I am currently writing a multi-part series titled Why I Became a Calvinist. I have noticed readers have questions about Calvinism. I plan to answer those questions upon the completion of the series. Please leave your questions on this post or the relevant post in the series. I will get to them sometime next week.
Thank you!
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 get a lot of emails and social media messages from both strangers and regular readers of this blog. I genuinely want to respond to every email and message I receive. I try to answer blog/social media comments when I can, but I cannot keep up with the volume of comments I receive. I do read every one of them, but I am no longer able to answer every one of them.
As regular readers know, I have serious health problems: gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and degenerative spine disease. Every day is a struggle for me. There is no such thing as a good day. Those days are gone (and wishing them for me is not helpful). I have embraced my present reality, my new normal. All I ask is that people understand where I am in life — and most people do.
I warn email senders on my contact page that it may take me a month or more to answer their emails. Currently, I am six weeks behind, working on emails from the end of August. Yet, I will have people send me multiple emails wondering when I am going to respond to them. They mean well, but their impatience is not helpful, and some days it is downright annoying, much like a toddler nagging you for a cookie.
Part of the problem is me. I over-promise and under-deliver. People want me to write on this or that subject, write about this or that criminal preacher, review their book, read their blog, listen to their podcast, etc. I tend to say I will try to do so, or even promise that I will. When I don’t follow through, people get upset with me. So, I apologize for giving you and others false hopes. Going forward, I will not do so. Starting today, I am clearing my “promise” list. I will do what I can, but I can no longer commit to covering certain subjects/people or doing things beyond my work for this site. I may in time get to things previously promised, but you shouldn’t expect me to do so. By all means, keep making suggestions, but I may not be able to meet your expectation.
My health continues to decline, ever so slowly. I am having increasing neurological problems with my hands (especially my dominant left hand). I fear I may someday have to stop typing. Not today, but typing has become difficult, at times painful. It’s just one more fucking thing for me to deal with. 🙂
I do want people to continue emailing me. I do want people to continue commenting on this blog and on my social media posts. I am just asking for your understanding if I don’t promptly respond to you. Please don’t take it personally. On my part, I will do better, not promising things I cannot deliver.
Thank you for your understanding.
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.
Earlier this week, I was delighted to do a live interview with Jonathan Pearce, A Tippling Philosopher. We had a wide-ranging two-hour discussion. If you were unable to watch it live, please watch our discussion on YouTube.
Let me know what you think. If you are so inclined, please click LIKE on YouTube and leave a comment. Your support is greatly appreciated.
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.
Yesterday, I worked through a backlog of sixty-three emails. As far as I know, at 11:57 pm on August 4, 2022, I have no outstanding emails to respond to. If you are awaiting some sort of response from me, please resend your email and I will promptly respond.
Thanks!
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.
Today, I noticed a new search engine in this site’s server logs, neeva.com. Curious to see what a search on my name would return, I typed Bruce Gerencser in a search window and hit enter. Most of the links returned can be found on major search engines. However, what I found interesting was two questions about me that were answered by neeva.com, I assume by artificial intelligence (AI).
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.
Our vacation came to an abrupt end on Monday. We are back home, sweltering with the rest of you.
As some of you know, I have gastroparesis—an incurable stomach disease (constant nausea, frequent bouts of vomiting, severe bowel problems). I also have fibromyalgia and live with unrelenting pain in my spine and neck from arthritis, degenerative disease, and numerous herniated discs. I knew taking a trip anywhere was going to be a challenge, but I took the “fuck it, you only live once” approach. Polly doubted I was up to the trip, but she knows not to push back when I’m hellbent on doing what I want. Little did she know how bad it would be.
While it was pain and nausea that brought me home, I must confess I had, for a variety reasons, a mental meltdown.
I have OCPD (obsessive compulsive personality disorder). I like and need order. I’ve always been this way. Living with me can be a challenge, but Polly and I have found a way to make peace with each other’s shortcomings and phobias. We will soon be married for forty-four years, so I guess we’ve figured a few things out. 😂❤️
In our forty-four years of marriage, we have stayed in the homes of people not family five times. That’s it. I have a hard time staying or sleeping in any home but my own. We rented a VRBO property for our vacation. I thought, “Bruce, you can do this.” Boy, was I wrong. The place was not clean. I got a total of three hours sleep over two days. The house had a chemical smell from the improper cleaning of the floors. The floors had a film on them, so much so that walking on them left footprints. These things, among others, pushed me over the edge mentally (and I’ve been on the edge for awhile).
One of the reasons we vacationed in southeast Ohio was so we could retrace the sixteen years we lived there in the 80s and 90s. I pastored two churches, one in Buckeye Lake, another in Somerset. I grossly underestimated how doing so would psychologically affect me. I couldn’t help but think about the sacrifices I made serving a lie; how my commitment to the ministry harmed Polly and our children; how I sacrificed our economic well-being, believing God would provide; how I worked myself to death in God’s vineyard, causing me physical and emotional harm; how Polly never had an opportunity to be anyone other than the Preacher’s wife; how my children became extensions of my work and ambition.
If this is TMI for you, I understand. I’m human, and right now I’m broken. I’m grateful that I scheduled a therapy session before I left. I need it — badly. Don’t let anyone tell you certain expressions of religious faith can’t cause harm. They can, and for me anyway, I will spend my remaining days trying to come to terms with my Fundamentalist past and the harm it caused, hoping to somehow make an uneasy peace with the past.
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, 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.
Last year, tired of dealing with trolls and insufferable Evangelical zealots, I left Facebook. Unfortunately, this move cut me off from many of my friends and family members. So, I have decided to return to Facebook. If you are inclined to do so, please send me a friend request. I am interested in friendships with people who regularly read my writing and support the work I do. I am NOT interested in friendships with trolls and apologists. I treat Facebook like the corner pub on a Friday night; a noisy boisterous place to hang out with family, friends, and acquaintances.
I look forward to interacting with you on Facebook.
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.
Next week, I will not post as many articles as I typically do. I need to take care of some things on the homefront. I also need to devote a couple of days to get my podcast off the ground. So, if you come to this site and don’t see any new posts, don’t worry, the rapture hasn’t taken place. Once saved, always saved, baby. When Jesus comes in the clouds to snatch away his bride, Bruce the Atheist will be going with him. 🙂
You can help me a bit while I am off doing other things by writing a guest post. If you want to share your story or have something you would like to share with the world, please send it to me and I will have Carolyn edit it. Posts of any kind are welcome, especially deconversion stories. Please email your submission to me here.
Thank you for your love and support.
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.
