Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion — put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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But still after every allowance, here we find boldly painted six marks of being born of God. Here is an inspired Apostle writing one of the last general epistles (1 John) to the Church of Christ, telling us that a man born of God, Does not commit sin, Believes that Jesus is the Christ, Does righteousness, Loves the brethren, Overcomes the world, and Keeps himself. I ask the reader to observe all this.
The Bible basis for what Ryle says is found in I John:
Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.
If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.
He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Denominations, pastors, and individual Christians explain, or should I say explain away, these verses in a variety of ways. Some take the verses exactly as they are written, even though their lives are a direct contradiction to what the verses say. Others go to the Greek text and say that these verses say one thing in the English text but another thing in the Greek text. They do a lot of explaining to get away from what the English text clearly says. It seems to me that the writer of 1 John (and keep in mind some scholars think 1 John is a fraudulent text) is very clear. You SAY you are a Christian? Here is the standard by which to judge yourself. Do you measure up? If not, you are NOT a Christian.
1 John contradicts other books of the Bible. 1 John and the book of James set a very different standard for what a Christian is than Paul does in his writings. Christians go to great lengths to harmonize, smooth over, and mediate the conflict, but since I am not a Christian I have no need to make everything “fit.”
I ask myself, if a person who had never had any contact with Christianity was stranded on an island and only had the book of 1 John to read, what conclusions would he come to? Would he say that salvation is by grace through faith, not of works lest any man should boast? I doubt it.
So much of what is called true, orthodox “Christianity” is actually someone’s interpretation of what the Bible says. As the centuries click by, the interpretations become more complex and varied. It is almost impossible to get a Christian to see that what they call true, orthodox Christianity is actually a man-made religion, shaped and molded over centuries. For the most part, modern Christianity is Paul’s version of Christianity and not Jesus’ version. I suspect the essence of the Judaistic Christianity of Jesus has been irretrievably lost.
Some may ask, since I am an atheist, why do I bother with matters concerning the Bible and Christianity? First of all, I like talking about these things. Second, our culture is deeply influenced and sometimes controlled by Christianity, and how Christians interpret the Bible affects our culture. Third, Christians (mainly Evangelicals and Mormons) tend to evangelize and preach at non-believers, so it is fair to hold them to the same standard they hold others to. Based on the verses above, it is quite evident that no Christian measures up to the Bible’s standard of what it means to be a Christian. Thus, no Christian is a true Christian.
I also know there are a lot of readers who are somewhere between leaving Christianity and agnosticism/atheism. They are still struggling with what they believe or don’t believe. Do they still believe the Bible, and if so, what parts? Do they believe Jesus existed at all? If they do, do they believe what the Bible says about him? Posts like this one are meant to help them settle some of the issues they are struggling with.
For those of you who are or were a Christian, how did you or your pastor explain the verses from 1 John mentioned above?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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The supernatural monster who orchestrates the kidnapping, enslaving, and thousand-fold drugging, selling, raping, and killing of girls around the globe, is the same one who has masterminded the murderous cultural delusion — from the highest court to the lowest porn-flick — that the practice of sodomy is delightful, not deadly. John Piper, August 3, 2015
Charismatic Calvinist and Christian hedonist John Piper believes Satan, a fictional being from the Christian Bible, is out to deceive and destroy the masses. But praise be to Jesus, we have Piper, former pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, watching out for us and ever ready to let us know what this fictional Satan is up to.
Like many fundamentalists, Piper was enraged over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage. What this decision did was flush out the homophobes and bigots for all to see. Unable to contain their outrage, preachers such as Piper expose for all the world to see the hate that lies underneath their theological beliefs:
Lie: “. . . the practice of sodomy is delightful, not deadly.” Behind all the relational descriptions of so-called same-sex marriage is the unspoken fact of “anal or oral copulation,” and in particular, “copulation with a member of the same sex.” That’s the dictionary.com definition of sodomy.
Someone will say: Choosing that word signifies your belligerence toward people with same-sex attraction. No, it signifies my hatred for what can destroy people with same-sex attraction. What destroys people is not same-sex attraction, but the lie that same-sex copulation is delightful, and not deadly.
What is truly belligerent is the promotion of shameful acts as beautiful acts. Belligerent is the right word, because the Bible says that you should “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). So those who encourage the indulgence of these passions (whatever they are) are making war on souls — they are literally belligerent.
The word sodomy has two advantages: it refers to the act of same-sex copulation, not same-sex orientation; and it still carries the stigma of shamefulness. Those who love people with same-sex attraction should want to preserve the stigma of shameful practices which destroy them — just as we should try to preserve the stigma of stealing and perjury and kidnapping, and fornication, and adultery. It is a gracious thing when a culture puts signs in front of destructive behaviors that read: Don’t go there; it is shameful.
…Lie: “. . . the practice of sodomy is delightful, not deadly.” The second word in this sentence that may be twisted is “practice.” When the Bible links “men who practice homosexuality” with “thieves,” and says that neither will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), it is important to note two crucial things.
One is that the warning is not sounded against those who are tempted to steal, but who practice stealing — thieves. Similarly the warning is sounded not against those who are tempted to practice homosexuality, but against those who actually do practice it. To be sure, there are all kinds of inward heart-lusts that are sinful, but the focus here is on the practice…
…Lie: “. . . the practice of sodomy is delightful, not deadly.” The third word in this sentence that may be twisted is “deadly.” I am not referring to AIDS or to hate-crimes against people with same-sex attraction. I hate hate-crimes, and I would love to see a cure for AIDS. I am not talking about the painful fallout of sodomy in this world — as real as that is (Romans 1:27).
I am talking about “the second death.” All unforgiven and unforsaken sin is deadly in this sense. It leads to the second death. “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8)…
While Piper would like to be thought of as a man who desires to love homosexuals all the way to Jesus, his insistence on using the word “sodomy” reveals what he really thinks about homosexuals. He knows this word is patently offensive, yet he uses it anyway. How then is John Piper any different from the Phelps clan and Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas? Just because Piper doesn’t stand on a street corner with a sign that says God Hates Fags doesn’t mean he disagrees with the sentiment.
Piper is a Calvinist. The Calvinist God has the world divided into two categories: elect and non-elect, saved and lost. Since Romans 1 states that homosexual behavior is a sign of a reprobate mind, why not just come out and say God Hates Fags? Instead, Piper pretends to have love for sodomite souls, deeply desiring to see them come to Jesus:
…In other words, not all practice of sin excludes from the kingdom of God. “All sins will be forgiven the children of man” (Mark 3:28). The sins that exclude from heaven are the sins we keep on pursuing without regarding them as God-dishonoring, and without seeking forgiveness through Jesus, and without making war on them as the enemies of our souls….
…For all those who trust in Christ, Satan is disarmed (Colossians 2:15), because the only thing that condemns us in God’s court is unforgiven sin. And in Christ, sins are forgiven (Acts 10:43). Satan’s accusations against Christians come to nothing. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” (Romans 8:33).
Therefore, we have the happiest and most horrible news in the world. In Christ there is light and freedom and life. Outside there is darkness and bondage and death. Failure to name the beauty of the light and the dreadfulness of the darkness is an abdication of truth and love…
According to Piper, there will be no homosexuals in Heaven. Since our eternal destiny is predestined by God and no homosexual shall inherit the kingdom of God, doesn’t this mean God predetermined that the homosexual would have same-sex attraction?
Piper may say he loves the sodomite, but his theology tells a different story. Surely Piper would agree that the Christian should love what God loves and hate what God hates. Does God hate homosexuals? Does God hate same-sex anal sex but not heterosexual anal sex? Does God hate same-sex oral sex but not heterosexual oral sex? Why does God hate the one and not the other?
Here’s what I think. John Piper is a 77-year-old man who can’t wrap his fundamentalist mind around two men (or women) loving each other and desiring to have sex. Like many men of his generation, the very thought of homosexual sex repulses him, and since it does this means God also must be repulsed by it too. The Bible gives Piper cover for hating what he cannot or will not understand.
Like others of his ilk, Piper thinks “sodomy” is akin to “kidnapping, enslaving, and thousand-fold drugging, selling, raping, and killing of girls.” Here’s an educated man who can’t qualitatively tell the difference between two people of the same sex loving each other and enslaving and raping girls. I am at a loss as to how to respond to such stupidity.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Snark ahead. If you are an easily offended Evangelical, please leave now before you feel a wedgie coming on.
Fundamentalist Nancy Campbell, blogger extraordinaire for the Above Rubies website, asks the question What Goes on in Your Home? Campbell wants to know if people “feel” the presence of God when they come into a Christian’s home:
Do the people who come into your home feel the presence of God? Are your neighbors and those around you aware that your home belongs to God?…
…How will folks know your home is truly God’s home? It will be a house of prayer. Jesus said, “My house will be called a house of prayer.” Sadly, not much prayer happens in Christian homes today, but if our home is called by God’s name it will be filled with prayer. It will be filled with confessing the name of the Lord throughout the day. It will be filled with the riches of His Word. It will be filled with joy, singing, and God-inspired music. It will be filled with the inspiration of a mother who delights to be in her home, nurturing, feeding, and training her children to be God-seekers and God-lovers.
How are people on the earth going to know the name of the Lord? When they see our homes called by the name of the Lord. When they see that He lives in our homes. Everything comes back to the family and the home. We can get involved in all kinds of ministry, but if God doesn’t fill our homes, we miss the boat. It grieves my heart to see many people serving the Lord in different organizations and yet their families are in disarray…
Campbell thinks that a Christian’s home can give off some sort of God vibe, a feeling that resonates with the person entering the home. Evangelicals are taught that they have some sort spidey sense that allows them to discern whether a person is a Christian. While their interpretation is out of context and does violence to the text, many Evangelicals think Romans 8:16 is a proof text for their Christian spidey-sense:
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God
According to Evangelicals such as Campbell, a Christian should be able to walk into a home and “sense” that they are in home owned by bought by the blood, filled with the Holy Ghost, followers of J-E-S-U-S (please emphasize the word Jesus like Oral Roberts or Robert Tilton or Benny Hinn would). Here’s the problem with this kind of thinking; if the standard for a Christian home is that it exudes love, joy, peace, and kindness, well . . . I know of many homes that are like this and none of them is remotely Christian. I also know of scores of Christian homes where the pretend Christian game is on full display when other Christians are around, but as soon as their fellow believers walk out the door the home reverts to some sort of Simpsons/Girls Gone Wild/Animal House/One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest home. Anyone can fake it. I guarantee you that Polly and I could, come Sunday, put on our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, dust off our KJV Bibles, and visit a nearby Evangelical church and everyone would think we are a wonderful Christian family; especially if we have Bethany the love magnet with us. Everyone would “sense” that we are super-duper Christians on fire for Jesus, especially once they hear Polly and I lustily sing harmonies on whatever song the band is playing. And their sense would be dead wrong.
The infallible marks of whether one is part of the Evangelical club are not some sort of seventh sense, can’t say sixth sense since six is the first number in the mark of Obama, 666. Evangelicals recognize one another by the clothes they wear, what bumper stickers are on the back of their cars, what euphemisms/cliches people use in their speech, and how much Jesus Junk® is on display in their cars, homes, and places of employment. Ask any former Evangelical, they can spot fellow believers or homeschooling families from a mile away. Polly and I can be shopping at Meijer and we will see a family in the distance and both of us will say, homeschoolers. We will then laugh, remembering that we were, for many years, THAT family.
How do you know which cars in the parking lot belong to Evangelicals? It’s the cars with a faded Ronald Reagan bumper sticker, Obama is the Anti-Christ sticker, a partially removed George W Bush bumper sticker, a Trump 2020 sticker, an Abortion Stops a Beating Heart sticker, and/or a bumper sticker that advertises what church they attend. If you look closely, you will likely see a Bible in the back window, right where it landed when it was chucked there after church last Sunday. If you don’t see it in the back window, move closer to the car, acting like you are trying to steal it, and look down at the floor. You might see a Bible stuffed under the front seat, partially covered by a McDonald’s Big Mac wrapper.
Drive by their houses and what will you see? Wind chimes with a small Christian cross as the chime ringer, a brightly colored gnome holding a sign that says Welcome! This is a Christian Home; a Jesus is Lord doormat, and out by the front of the house a sign that says Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, A Christian Lives Here, or Protect Religious Freedom, or some other sign recently purchased from one of the fear-mongering Evangelical parachurch groups.
Once inside their homes, what will you see? Everywhere you look you’ll see Jesus kitsch, likely made by child labor in China or some third-world country. From Bible verse signs and paintings by Christian alcoholic, the late Thomas Kincade to clock chimes that play Sweet Hour of Prayer, and potholders with Christian slogans, Jesus will be on display everywhere you look. In their bookcases, you will notice deep intellectual books by Tim LaHaye, Kay Arthur, Joyce Meyer, and Beth Moore, and dusty, well-worn copies of The Prayer of Jabez and The Purpose Driven Life. (What!! Harry Potter? Starting to wonder what kind of Christian home this is.) Even in the bathroom there will be no escaping Jesus. Try as you might to defecate in peace, Jesus and the trappings of 21st-century Christianity will be staring you in the face. J-E-S-U-S is everywhere (please say Jesus in the voice mentioned above).
Visit them at their offices, what will you see? You will likely see a picture of their family sitting on the desk, but the picture will be housed in a frame that says. As For Me and My House, We Will Serve the Lord. The calendar on the wall will bear the name of the church they attend or an Evangelical parachurch group they support. Perhaps there will be a Bible or the latest Christian get-rich-quick book sitting next to the family portrait. The screen saver on their computer will have a picture of Jesus or a Bible verse. Everywhere you look you will see visible proof that the person who works in this cubicle is on Team Jesus®.
And here’s the thing, all the things I’ve mentioned in this post that are meant to say to other Evangelicals, Hey, we are on the same team, mean nothing. I suspect the home Josh Duggar grew up in had plenty of Jesus Junk®. I suspect the homes of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, Eddie Long, Jack Hyles, Jack Schaap, David Hyles, Paula White, David Loveless, and Tullian Tchividjian, to name of few of the Evangelical pastors who have run into sexual “sin”, gave the appearance that they were devoted, spirit-filled followers of Jesus. Yet, in real life, they were fornicators, adulterers, abusers, and child molesters.
All that the Jesus Junk® tells you is that the family has enough disposable income to invest in the cheap trappings of Evangelicalism. The clothing and the outward appearance of a person tells you nothing about what kind of person they really are. Anyone can play the Evangelical game. Give me a few days and I can take a Muslim couple and turn them into Bob and Marsha Evangelical. The Evangelical shtick is easy to reproduce, so much so that anyone can do it. I correspond with closeted atheists who attend Evangelical churches every Sunday with their believing spouses. Everyone thinks the atheist is a Jesus-loving, praise-and-worship-singing Baptist. I also correspond with several closeted atheist pastors. Everything about their lives, including their demeanor, says to others, I am a follower of Jesus, Yet, if an Evangelical knew they were an atheist they would say the person is a follower of Satan.
Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t know what a person is made of. While we can never know all there is to know about a person, we can, over time, observe their life, and come to a conclusion about the kind of person they are. Here’s what Evangelicals need to understand. Non-Christians are not interested in or wowed by the consumer culture on display in your home, car, or workplace. They aren’t interested in what takes place on Sunday Morning at the church you call home. They are not interested in your Ken and Barbie pastor. What does interest them is the words you speak and your behavior, not only in public, but also when no one is looking. How do you treat your spouse, children, and grandchildren? How do you act towards minorities, the weak, the defenseless, and the marginalized? How do you treat those who are not your flavor of Christianity or vote differently than you do? How do you respond to those who have no interest in your God and have told you please don’t? What do your non-Christian coworkers say about you?
These days, when I see an Evangelical whose life is a walking billboard for the Christian Ghetto®, I immediately doubt they are what they say they are. They are trying too hard to be viewed as a Christian. They are like the car dealer who tells you he is the most honest dealer in town or the husband who tells everyone around him how faithful he is to his wife. I don’t trust those who have to publicize their virtuous character. Just live it and everyone will notice.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In 2018, Kenneth “Kenny” Glasgow, a well-known preacher in the Dothan, Alabama area and the half-brother of Al Sharpton, was accused of capital murder.
A well-known community activist has been arrested and charged with capital murder in connection with a fatal shooting Sunday night on Allen Road.
Dothan Police Chief Steve Parrish said police believe the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, 52, was the driver of a vehicle involved in the shooting of 23-year-old Breunia Jennings of Dothan. Also charged is 26-year-old Jamie Townes of Dothan, whom police believe to be the trigger man.
Police believe Townes was angry at Jennings because he believed she stole his car. The two men are being held at the Houston County Jail without bail.
Under Alabama law, a person believed to have aided or abetted a criminal act is equally liable for the underlying act.
“Patrol units were responding to a suspicious vehicle call near Stringer Street AME Church,” Parrish said during a press conference Monday at the Dothan Police Department. “When the units approached the area, they noticed a situation that appeared to be an automobile accident. However, when officers approached the area they knew the scene was a homicide.”
Parrish stated the investigation is ongoing and additional arrests may occur since additional passengers are believed to have been in the vehicle police say was driven by Glasgow. ….
Glasgow has been involved in several community movements since being released from prison. He was convicted on drug charges in the late 1980s. Upon his release, he founded The Ordinary People Society, a community and homeless ministry in Dothan. He has advocated for the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons and helped start Moma Tina’s Mission House in Dothan, along with his mother.
Glasgow has referred to himself as Kenny Sharpton Glasgow on several occasions and is believed to be the half brother of the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network.
Under Alabama law, murder committed by or through the use of a deadly weapon while the victim is in a vehicle is considered a capital crime. A person convicted of a capital crime is eligible for life in prison without parole or death.
In February 2021, the Houston County Grand Jury dropped the murder charge against Glasgow.
The Houston County Grand Jury has dropped capital murder charges against Kenneth Glasgow stemming from his March 2018 arrest for the involvement in the shooting of 23 year old, Breunia Jennings.
The Grand Jury ruled there is insufficient evidence to establish enough probable cause to take Reverend Kenneth Glasgow to trial for the capital murder charge.
Dothan Police Department told WDHN three years ago that the murder victim, Breunia Jennings, was found dead in a stolen car belonging to Jamie Townes, the assailant who allegedly shot and killed Jennings.
Townes then rode around Dothan with human rights activist, Rev. Kenneth Glasgow looking for his stolen car. Police determined that multiple rounds had been fired into the stolen car Jennings body was later found in.
In the state of Alabama, when a person fires shots into an occupied vehicle it becomes a capital murder case.
Although Glasgow no longer has a capital murder charge, he still currently has pending charges; drug possession, assault on a police officer, and tampering with physical evidence that he is awaiting trial on.
Earlier this year, Glasgow pleaded guilty to tax evasion, mail fraud, and drug conspiracy charges.
Dothan pastor Kenneth Glasgow, 57, pleaded guilty to tax evasion, mail fraud, and drug conspiracy charges on Friday, according to United States Attorney Sandra J. Stewart.
Glasgow founded The Ordinary Peoples Society (TOPS) and the Prodigal Child Project, nonprofit organizations.
He claimed that nearly half a million dollars he took would be used for charitable purposes.
Instead, Glasgow admitted during the 2018 calendar year alone, he withdrew $407,450.00 in cash from the bank that was used for personal benefit.
He failed to report those funds as income on his tax return, not even filing a report for that year.
As a part of the plea agreement, Glasgow agreed to pay the IRS $376,720.00 in restitution for tax years 2016 through 2019.
He also pleaded guilty to mailing falsified forms in order to collect Social Security disability benefits.
To collect those payments, Glasgow told the Social Security Administration that he struggled with mobility, dressing himself, and preparing meals. But he failed to answer questions about his ability to handle money.
In his plea agreement, Glasgow admitted that he also rented a car using funds from one of his nonprofits and listed himself as the sole authorized driver.
Glasgow also pleaded guilty to previous drug charges.
“Kenny’s plea today is what he felt was in his best interest. He’s happy to finally get this matter behind him,” defense attorney Derek Yarbrough told News4.
A sentencing hearing will be scheduled in the coming months.
At that hearing, Glasgow will face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, along with substantial fines and restitution.
Yesterday, Glasgow was sentenced to 30 months in prison for drug conspiracy, social security and mail fraud.
Kenneth Glasgow, pastor and founder of The Ordinary People’s Society and Prodigal Child Project, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for drug conspiracy, social security and mail fraud, according to his attorney Derek Yorbrough.
According to documents filed by the Department of Justice, Glasgow was accused of stealing $407,450 from one of his tax-exempt organizations and sending false information to the Social Security Administration to obtain disability payments and related health benefits under the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Glasgow reported in 2019 that he worked at The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS) for 60 hours a week with no income and at his other charity, Prodigal Child Project (PCP), for 50 hours a week. They also claim Glasgow used the money to rent a vehicle each month from a dealership, even though he said others drove him around, according to past reports.
From 2016 to 2019, Glasgow withdrew a total of $1,300,848.54 in cash from TOPS and PCP, never accounting for that money on the nonprofits’ IRS forms or on any tax returns of his own, according to documents.
Glasgow’s sentence includes charges for conspiring with codefendant Willie Frank Peterson, 50, of Dothan, to possess cocaine with intent to distribute. Documents show that Peterson pleaded guilty to his involvement in the drug conspiracy on March 14, and in his plea stated that Glasgow agreed to purchase cocaine from Peterson in 2018 and 2019.
In addition, reports show Glasgow received traffic citations relating to 27 different traffic stops between February 5, 2015, and August 11, 2020. All citations indicated that Glasgow was the driver of the vehicle.
Glasgow changed his plea four different times until eventually pleading guilty to all charges on February 24, 2023. The judge also ordered that Glasgow serve three years of supervised release following his prison term and pay the IRS $376,720.00 in restitution, according to the DOJ.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The exploration of the Nephilim and their connection to UFOs has long been a subject of fascination and speculation. From ancient biblical texts to modern-day sightings and revelations, this enigmatic topic has captivated the attention of many.
It is often dismissed or overlooked due to a lack of understanding or a secular worldview. Although award-winning author, filmmaker, and internationally recognized specialist on the Nephilim L.A. Marzulli says to the logical Christian, it all may sound outlandish, it is indeed very real.
….
At the core of Marzulli’s and his team’s exploration is Genesis 6, where the union of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of man” gave birth to the Nephilim. While this passage is often dismissed as a fantastical tale, a closer examination reveals a deeper spiritual reality.
The term ‘sons of God’ consistently refers to angelic beings throughout the Bible, linking the UFO phenomenon to the ancient Nephilim. But it’s Genesis 3:15, the ancient and one of the most well-known stories of the Bible, that Marzulli says is “the nexus,” or basis, of the entire discussion about the Nephilim.
Understanding Genesis 3:15 is crucial in comprehending the ongoing cosmic battle between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the dragon. This battle culminates in the person of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The pre-incarnate Christ’s presence in the garden and His declaration to the serpent foreshadowed His redemptive mission on Earth. The war between good and evil, initiated by the Nephilim incursion, sets the stage for the entire biblical narrative.
Researchers, including anthropologist Rick Woodward, argue that these anomalies point to genetic manipulation by the Nephilim. Genetic analyses of the Paracas skulls have revealed Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Baltic Sea haplogroups, challenging established historical narratives.
While the charismatic Christian perspective on the Nephilim and UFOs may differ from secular interpretations, it offers a unique and spiritually grounded understanding of these phenomena. By recognizing the biblical foundation and the ongoing spiritual warfare, we gain insights into the mysteries that have captivated humanity for centuries.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Congratulations! You made it to the end of your second term as governor of Florida. I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Phew!”
I know you didn’t want to hang around Tallahassee this long. But it turns out that saying “woke” 29 times in a 40-word sentence is not much of a national platform. Once your presidential campaign nosedived to oblivion the way every other Florida governor has (Askew, Graham, Bush, even Claude Kirk), you had to come back here and stick it out.
I know the last three years haven’t been easy for you. Once all the other Florida politicians figured out you weren’t going to the White House, they stopped bending over backward for you.
That was especially true for the folks whose priorities you’d vetoed. Still, I thought it was rude of them to slip that line into the budget that allows Disney to garnish your wages to pay off that million-dollar judgment against the state.
Meanwhile, the voters have been in an open revolt, to the point of circulating petitions to change the state constitution to allow a recall vote of elected officials. The drive really picked up steam when the organizers dubbed it the “Ditch DeSastrous” measure, but by then you’d nearly completed this second term.
There was even an abortive attempt to mount an insurrection at the Governor’s Mansion, led by members of your own Florida State Guard who were upset that you’d failed to pay them. They were unhappy to learn you’d spent their salary money on the high-priced attorneys you’d hired to defend all your unconstitutional laws.
I’m sure you’re wondering where everything went wrong. How did you fall from being reelected in 2022 by a 19-point margin to being less popular than Sen. Rick Scott, once labeled the least popular man in Washington.
Looking back, I think I‘ve spotted the turning point. It happened on June 29, 2023. Do you remember? About six months into your second term. That was the day when you, with no fanfare whatsoever, signed into law SB 718.
Here was the headline on the FloridaPolitics.com website: “Gov. DeSantis signs measure banning local voter referendums on land development.”
“Voters will soon have little say in how the areas around them change through construction large and small, due to legislation Gov. Ron DeSantis just approved,” the story reported.
You must have figured it was no different than that $92 million I-95 interchange to help your buddy Mosi Hosseini’s development near Daytona Beach. (By the way, have you figured out yet how to take Hosseini’s golf simulator with you when you leave office?)
But this favor was much, much bigger. It turned out to be a major tipping point for Florida — and thus, for you.
You may be wondering why I zeroed in on this bill. You certainly signed other dopey legislation that year.
Your approval of the so-called “sprawl bill” got the most attention from the environmental community. Remember that one? The one about how big developers could collect attorneys’ fees from any citizens who dared to challenge their projects? Friends of the Everglades called it “the worst environmental bill passed by the Florida Legislature during the 2023 session” and “a death knell for smart growth in Florida.”
So, it was Sen. Rodriguez, R-Dark Side — er, excuse me, Doral — who first proposed ending the voters’ ability to change land-use regulations in a bill labeled SB 856. When she filed that bill, it was referred to three different committees: Community Affairs, Judiciary, and Rules.
Her bill never made it out of its first committee — thanks to Sen. Rodriguez.
“Bill banning public votes on local land use yanked amid lack of support,” FloridaPolitics.com reported.
Yes, it’s ironic that a bill to ban voting didn’t make it to a vote. Why did the sponsor pull the bill? Because the committee’s chair was absent. Without that one vote, “it wasn’t going to pass,” Rodriguez said.
That should tell you a lot about this measure that critics were calling the “protect developers from citizens” bill.
Another indicator: One of its loudest supporters was Ocala Sen. Dennis Baxley. He counts among his accomplishments sponsoring both the “Stand Your Ground” law and the “Don’t Say Gay” law, two of the most dysfunctional measures in Florida history.
Baxley called the Rodriguez bill “perfectly appropriate,” because, he said, it “takes people out of a situation (where they’re voting) on something they have no idea what they are voting on half the time, when you throw something that massive on the ballot.”
In other words, Baxley contended that Florida voters are much too stupid to be trusted with anything important. Perhaps he was thinking that that’s how someone like him was elected.
Rodriguez said then that she’d probably bring her bill back at the next committee meeting, but she didn’t. The bill she’d sponsored died, but its provisions moved on. She’d implanted them in a different bill, not unlike the alien in the movie “Alien.”
The Yarborough version of the Rodriguez bill is what finally passed, and that’s what you very quietly signed. Which you should deeply regret.
These land-use referendums weren’t common before you signed that bill, but they sure were important.
A few small communities, like Key Biscayne, had the referendum requirement written into their charters, which meant they had to adapt to state law altering what they were accustomed to. In other communities, though, they were optional — and crucial.
In the runup to the vote, CAN DO was outspent 25-to-1 by an anti-referendum alliance between the city and developers. But CAN DO’s name was like a prophecy. The height limit passed by a margin of nearly 60 percent to 40 percent.
From a land-use planning standpoint, those referendums are, in the words of Jane West of the smart-growth organization 1000 Friends of Florida, “the option of last resort.”
In other words, they were sort of like dropping the atomic bomb. Just knowing it was possible could be a deterrent.
Five people calling themselves Venice United organized a petition drive to vote on repealing the new regs. The five did this, one of them told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, because “city council pushed this through without listening to the voters.”
Within six months, Venice United had rounded up the necessary 2,228 signatures from registered voters to put the matter on the ballot.
By then, n-n-nervous city officials were ready to work out a compromise. The council did NOT want Venice United to drop that bomb on them.
“Your voters are passionate about preserving what makes Venice special,” the leader of Venice United, Frank Wright, said then.
That’s what this bill you signed in 2023 killed. In effect, you approved the nuclear disarmament of Florida’s citizens.
Well, you know what happened after that.
Local governments around the state were already inclined to say yes to most anything developers demanded to avoid facing a Bert Harris Act lawsuit. Once they no longer had to fear a voter revolt like the ones in Ormond Beach and Venice, they became even more eager to please the big-money boys.
And there was nothing that upset citizens could do about it. You’d robbed them of their last defense.
The result was easy for West to predict when we talked a week after you signed the bill:
“It was one more step where the Legislature was taking away from the citizens having any control over their communities,” she told me in July 2023
But Florida has a finite amount of developable land and a finite amount of clean water, she pointed out. As a result, she said, “basic market forces are going to start driving the conversation.”
With no one able to say no to development, or to at least hold it to acceptable limits or steer it to acceptable areas, “the whole thing’s going to snowball into one big mess,” she said back then.
Thus, as development ran amok, we wound up with crisis after crisis over the past three years.
We’ve seen maddening traffic gridlock on even smaller roads. The frequency of road rage incidents exploded, including several involving colliding golf carts in The Villages.
School campuses are now full of portable classrooms trying to handle the overflow of students, even at the voucher-fueled charters and religious schools.
Sewer plants started breaking down more frequently. Their repeated spills fueled more and worse algae blooms and fish kills which then drove away tourists who wanted to go fishing or boating. Disney and the other theme parks have continued attracting visitors, but a lot of the other places that depended on tourist money are struggling.
You went along with them, as usual. But the folks in North Florida fought back by forming volunteer militias to guard their springs against anyone stealing the water.
And that’s when people started burning you in effigy, sabotaging construction equipment, and using your campaign merchandise as projectiles to throw at public hearings. Those gubernatorial golf balls really did some damage, too!
You tried distracting everyone with more of your culture war “Ya Got Trouble in River City” song-and-dance routines, but it didn’t work anymore. Everybody was too mad. You ended up hiding in the mansion like you were on a one-man COVID lockdown.
Meanwhile, as resources started to run short, that’s when your push to make guns easier for everyone to carry turned out to be a really bad idea. The crime rate skyrocketed. And with no training requirement anymore, everyone’s aim was really bad!
You dispatched your underpaid Florida State Guard to help out several cities in chaos (only the ones with Republican mayors, of course). But the first time someone took a shot at them, they retreated faster than the Arctic ice sheet facing climate change.
On the plus side, though, Carl Hiaasen had a lot of material for his 2025 Florida novel, “Apocalypse Wow!” People really love the climax where Skink kicks your butt. I hear he’s already working on a sequel.
Anyway, that’s my analysis of where your administration took its most crucial wrong turn. As any student of government could tell you, you can’t close off EVERY avenue of legal protest, or people will turn to illegal means to fight back.
That’s what happened here, and if you hadn’t been distracted by your ill-fated presidential campaign, you might have spotted the danger.
Maybe next week, when you start your new gig hosting “The Anti-Woke Hour with Ron DeSantis” on Fox News, you can warn other politicians not to make the same mistake and underestimate the need for letting citizens have their say.
I mean, assuming anyone’s awake and watching you at 3 a.m.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I am sure someone will object to the title of this post and say Christian music is not a business; it is a ministry; it’s ALL ABOUT J-E-S-U-S! It’s a ministry when the musician is willing to go anywhere for a love offering. It is a business when they have contracts, riders, and demand a certain amount of money. For the most part, the Christian music business stopped being about Jesus a long time ago.
Years ago, I contacted the booking agent for the contemporary Christian group FFH about holding a concert at our church. I had checked their calendar and noticed that they had a few off days and would be near our church in West Unity, so I thought I would see if they were willing to come and sing at our church.
Not a chance. The booking agent told me that they had a $5,000 minimum. I was astounded by this. I thought, if I promoted the concert right we would likely take in about $2,000. Surely this would be enough money for FFH, especially since it was on a weekday. The booking agent proceeded to lecture me on the Christian music business, about how groups like FFH only have a limited window of opportunity to make their money. He then asked me how would I like to preach for just a love offering. I then got to school him about how I had spent my entire life preaching with no monetary expectation in return.
All told, I preached for thirty-five years. Not one time did I say to a church or to someone who wanted me to hold a meeting, I must have X amount of dollars. I never said no, and I preached more than one meeting over the years where it cost me more to drive back and forth to the meeting than I received in the love offering. This was never a problem for me, and according to some of my friends and family, I SHOULD have made money more of an issue.
I asked the booking agent for FFH to take my request to the group. He told me that he would not do this. Why? Because, he said, they would likely say Yes! If I let them, they would sing for free.
Over the years, I booked many musicians to come to sing at the church I was pastoring at the time. As a result, I learned a lot about the “business” side of Christian music. I met a lot of wonderful people who were willing to come and sing for little more than a promise. As a small church pastor, I did my best to promote the concerts and the church usually supplemented the love offering to make sure the musician (s) were given a decent offering.
In the late 1990s, I decided to use concerts as one way to promote the church. I thought if outside people attended a concert they might be interested in our church and start attending. While the concerts did draw large crowds, not one person ever became a part of our church as a result of attending a concert.
I put on a concert at Hilltop High School in West Unity, Ohio featuring the group contemporary Christian group Sierra. I decided to sell tickets for the event, advertised it heavily, and sold 400 tickets, at $8 each. Sierra charged us $4,000 plus expenses to come sing for us. All told, the church lost $2,000.00 on the concert.
Another time, I put on a Southern Gospel concert at Hilltop Middle School, featuring The Sojourners Quartet from Kentucky and a local group called The Overcomers. This concert was well attended by what I call the blue-hair crowd. They loved the concert so much that their love worked out to about $2.00 a head when the $400 love offering was counted. Again, the church lost a substantial amount of money. I quickly learned that elderly people were of the ‘not a bad show for a buck’ giving mindset.
I pastored Our Father’s House, in West Unity for seven years. In addition to the above concerts, the following Christian groups came to our church to sing:
The Mast Brothers, a southern gospel group, were the easiest to work with and Annie Herring, by far, was the hardest. When Herring came to our church, it was quite evident that she was put out at having to sing at such a small venue, even though there were more than a hundred people crowded into our little storefront church. David Meece? Eclectic, strange, and he borrowed a Bible of mine and permanently highlighted and underlined verses in it. He didn’t ask me if he could do this, and had he asked me I would have said no. As a result, I had to buy a new Bible.
I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in southeast Ohio for eleven years. During this time, a number of Southern gospel groups came to the church and sang. One group, The Songsmen Quartet, a local group from the Lancaster area, was a church favorite, holding at least one concert a year for many years. The group broke up (and may have later restarted with different people) after two of the group members got overtly friendly with each other and committed adultery.
My favorite concert while at Somerset Baptist Church took place in the mid-1980s when Robbie Hiner came to sing for us. At the time, Hiner worked for Jerry Falwell at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Hiner was a regular on Falwell’s nationwide TV program, The Old Time Gospel Hour.
Several hundred people from all over Southeast Ohio, came to hear Hiner sing. The building was packed. Hiner made no demands or requests, sat down at our old, beat up church piano, and just started singing. In between songs, he shared funny stories, and from start to finish, this was the best Christian concert I ever attended. After the concert, Hiner hopped into his car, I believe it was an old, high-mile Mercedes, and drove on down the road.
There is a certain group of Christians I call diesel sniffers — people who don’t support a local church, spending their weekends traveling from church to church to hear their favorite Christian singing groups. They throw a few dollars in the plate and walk out the door of the church blessed! They subscribe to the Singing News so they can find out when their favorite groups with be near where they live. Such people wouldn’t walk across the street to share their faith, but they would drive two hours to hear their favorite quartet sing.
There is a lot of fakery in the Christian music business. I suppose this is inevitable due to the fact that they travel from church to church, venue to venue. They develop a routine, a shtick. Where they get into trouble is when their shtick extends to their spirituality or their emotional responses. Years ago, I went with a church member to hear The McKamey’s sing. There was one song where one of the female singers kicked off her shoes and had an emotional, supposedly spiritual, outburst. I thought, God just touched her heart. A week later, the church member heard The McKamey’s again at a huge gospel sing. Same song, and at the exact same point in the song, the female singer kicked off her shoes and had an emotional, supposedly spiritual, outburst. The woman wasn’t being “blessed.” Her display was rehearsed and was meant to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Reason? Stirred emotions lead to open wallets. I saw this kind of rehearsed, fake, insincere, emotional manipulation countless times at Southern gospel, contemporary Christian, and Christian rock concerts. They used the same tactics and manipulations that I did as a pastor. Sincere? Perhaps, but it is still emotional manipulation and it often results in people doing things they wouldn’t normally do; things like giving large sums of money, running the aisles, or going to the altar.
Over the years, I talked to several people who were Christian music industry insiders. One man traveled for a time with The Kingsmen Quartet. He told me that I would be shocked if I knew what really went on behind the scenes at Southern gospel concerts; from musicians getting drunk before taking the stage, to Christian groupies willing to bed their favorite gospel singer. These concerts are so man-centered, hey look at me, I am singing for Jesus, that it should come as no surprise that people got caught up in all kinds of illicit behavior. In other words, they were human.
I eventually realized that Christian concerts were entertainment, no different from that in the “world.” As much as the musicians tried to sell me on their music being a “ministry,” I realized it was just religion-oriented entertainment, no different from the secular concerts Polly and I attend every year (Collective Soul and Killer Queen coming up in June.) Once I came to this conclusion, I was free to just sit back and enjoy!
Someone is going to ask who my favorite Christian groups were/are. Here is my Top Eleven List:
and Steve Camp before he turned into a first-rate, blowhard, asshole Calvinist.
This list, by the way, is a great way to view my path through Christianity, from Fundamentalism to the questions and doubts of musicians such as Derrick Webb. I still listen to Christian music from time to time. I don’t believe a word of it, but I do enjoy it, a relic from my past. Polly? She won’t touch the stuff . . . hates it! I usually wait until she is at work to play it.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As Polly and I were traveling to Lake Erie and the Marblehead Lighthouse, we came upon the billboard pictured above. For Christians, the message is perfectly clear: Jesus or the Christian God loves them. However, for the unbeliever or the skeptic, the message is not so clear.
First, which God? Christians presuppose that their God is the one, true, and living God. All other gods are false deities. Since I don’t start my rational inquiry with the notion that the Christian God left this message for me or anyone else traveling by, I ask again, which God? This is the same argument I use when Christians try to argue that the wonders of the natural world testify to the existence of God. Fine, I say, so WHICH God? It is not evident from creation that the Christian God or any other God created everything. To come to the conclusion that the Christian God created everything as we now see it requires accepting as true what is written in Genesis 1-3, a belief that runs contrary to everything science tells us about the universe.
Second, the I ‘HEART” U message is not at all clear. Most people assume that the message means I love you. However, according to the Urban Dictionary, this phrase has several different meanings:
Words uttered by a person not ready to say I love you
Words not as serious as I love you
I have feelings for you
I love you
This undefined God, does he really love me, or does he just have feelings for me? Perhaps he is not ready to make a commitment to me. There is nothing in the message that would lead me to conclude that this God loves or has feelings for me. This is how I view the Bible, just ink on paper. There is nothing in the Bible that would lead me to conclude that the Christian God loves me.
You see, love is not measured by words on a printed billboard or page. Just because an undefined God’s name is attached to a nonspecific phrase like I ‘HEART’ U doesn’t mean that any specific God loves me. Polly and I will celebrate forty-five years of marriage next week. We’ve written a lot of letters to each other over the years, yet both of us would agree that love is shown, not in what a person says or writes on paper, but by what he or she does. In other words, when it comes it love, don’t tell me, show me.
We have an ancient book, the Bible, that tells us the Jewish/Christian God at one time, in the person of Jesus, walked among us, yet no one has drawn a picture or snapped a photograph of this God. All we have to go on are ancient writings by unknown authors. If knowing this I ‘HEART’ U God is so important, don’t you think he would make an appearance now and then and let us know that he is alive and kicking? Jesus could settle things right now for everyone by coming back to earth and working a few miracles. Allow the press to report the miracles, allow photographers to shoot the Son of Man doing his miracle show, and perhaps let National Geographic do a feature spread on the mighty works of the Lord. Better yet, Jesus could make an appearance on America’s Got Talent and give a miraculous performance — say raising someone from the dead or regrowing an amputated leg. Billions would fall on their knees and worship Jesus if this happened.
Instead, Jesus spends all his time building rooms in the heavenly Trump Hotel for his chosen ones. According to the Bible, when Jesus ascended back to Heaven, he left a spirit form of himself behind, the Holy Spirit/Ghost. Supposedly, this Spirit/Ghost lives inside every Christian, teaching them everything that pertains to life and godliness. Of course, there is no evidence given for this claim other than what is printed on the pages of the Bible.
If I believe what is written in the Bible about the nature and good works of the followers of Jesus, I can safely conclude that no one is a Christian. If the new life of the born-again Christian is supposed to be radically different from the life of the non-Christian, where can I find these radically different Christians? If the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, where are the Christians who evidence such fruit?
The proof of any religion is the product it produces. An apple tree might look nice with all its green foliage, but unless it blossoms and produces fruit it has no value. So it is with Christianity, especially here in the United States. It looks nice with all its ornate, expensive buildings and well-dressed clergy, but a Christianity that takes seriously the teachings of Jesus is nowhere to be found. Why is this? 2,000 years removed from Jesus, Christianity has been reduced to a generic, nondescript, cheesy slogan on a billboard. Is this all Christianity has to offer the world after twenty-one centuries?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
“Regarding the churches you pastored and started, do they still exist today or have they changed their names ? I could not find any of the church’s personal websites. Sorry if you feel I wasn’t trying hard enough. I don’t know what I missed as there are hundreds of ‘google’ links.”
When I get questions like this, I have to consider what is the person’s motive for asking this question. Do they really want to know or are they part of a small group of tin-hat Christians who think that my story is a lie. Yes, even after I’ve been blogging for sixteen years, there are Evangelicals who doubt that I am telling the truth. They question if I pastored when and where I said I did. One man told anyone who would listen that he knew someone who lived in northwest Ohio when I pastored two different churches, and he had never heard of me. This was PROOF, at least for this reason-challenged Christian, that I was lying. While I am well-known in this area, I am sure there are more than a few people who don’t know anything about me.
My gut told me that the aforementioned letter writer was just curious or nosy, so I decided to answer his question. He also asked a question about my mother’s suicide, an offensive question I did not answer. While I gave him a brief rundown of the churches I pastored and what happened to them, I thought I would turn my email into a blog post.
Freshman class, Midwestern Baptist College, Pontiac, Michigan 1976. Polly is the first person in the first row from the left. Bruce is in the third row, the eighth person from the left.
So, let’s get some facts out of the way:
I made a public profession of faith at Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio in 1972 at the age of fifteen.
I was baptized at Trinity Baptist Church in 1972 at the age of fifteen.
I was called to preach at Trinity Baptist Church in 1972 at the age of fifteen.
I preached my first sermon for the Trinity Baptist Church high school youth group in 1972 at the age of fifteen. Bruce Turner helped me prepare the sermon. The text I preached from was 2 Corinthians 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.
In the fall of 1976, at the age of nineteen, I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College, Pontiac, Michigan to study for the ministry. I met my wife at Midwestern. We married in July of 1978. In February 1979, unemployed and with Polly six months pregnant, we dropped out of college and moved to Bryan, Ohio.
Montpelier Baptist Church, bus promotion
Montpelier Baptist Church, Montpelier, Ohio
In February 1979, Polly and I started attending Montpelier Baptist Church. Pastored by Jay Stuckey, a Toledo Bible College graduate; the church was affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC).
In March, Stuckey asked me to become the church’s bus pastor — an unpaid position. My responsibility was to build up the bus ministry which consisted, at the time of one bus. On average, the bus brought in 15 or so riders. I went to work aggressively canvassing Montpelier in search of new bus riders. Several church members helped me with this task. A few weeks later, on Easter Sunday, the bus attendance was 88. The head of the junior church program met me in the church parking lot and asked me what he was supposed to do with all the children. I told him, that’s your problem. I just bring ’em in.
Several months later, the church bought another bus. On the first Sunday in October, the church had a record attendance of 500. Bus attendance was around 150. The Sunday morning service was held at the Williams County Fairgrounds. We had dinner on the grounds, a quartet provided special music, and Ron English from the Sword of the Lord was the guest speaker. Tom Malone was scheduled to speak, but, at the last moment, he canceled.
The church started an expansion program to accommodate the growing crowds. The next week after our big Sunday, I resigned as bus pastor, and Polly and I packed up our household goods and moved to Newark, Ohio. Pastor Stuckey left the church a few years later. The church hired a pastor who was a Fundamentalist on steroids. Attendance began to decline, he left, and another man became pastor. About a decade after I left the church, it closed its doors, unable to meet its mortgage payment. The Montpelier First Church of the Nazarene bought the building and continues to use it to this day.
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Buckeye Lake, Ohio, Bruce Gerencser’s ordination, 1983
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Buckeye Lake, Ohio
In January of 1981, my father-in-law and I started Emmanuel Baptist Church in Buckeye Lake, one of the poorest communities in Ohio. I was the assistant pastor, primarily responsible for the church youth group. The church quickly grew with most of the growth coming from the burgeoning youth group. On any given Sunday, over half of the people in attendance were under the age of 18. I was ordained in April of 1983, several months before Polly and I moved 20 miles south to start a new Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church, Somerset Baptist Church.
In the early 1990s, the church closed its doors.
Somerset Baptist Church, Mt Perry, Ohio, Bruce and Polly Gerencser and kids, 1985
Somerset Baptist Church, Somerset, Ohio
In July of 1983, Somerset Baptist Church held its first service. There were 16 people in attendance. The church met in several rented buildings until it bought an abandoned Methodist church building in 1985 for $5,000. The building was built in 1831.
Over the years, church attendance rapidly grew — reaching 200 — ebbed, and then declined after we could no longer afford to operate the bus ministry. In 1989, we started a tuition-free Christian school for the children of the church. Most church members were quite poor, as was Perry County as a whole. Unemployment was high, and what good paying jobs there were disappeared when the mines began to lay off workers and close.
In February 1994, I resigned from the church and prepared to move to San Antonio, Texas to become the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church. Because I was a co-signer on the church mortgage and no one was willing to assume this responsibility, the church voted to close its doors. There were 54 people in attendance for our last service.
Pastors Joe Maldonado, Bruce Gerencser, and Pat Horner, Somerset Baptist Church, Fall of 1993
Community Baptist Church, Elmendorf, Texas
In March 1994, I began working as the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church, a Sovereign Grace (Calvinistic) Baptist church. My fellow pastor, Pat Horner, had started the church in the 1980s. The church ran about 150-200 in attendance. (I am uncertain as to the exact number since attendance records were not kept). Horner and I alternated preaching, with me doing most of the preaching on Sunday nights. While I was there, I helped the church start a Christian school and plant two churches, one in Stockdale, the other in Floresville. I also helped the church start a street preaching ministry and nursing home ministry.
This post is not the place to detail the various reasons why I left the church seven months later. Please read the I am a Publican and a Heathen — Part One series for a fuller explanation about why I left.
Several years after I left, Horner also left the church. The church is currently pastored by Kyle White. You can peruse the church’s website here. Horner is no longer a pastor.
Olive Branch Christian Union Church, Fayette, Ohio
In March 1995, a few weeks before my grandmother died, I assumed the pastorate of Olive Branch Christian Union Church in Fayette Ohio, a rural church 23 miles northeast of where I now live. Olive Branch was a dying, inward-grown church in need of CPR. Over the course of the next few months, I set about getting the church on the right track. The church was over 125 years old. I had never pastored an old, established church, but how hard could it be, right? Seven months later, I resigned from the church. Despite the best attendance numbers in decades, the church was increasingly upset with my brash style. It all came to a head one Sunday when one of the elders found out I had moved a table (a cheap Sauder Woodworking ready-to-assemble end table) off the platform to a storage closet. He confronted me just before Sunday morning service, demanding that I put the table back. I looked at him, said NO, and walked away. Three weeks later, I resigned, and Polly and I moved our mobile home off church property to a lot 1/2 mile north of the church. We sold the trailer in 2007 to the brother of a friend of ours.
Joe Redmond took over the church after I left. He has since died. I do not know who is presently pastoring Olive Branch. The church does not have a website. The church is located at the corner of Williams County Road P and US Highway 127.
Polly Gerencser late 1990s, none of this would have been possible without her.
Grace Baptist Church/Our Father’s House, West Unity, Ohio
In September 1995, two weeks after I had resigned from Olive Branch, I started a new Sovereign Grace Baptist church in nearby West Unity, Ohio. The church was called Grace Baptist Church. I would remain pastor of this church until July 2002.
We bought the old West Unity library building to use as our meeting place. None of the families from Olive Branch came with me when I left the church, but over time three families left Olive Branch and joined Grace Baptist. In the late 1990s, we had a church conflict over contemporary music and spiritual gifts. Three families left the church. A few weeks later, we changed the name of the church to Our Father’s House, a nondenominational church.
It was during this time that I began to have serious health problems. In July 2002, for a variety of reasons, I resigned from the church. The church body decided that they didn’t want to continue on as a congregation, so they voted to close the doors and sell the building.
If I had to pick one church that had the nicest, most loving people, it would be this church. After the three families left, things were quite peaceful. This is the only church where Polly and I have the same opinion about the church. Great people, a pleasure to be around
Victory Baptist Church, Clare Michigan
In March of 2003, I assumed the pastorate of Victory Baptist Church, a small, dying Southern Baptist church in Clare, Michigan.
There is little good I can say about this church. I worked my ass off, while the church body, for the most part, was quite passive, In October of 2003, I resigned from the church. I never should have become its pastor. It needed to die a quick death. I don’t mean to say that members were bad people. For the most part, they were typical Southern Baptists. Good people, entrenched in the ways of the past, and unable to see their way clear to the future. The church and I were a wrong fit.
After we left, so did a few other families, moving on to nearby Southern Baptist churches. A year later, the church closed its door.
From October 2003 to April 2005, I had numerous opportunities to pastor churches or start new works. In the end, Polly and I decided we no longer wanted to be in the ministry. All told, we spent 25 years in the ministry.
I know by writing this post, I will open myself up to criticism from people who go through my writing with a nit comb, hoping to amass evidence that will justify their dismissal of my story. There’s nothing I can do that will satisfy people intent on marginalizing and discrediting me.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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