine order for the home.

I have often said, I don’t know how ANY woman stays in the IFB church. Well, I do know. Women are afraid. They fear disobeying God, their husbands, and their pastors. They fear God will chastise them if they dare step outside the role God has allegedly ordained for them.  And so they stay and suffer the abuse.

Again, theology plays a big part in this. Many IFB pastors think that there are no grounds for divorce or that the only ground for divorce is adultery. Having a husband who is abusive, especially if it is emotional or mental abuse, is not grounds for divorce.

Let me give an illustration of how this is perpetuated from the pulpit:

Years ago the church I was pastoring joined together with other IFB churches to hold a joint revival meeting. The speaker was Bill Rice III. (I am almost certain it was Bill Rice but it could have been Pete Rice, both were associated with the Bill Rice Ranch.) One night, Bill Rice preached on  the subject of marriage and divorce. Rice did not believe there were any grounds for divorce. He said that even if a husband was beating on his wife, the wife should stay in the marriage. Perhaps she would win her husband to Jesus by her willingness to stay in the marriage. Rice intimated that saved husbands don’t beat their wives.

By the time of this meeting my views had already begun to change and I pulled our church out of the meetings. I was incensed that Rice was advocating a woman endure her husband beating on her, implying that God wanted her to do so.

As my wife and I traveled beyond the IFB church movement, we had to relearn what it meant to have a healthy marriage and family relationship. Ultimately, it took getting away from Christianity altogether for us to find wholeness.

I am not suggesting that every husband in the IFB church movement is abusive or that every father abuses his children when he disciplines them. I am suggesting that IFB theology encourages manipulation, violence, and abuse. Personally, I don’t think the IFB church movement is good for anyone. The extreme Fundamentalism found in the movement is psychologically harmful and people are better off finding other Christians sects to be a part of; sects that don’t view women as inferior, and don’t see children as chattel. I am of the opinion that the best thing that can happen to the IFB church movement is that it dies a quick death. It is dying, but it is dying slowly. I am all for smothering the movement in its bed.

Over the years, I have watched a number of women break free from domestic violence. They decided their own personal self-worth and happiness were more important than supposed obedience to God, the Bible, the pastor, and their husbands. Most often, gaining their freedom required them to divorce their husbands.

Let me head off those who might suggest that the reason there is domestic abuse and child abuse in the IFB church movement is that they misinterpret the Bible. I don’t think this is the case at all. Sadly. abusers are being consistent with their beliefs and literal readings of the Bible. After all, the Bible does command fathers to beat their children with rods. The Bible does command wives to be submissive to their husbands and be keepers of their homes. And let’s face it, the Bible is a written record of the violence God pours out and will yet pour out on all those who do not worship or obey him. The good news is that many Christians ignore or explain away vast parts of the Bible. They know beating children is wrong. They know demanding a wife submit to her husband is demeaning. They wisely reject such things.

Do you have a story to tell about domestic violence? What did you experience growing up in the IFB church? What went on in your IFB home when the doors were closed? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.

Connect with me on social media:

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