Polly and I and Bethany are taking a vacation, starting tomorrow through next Sunday. We will be spending time in central and southeast Ohio. I won’t be posting any new articles during this time, though I will post a few Christians Say the Darnedest Things, Black Collar Crime articles.
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.
This list could be pages upon pages long. But, here are some obvious examples of how Satan is attempting to destroy the family, which means destroying godliness, men, women, marriage, and children.
Gender confusion, perverted (woke) cartoons, divorce, sodomy, adultery, pornography, lesbianism, fornication, godless schools, cross-dressing, effeminate men, passive husbands, domineering women, pronoun confusion, feminism, transgenderism, hook up culture, woke college campuses, birth control, abortions, sex-ed curriculums, intersectionality, government propagated sexual perversion, subsidizing the murder of babies, etc.
HOW DO FAMILIES FIGHT THESE PERVERSIONS??
The reason we learn about spiritual warfare is not to sit down in victimhood, but to rise up as victors. This is impossible apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, but for the Christian, spiritual warfare does not end there. Like soldiers, we do not put on the uniform of Christ and think the battle is magically over. There is training, education, fighting, deploying, war-waging, raising up new soldiers, and the eventual triumph after a long and hard-fought campaign.
Below is another non-exhaustive list of activities we can be doing, as soldiers of Christ, to successfully wage war against the serpent. (P.S. it has everything to do with the recovery of the family)
Read the Bible and submit to its truth, pray continually, commit to a local church, get baptized, take communion weekly, love Jesus, and be discipled. Then, while you wait on Jesus to return, guard your virginity, date with purity, protect your eyes and your heart from Satanic perversions, get married to a godly believer, and be faithful to your spouse physically, mentally, and emotionally. Have frequent godly sex so that you are not tempted, make lots of babies, raise them up in the Lord, and refuse to send them to our perverted public schools. Instead, disciple them to grow up and have godly, fruitful, and multiplying families, teach them to worship Jesus fiercely, and to storm the gates of hell advancing Jesus’ Kingdom. If you cannot have children, adopt children, help others raise their children, and be the kind of member of your church that cheers for and supports godly families. If you have kids, do not forget to teach them how to date, how to marry, and how to raise children the same convictions, so that they can make for you an army of grandbabies, that you will assist in preparing for the war.
— Kendall Lankford, pastor of The Shepherd’s Church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Dangerous Families, April 13, 2022
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.
A final aspect of rape that should be briefly mentioned is perhaps closer to home. Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence. When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us.
In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
– Douglas Wilson, pastor Christ’s Church, Moscow, Idaho, Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man
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.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is known for starting new evangelism programs. SBC attendance has been in a freefall for years. Churches often have large membership rolls and much smaller actual attendance numbers. On any given Sunday, over half of Southern Baptist church members are somewhere other than the house of God. Over the years, the SBC has rolled out numerous programs meant to evangelize the lost and prop up attendance numbers. All of these programs have spectacularly failed. No matter how many new programs with catchy names the SBC comes up with, attendance numbers have continued to decline. SBC leaders can’t seem to figure out WHY people don’t want what they are selling.
One program cooked up by the SBC is the 3 Circles program.
This tool helps Christians to share the gospel using three simple circles. These represent (1) God’s
Design, (2) Brokenness, and (3) the Gospel. They also illustrate how accepting and submitting to Jesus will grow faith and lead to God’s perfect design.
“Three Circles” is something that people easily understand.
All you need to have is a pen and paper, or napkin, or hand!
The method provides quick answers to common questions of faith:
o What was GOD’s DESIGN?
o How did we depart from God’s Design through SIN?
o Can anyone escape BROKENNESS and what does BROKENNESS feel like
Last week, Kentucky Today had a story on how one church and pastor is indoctrinating children in the use of the 3 Circles program:
You may not find a more evangelistic person than Derrick Willis in Carrollton.
Unless, of course, you meet 8-year-old Timber Kincaid.
After Willis, the associate pastor of English Baptist Church, taught Timber the children’s version of the evangelistic 3 Circles tool, she’s been running circles around everybody. Timber shares the gospel seven times a day, seven days a week.
Willis knows that because she reports to him about every gospel conversation.
“She’s on fire,” Willis said “She calls me two or three times a week to tell me how many times she’s shared the gospel. She averages 7-8 times a day.”
The North American Mission Board put together the 3 Circles for children, which Willis said is a “knockout.”
But it’s not just Timber showing evangelistic chops. Willis said “the Lord has blessed our area here lately.”
He has two community Bible study groups and watched how God is changing lives. A man and his son who lived next door to the church for over 30 years but never attended are now scheduled to be baptized in a couple of weeks.
It was about six years ago that Willis felt God tugging on his own heart and, since then, sharing the gospel has become his pastime. He’s a bivocational minister, with a fulltime job, but he’s also all in on evangelism.
“To be truly honest, I didn’t become a believer until about six years ago,” Willis said. “I was there because my wife was there. The Lord got ahold of me and I’ve been working in ministry ever since.”
Willis has trained the youth in 3 Circles and has them excited and the church is taking the Gospel to Every Home seriously as well with regular weekly visitation. He has found that with COVID starting to fade a little, more and more people are open to having a gospel conversation.
“Maybe it’s just for the fellowship but they’re paying attention more and are more receptive to hearing what you have to say,” he said.
He said sometimes they only get in three or four visits because the conversations have become so rich. Willis said he started one day with 30 bags and only passed out a dozen because of how well the conversations were going.
During one of the Bible studies, a man’s son, who is a self-proclaimed atheist, was sitting in the corner as Willis shared from John. “He was kind of sitting in the corner but you could tell he was listening.”
The father sent Willis a text and told him they were in the car and his son turned it over to K-Love. “I’m telling you, good things are happening here. The Lord is opening up some doors for us.”
The senior pastor is Jon Elardo, who Willis said is strong in the ‘ships – discipleship and fellowship – and that they work well together. “We kind of piggyback off each other,” he said. “Jon is happy all the time. Sometimes, I’m not that way. We make a good team.”
The church is stirring more than it has in a long time with new members and baptisms. Meanwhile, Willis’ evangelistic touch is spreading like wildfire. Even to an 8-year-old girl.
What pastor Willis has done is rob the children of his church of their youth. Instead of letting kids be kids, Willis has turned them into the next generation of God-botherers in Carrollton, Kentucky. The eight-year-old mentioned in the article has been turned into a soulwinning machine (though I seriously doubt she is sharing the gospel forty-nine times a week in a community of 4,000 people). She is presently lauded for her evangelistic zeal, but there will come a day when she will regret having spent her young life bugging people to get saved (using a truncated, shallow, cheap gospel). And when she’s a mother with children someday, guess what? The SBC will have moved on to a new evangelism program, church attendance will be what it was a decade before, and “fire” will be gone. Why? That’s just the way it is . . . The fundamental problems of the Southern Baptist Convention are foundational. Evangelicals, in general, are one of the most hated sects in America. Trumpism. Misogyny. Anti-LGBTQ. Anti-abortion. Judgmental. Indifferent towards sexual abuse. Rock star culture. Indifferent towards the least of these. Shall I go on? All the circles in the world won’t change how unbelievers view the SBC until churches and pastors change their ways. They won’t, of course. They can’t. The SBC is married to the irrational notion that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Thus, they are forced to defend and live out all sorts of things that moderns consider immoral and irrational.
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.
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 2018, Jamie Worley, a pastor at Powell Valley Church in Gresham, Oregon, was convicted of numerous sex-crime charges.
Garrett Andrews, a reporter for The Bulletin writes (behind paywall):
When Jamie Worley’s attorney made his closing argument, last week, he told jurors only one of two things could be true: Either his client’s accuser had created her story, or that Worley was indeed the “monster” portrayed by the prosecution.
Wednesday afternoon in Deschutes County Circuit Court, the jury provided the answer.
James Daniel “Jamie” Worley, 45, a Gresham pastor and onetime Bend resident, was found guilty of seven sex-related felonies against a former family member in a case that stretches back six years and involves abuse that took place around the turn of the millennium.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on eight other counts. Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said his office will decide in the next few days whether or not to try Worley again on those charges.
The verdict shocked Worley and the family and friends who packed the courtroom. A jury in an earlier, related case in Tillamook County had found Worley not guilty on several charges, and deadlocked on others.
In casual exchanges this month around the Deschutes County Courthouse, Worley expressed cautious optimism he’d again be found not guilty. He wanted to move on with his life, he said.
None of the six men and six women seemed to look at Worley as they filed past him on Wednesday.
“Why?” a red-faced and tearful Worley asked himself repeatedly after the verdict was read. He said it looking toward the ceiling with his hands turned up. He said it again as he looked at the jurors who spent four weeks hearing evidence and four days deliberating.
Worley was originally arrested in 2014, based on accusations made two years earlier. The family member described abuse that took place between 2002 and 2004, when Worley and his then-wife lived in Bend.
….
Following Wednesday’s verdict, Worley’s current wife, Joanne, said the family hasn’t given up. “He is innocent,” she said multiple times. “There is so much the jury didn’t get to hear.”
After the verdict was read, Worley’s distraught mother, Connie Worley, startled the courtroom. She pointed at Judge Beth Bagley as she was leaving, wagging her finger.
“You,” Connie Worley said. “You.”
….
A May 1, 2018 report in The Bulletin states:
Former Gresham pastor James Daniel “Jamie” Worley was sentenced to 12½ years in prison Monday in Deschutes County Circuit Court for sexually abusing a family member when he lived in Bend in the early 2000s, when his victim was between age 5 and 7.
Worley’s recent trial lasted four weeks before a jury returned guilty verdicts on March 14.
The drama on Monday came down to whether Judge Beth M. Bagley would choose to run three 75-month sentences concurrently — as the defense had asked — or consecutively, as the prosecution asked.
Bagley said that despite an expert witness who testified Worley represented a low level of risk to the community, the pain he caused his victim needed to be addressed in her sentence.
“We as a society say child sexual abuse is intolerable,” she said.
Bagley ultimately gave Worley two consecutive 75-month sentences, with the third to run concurrently.
Worley, 45, was additionally given 10 years post-prison supervision during which the only children he may spend time with are his own.
He also now owes about $20,000 as a result of this case. He was ordered Monday to pay $12,000 in compensation to his victim for the therapy she’ll undertake as a result of the abuse.
….
Worley’s conviction was later overturned. He was subsequently retried, entering an Alford plea to one count of misdemeanor harassment.
Following an assist by the U.S. Supreme Court, a onetime Bend resident remains a guilty man, but one no longer guilty of child sex abuse.
In a short hearing Monday in Deschutes County Circuit Court, James Daniel “Jamie” Worley, 48, pleaded guilty by Alford plea to one count of misdemeanor harassment, having once faced more than 30 counts of child rape.
In an Alford plea, a defendant accepts responsibility for a crime without admitting guilt.
Worley’s plea deal includes no jail time. Harassment is a Class B misdemeanor and as such, he won’t have to register as a sex offender. He was ordered to have no contact with the victim for three years.
A $12,000 fine imposed at his last trial, which he has paid, remained in place.
In March 2018, a jury convicted Worley of seven sex-related felonies against a child, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appealed his conviction on the basis of the unconstitutionality of nonunanimous jury verdicts.
Prior to 2020 in Oregon, only 10 of 12 jurors needed to vote guilty in order to convict.
That April, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, striking down nonunanimous jury laws in Oregon and Louisiana and sending back hundreds of cases for re-trial, including Worley’s.
Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel opted to re-try him, maintaining he believed Worley was guilty.
Hummel spoke out against Oregon’s nonunanimous jury law in an article about the law and the Worley case in The New York Times. In the same article, Worley professed his innocence: “I did not do these things. What more can I say than I didn’t?” he’s quoted as saying.
The allegations against Worley were first made in late 2012 and concerned abuse said to have taken place in the early 2000s, when Worley and the victim lived in Deschutes County.
In 2014, he was indicted by a Deschutes County grand jury, charged with more than 30 counts of child rape. He was arrested at his home in Gresham, where he worked as a pastor.
The trial was delayed by a different trial with the same victim in Tillamook County, where Worley’s family had also lived. The jury there ultimately found him not guilty of several charges and deadlocked on others.
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.
Yesterday, I posted the following comment by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher Dillion Awes:
Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination of homosexuality, that they have. They should be convicted in a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death.
They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That’s what God teaches. That’s what the Bible says. You don’t like it? You don’t like God’s Word, because that is what God says.
It should come as no surprise that Awes said what he did. While Awes, Shelley, and Anderson are proudly willing to let their homophobia hang out for all to see, scores of other IFB preachers, unwilling to say such vile things in public, believe as they do.
Awes is a product of the IFB church movement and the “ministry” of Jonathan Shelley.
According to God we should hate Pride, not celebrate it. God has already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, rape, bestiality, and homosexuality are crimes worthy of capital punishment.”
The Bible says that they’re [LGBTQ people] worthy of death! They say, ‘Are you sad when fags die?’ No. I think it’s great! I hope they all die! I would love it if every fag would die right now.
Sick fucks, the lot of them. Dangerous too. Imagine if such people gained the power of the state?
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.
The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Awes hatefully and violently, and, allegedly, “Biblically” stated:
Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination of homosexuality, that they have. They should be convicted in a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death.
They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That’s what God teaches. That’s what the Bible says. You don’t like it? You don’t like God’s Word, because that is what God says.
On Sunday, Christian hate-preacher Dillon Awes said that the government should execute every gay person. All of them.
"They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That's what God teaches. That's what the Bible says." pic.twitter.com/rMzF3BHSNF
Everything about Awes suggests this young preacher boy lives in the darkest corner of the proverbial closet, joining many of his fellow IFB preachers. Shelley has taught him well.
The saddest thing about this sermon clip? All the people who shouted AMEN! Here’s a church filled with people who are okay with rounding up LGBTQ and summarily murdering them. Sick fucks, the lot of 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.
The Greek word pharmakeia appears in Galatians 5:20 and Revelation 18:23. Terms from the same root word appear in Revelation 9:21, Revelation 21:8, and Revelation 22:15. These are typically translated into English as “sorcery,” “witchcraft,” or “sorcerer.” Ancient Greek uses of pharmakeia closely mirror the generic modern English word drugs ; the same Greek root word produced English terms such as pharmacy and pharmacist.
Modern use of the word sorcery evokes images of supernatural power and spells; biblical use of pharmakeiadoesn’t fit well with such ideas. Rather, the term suggests various forms of drug abuse. Those might include drug use in pagan worship, as an addiction, or as a poison used to manipulate and control others.
….
Many of my friends know that I have been suffering with hives for over a year. When they first started, it was agonizing. I would wake up several times in the night, realizing that I had scratched myself to the the point of drawing blood. I was miserable.
I began to realize that there was a pattern to my hives. My children and grandchildren were jabbed and boosted, and if I was around them right after they received the jabs, I would break out in the hives.
The itching was so horrible. I finally called my GP’s office and spoke to one of the nurses about the hives. My doctor called me in an antihistamine called HydroxyZine. On the bottle the dosage said 1 to 2 pills every 4 – 6 hours. These were 25 mg pills.
I trusted that my doctor was prescribing these pills in a safe manner. I soon found out that he was not. After about 3 days on HydroxyZine, the most frightening and horrific things were happening to me in the night.
The first night I awoke about 3 am and saw faces which looked like demons at the foot of my bed. I clung to my husband and said to him “Don’t let them get me!” Of course, Tim didn’t see the faces, but seeing me in such a state, he commanded them to leave in the name of Jesus – and they were gone.
The next morning I sent a message to my doctor and asked if there are known complications with HydroxyZine. He wrote back almost immediately and said that this antihistamine could cause hallucinations in older people. I am 71 years old and my doctor has been seeing me for over 13 years. He knew my age and yet prescribed these devil drugs to me anyway.
….
Then my GP wanted me to see an immunologist/ dermatologist and I did. I have numerous autoimmune issues, and when the doctor heard this she said “Well your hives are Autoimmune hives and we really do not know how to cure them.” She proceeded to tell me to take 4 Zyrtec a day for itching. I told her that the bottle says to only take one. She said “I’m saying take 4 because of the extent of your hives.”
I’m glad now that I didn’t listen to her advice, and you will see why towards the end of this piece.
I called my Neurologist who sees me for seizures and scheduled a video appointment with her. I made a list of OTC meds and I asked her one by one if each was safe for me to take. She told me to NEVER take any “PM” pills for sleeping. I told her about the experience with the HydroxyZine and she was shocked that my GP would even have prescribed those for me!
….
My neurologist told me that the only medication she wanted me on was my Clonazepam (Klonapin) because I have been on that for over 30 years for my seizures. She did not even want me to take Zyrtec. Remember the immunologist wanted me to take 4 a day? The neurologist said that Zyrtec is not recommended for elderly people!
….
I know that many of my readers are older people. I wondered how many of my friends were taking drugs which were not good for them and could even cause hallucinations or worse – death!
Don’t ever forget what Pharmakeia means in the Bible! I had to learn this the hard way.
I even wondered if certain drugs can open up a demonic realm, and perhaps when I saw what appeared to be demons – may have been demons! Years ago, a sister in the Lord said to me that she read that if we could “see” the demonic activity around us, we’d most likely have heart attacks!
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.
Yesterday my wife, Polly, and I, along with our oldest daughter, attended a dance recital for two of our granddaughters at the former Defiance High School auditorium. We had a delightful time. That said, the auditorium and its steps were not ADA compliant. I found them difficult to navigate, almost falling several times.
Almost a thousand people attended the recital, put on by Defiance Dance Studio. We had to park a good distance away from the auditorium. By the time we arrived, all the nearby parking spaces were filled. We parked in the St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church parking lot. There was one parking space closer to the auditorium we could have parked in, but unfortunately, it was guarded, much like the Garden of Eden, by an angel with a flaming sword, warding off all who would dare to park in this holy space.
Not one person would park in this holy space. I told Polly, “pull in.” She did, as we both heartily laughed. As I pondered our atheistic parking, I thought, “ya know, the church might have our car towed if we park in the holy of holies.” Churches can be and are quite vindictive if their “space” is adulterated by unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines. So we moved, safe from God and his tow trucks.
Best I can tell, the church’s pastor, Dave Brobston, is not disabled.
My position has remained the same both today and during the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry: such reserved parking places are signs of privilege; that pastors are above the people they pastor. James 2:1-9 says:
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool:Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
Instead of being “the least of these,” pastors often expect preferential treatment (or, at the very least, don’t push back when their churches try to give them exalted status). I refused to let churches treat me any differently from anyone else. Instead of parking close to the church, I deliberately parked at the back end of the lot, giving preference to others. You know, as Jesus did. WWJD? Remember? A new trend in IFB churches is for pastors to have gaudy recliner-sized chairs on the platform for them to sit in. Again, perception matters. What do these chairs say to visitors? Well, Bruce, where did YOU sit when you were a pastor? Glad you asked. I typically sat on the front pew, except when preaching and leading the music. In the late 90s, I took matters one step further by preaching from the floor instead of the platform. I stopped wearing “uniforms,” hoping to show congregants I was one of them. One Sunday, my mother-in-law complained, “Bruce, if you keep doing this stuff, your people won’t think you’re special.” 🙂 Yep, that was my goal. (Bruce was always doing “stuff.”) 🙂
Perception matters, and from my seat in the atheist pew, this sign tells strangers and visitors that the pastor is special, worthy of elevated status. The fact that not one person attending the recital was willing to park in the reserved space tells me that the threat of financial punishment if you parked there was received. Left unsaid is what this sign says to people St. Paul might be trying to reach. I am in no way impugning the motives of the church and its pastor. What I am saying is perception matters; that if the goal is “reach” people with the gospel, how you present yourself matters.
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.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ 16th “Pride Night” was held Saturday, the Florida club’s annual show of support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Most Major League Baseball teams acknowledge Pride Month in some way, with the Minnesota Twins and Toronto Blue Jays including drag queens as part of their celebrations.
Tampa Bay was more muted, simply having its players wear rainbow logos on caps and sleeves for its game against the Chicago White Sox. However, several players opted out of participation, citing religious reasons.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that pitchers Jason Adam, Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs, and Ryan Thompson were among those who didn’t wear the logos of support.
Jason Adam, a pitcher who only tosses one way, released a statement on behalf of his fellow Jesus-loving, LGBTQ-hating homophobes:
A lot of it comes down to faith, to like a faith-based decision. So it’s a hard decision. Because, ultimately, we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here.
But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe — not that they look down on anybody or think differently — it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior. Just like (Jesus) encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage. It’s no different.
It’s not judgmental. It’s not looking down. It’s just what we believe the lifestyle he’s encouraged us to live, for our good, not to withhold. But, again, we love these men and women, we care about them and we want them to feel safe and welcome here.
Adam would have us believe that they are not being judgmental; that he and his fellow Christian bigots love and respect LGBTQ people. Adams reveals his ignorance of LGBTQ people by saying that there is something morally wrong with their chosen gender, who they love, and who they fuck. Using Adam’s logic, I could just as easily say that he and his fellow teammates aren’t really Christians; that every time they play a game on Sunday they are violating the Ten Commandments. Talk about hypocrites, demanding unbelievers keep their peculiar interpretation of the law of God while they don’t do the same. And does anyone think that these players are virgins or were virgins when they married? It’s possible, I suppose, but I doubt it. Besides, I suspect Adam and his virile friends have looked at women or two with lust in their hearts; lust Jesus called adultery. And the Bible is clear, no adulterer shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Think of all the fornicating that goes on among professional baseball players. Why hasn’t Adam taken a public stand on this issue? Or, is this really all about heterosexual men who think same-sex anything is “yucky”? Don’t they know Jesus was gay? After all, his disciples were all men. Just saying . . .
The players could have quietly not worn the logos. Instead, they decided to run onto the field, sans jock straps, letting their hateful, perverse religion hang out. Personally, I am not a fan of the meaningless, performative shows of support for LGBTQ people sports teams are fond of doing these days. Do we really think rainbow logos, signs, and flags at stadiums will make one bit of difference? Of course not. I suspect LGBTQ people are tired of shallow shows of support from businesses and sports teams that cause no meaningful difference in their lives.
The refusal to wear the logos is being framed as a freedom of religion issue. It’s not. Players are expected to wear all sorts of garb on game days. Players often wear pro-military uniforms and logos. Imagine what the outrage level would be if some players refused to wear these things, voicing their disapproval of the flag-waving nationalism that is so prominent at baseball games these days. Yet, because this is being framed as a religious issue, we are expected to respect the players’ homophobic beliefs. Change the issue to one of skin color — as was common in the 50s — should we be expected to ignore the sincerely held beliefs of racist players? Of course not.
Tampa Bay management should have released a statement calling out the players’ homophobic statement. Instead, the team said nothing. Better yet, give the players a day off. After all, they are Christians. They could have spent the day in church, reflecting on WWJD?
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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