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.
Caleb Toney, a youth pastor at several unidentified Iowa Evangelical churches, stands accused of two counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, as well as two counts of supplying alcohol to a minor involving the same teen and one other.
A former youth pastor is facing charges in Polk and Story counties for allegedly sexually abusing teens and providing them with alcohol.
Twenty-six-year-old Caleb Toney of Elkhart is charged with two counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, one count of assault, three counts of supplying alcohol to persons under the legal age, and one count of permitting minors to consume alcohol.
Cmdr. Dan Walter with the Ames Police Department said the first charges stem from incidents in the fall of 2017 at a residence where Toney lived at the time. Toney is accused of giving a 15-year-old alcohol and once the teen was intoxicated Toney allegedly touched him in an “unwanted, insulting, and offensive” manner. Court documents show he provided alcohol for a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old on multiple occasions and allowed them to drink at his Ames residence.
The other incidents are alleged to have happened in Ankeny and Elkhart between January 2019 and May 2020. In court documents, the victim alleges Toney got into bed with him and touched his genitals when he and an underage friend spent the night at his home in Elkhart. Toney is also accused of touching the victim’s genitals while the two were sitting on a couch at an apartment where Toney lived in Ankeny.
Police in Ankeny and Ames did not have information immediately available about which church or churches Toney was a youth pastor at when the alleged abuse occurred.
Toney was arrested on Monday and bonded out of the Polk County Jail on Tuesday night. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on December 16th for the charges in Polk County.
A former youth minister from Elkhart has been sentenced to probation for sexually abusing an underage student.
Caleb Toney, 27, was arrested by Ankeny police in December. According to Polk County court complaints, Toney on multiple occasions had sexual contact with a teen boy, then a high school student, in 2018 and 2019. The teen told police that Toney was his youth pastor at the time.
Toney was charged with two counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, as well as two counts of supplying alcohol to a minor involving the same teen and one other.
….
In April, Toney pleaded guilty to two reduced charges of lascivious conduct with a minor and the two alcohol charges, all serious misdemeanors. On May 18, he was sentenced to two years of probation in lieu of a four-year prison term.
Toney also was ordered to register as a sex offender and remain on supervision for 10 years. As part of his probation, he was ordered to stay off Craigslist and other online personal ad or escort services.
He must pay a fine of $1,720 on top of other court costs and surcharges.
Toney also was charged last year with assault in a separate Story County case. According to that complaint, Toney provided alcohol to a 15-year-old boy at a residence in Ames, then after the boy was intoxicated, began touching the boy’s body until the teen stopped him and moved away. That charge was dismissed at prosecutors’ request in January.
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.
Raymond Chang, the pastor of Resurrection Church and an employee of Sweetser Adult Crisis Residential Facility in Rockport, Maine, stands accused of sexually assaulting a child.
Raymond K. Chang, who is both a pastor and works at a Sweetser crisis unit, was arrested by the Knox County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant charging him with felony unlawful sexual contact and misdemeanor unlawful sexual touching.
Chang was taken to the Knox County Jail in Rockland. Judge Sarah Gilbert set bail Wednesday, May 31 at $2,500 cash during Chang’s initial appearance in the Knox County Court in Rockland. The judge also ordered Chang to wear a GPS monitor, not have contact with the victim or her mother, and to have no unsupervised contact with people younger than 18 years old.
Assistant District Attorney Mari Wells had asked for bail to be set at $5,000, citing the seriousness of the charges.
Defense attorney for the day Daniel Purdy had asked for bail of no more than $1,200 which is the amount he said Chang could raise.
Chang is a pastor at his church and operates a Sweetser facility, Purdy said.
Sweetser Communications and Public Relations Director Justin Chenette said Chang works at a Sweetser adult crisis residential facility in Rockport but does not run it. Chang is on unpaid administrative leave, the spokesman said.
The affidavit filed in the court by the Sheriff’s Office stated that the victim said Chang had been kicked out of his last church and started a new one in Rockport called “Resurrection Church.”
The affidavit stated that the victim reported being sexually assaulted by Chang multiple times from when she was 12 to 14 years old. The initial criminal complaint filed by the district attorney’s office lists two counts in 2019.
Chang was not asked to enter a plea at Wednesday’s hearing because one charge is a felony and that must first be presented to a grand jury.
The affidavit quotes the victim as saying that she reported the sexual abuse to a family member and in response the family got together with members of the former church (which is not named in the affidavit) and she was told she needed to apologize and that both needed to forgive each other.
The victim reported the matter to police in early April and the Sheriff’s Office began its investigation.
The victim and her mother obtained a temporary protection from abuse order against Chang on April 21 from a state judge in Lewiston, citing sexual and physical abuse, according to the affidavit.
The Sheriff’s Office contacted Chang by telephone on April 27 and he referred Detective Justin Twitchell to his attorney. Chang said he did not have a contact number for the lawyer, and hung up. The man’s attorney Adam Sherman of Lewiston then called the detective back moments later, according to the affidavit.
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.
Evangelicals believe the words printed in red in the New Testament were uttered by Jesus himself. Thus, in John 14:13, Jesus says to his followers: whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Jesus’ unambiguous statement makes it clear that whatsoever Christians prayerfully ask in his name, he will do. Awesome, right? Mark 11:24 records Jesus saying: Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. Jesus’ statement in Mark 11:24 is even more extreme. Whatsoever Christians desire and pray for, if they will really, really, really believe that God will give it to them, Jesus will affirmatively and fully answer their prayers. If only this were true, why I might become a Christian again. I have a lot of things that need fixing in my life. I am more than happy to let Jesus take the wheel! But, alas, the Jews buried the steering wheel with Jesus in an undisclosed location, so I am on my own.
Decades ago, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) evangelist John R. Rice wrote a book titled, Prayer: Asking and Receiving. Rice, the long-time editor of the Sword of the Lord newspaper, believed that “getting” what you wanted from God was as simple as praying and asking God to deliver. Granted, Rice, and others who followed in his footsteps, had all sorts of explanations for “why” God failed to come through, but these Fundamentalist men of God sincerely believed that getting what they needed in their ministries and personal lives was but a prayer away. Rice believed that the primary hindrance to answered prayer was “sin.” He advocated praying for forgiveness as soon as you become aware that a behavior or action is a sin. “Keep your sin lists short,” Rice said. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17: Pray without ceasing. Rice believed that Christians should always be in a spirit of prayer, ever-ready to shoot a prayer up to God. In Asking and Receiving, Rice wrote:
The normal Christian life is a life of regular, daily answer to prayer. In the model prayer, Jesus taught His disciples to pray daily for bread, and expect to get it, and to ask daily for forgiveness, for deliverance from the evil one, and for other needs, and daily to get the answers they sought.
For many years, IFB churches, parachurch ministries, and education institutions grew numerically and financially. In the minds of many IFB Christians, this proved Rice’s contention that prayer was believers asking and God delivering. Today, the vast majority of these churches, ministries, and schools are shells of what they once were. Many of them have closed their doors. What are we to make of their precipitous decline? Did Rice’s prayer formula no longer work? Or, perhaps, it never did work, and answered prayers came from and through human instrumentality, not God.
In the 1980s, I pastored a rapidly growing IFB congregation. Starting with 16 people, in four years the church grew to 200. I thought, at the time, that God had answered my prayers. I pleaded with God to save the lost, stir the saints, and cause Somerset Baptist Church to be a lighthouse in the community. And for five or six years, it seemed God was coming through every time I asked him to do so. Not that I was ever satisfied. I remember Rice saying, “It is not wrong to have a small church — for a while.” I attended numerous IFB preacher’s conferences and Sword of the Lord conferences in the 1970s and 1980s. The theme was always the same: building large churches for the glory of God. I was never, ever happy with the numbers. I took it personally when people skipped church. How dare they miss out on what Bruce — uh, I mean God — was doing at Somerset Baptist. I would learn, over time, that it wasn’t God that “blessed” my ministry, it was me and a handful of dedicated volunteers. One day, I looked behind the vending machine IFB preachers called God, and I noticed it was unplugged. Prayer wasn’t asking and receiving. At best, it was asking, asking, and asking, and then acting accordingly. I found that it was humans, not God, who answered prayers; that I was asking “self” for this or that, and “self” gave me what I asked for.
Rice went to his grave believing: “According to the Bible, a genuine answer to prayer is getting what you ask for.” If he had any doubts, he never uttered them in public. While John 14:13 and Mark 11:24 are clear – that if Christians ask, they will receive – evidence on the ground is clear: God doesn’t answer prayer. Either God can’t answer prayer because he doesn’t exist, or Christians live such sinful lives that their God has turned a deaf ear to their petitions. My money is on the former.
The next time an Evangelical says to you, THE BIBLE SAYS __________, ask him about John 14:13 and Mark 11:24. Does your own version of THE BIBLE SAY __________? Ask him if Jesus meant what he said in these verses. The answer that comes next will likely prove to be long on obfuscation and theological gymnastics and short on, The B-i-b-l-e, yes that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-i-b-l-e. BIBLE!
How did your pastors and churches handle verses such as John 14:13 and Mark 11:24? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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.
Josh Price, pastor of Southside Baptist Church in Lexington, North Carolina, and his son Matthew stand accused of growing marijuana in the church building. According to news reports, the church closed sometime during the Pandemic. Price and his son, however, kept serving the Lord by growing weed.
A former pastor and his son have been charged with growing marijuana at his former church.
Josh Price, 50, and Matthew Price, 28, were arrested after an investigation that recovered approximately 13 pounds of marijuana and 20 plants as well as other drugs at the former Southside Baptist Church south of Lexington, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office said. The church has been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the investigation, it was determined Josh Price, who lives in the fellowship hall behind the church, was growing marijuana, the sheriff’s office said.
On May 28 officers with the patrol division and detectives with the Special Investigations Division conducted a search at the church building at 1014 Floyd Church Road. In addition to the marijuana, deputies found about 32 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, 41 THC vape pens (THC is the psychoactive chemical in marijuana) and about 2 pounds of marijuana wax, a dense, highly potent form of THC. Investigators also recovered grow lights, potting soil, fertilizer and several growing bins, the sheriff’s office said.
The Prices were both charged with felony manufacturing marijuana, felony trafficking in marijuana, felony possession with the intent to manufacture, sell or distribute a Schedule VI (THC wax) controlled substance, three counts of maintaining a dwelling for the distribution or sale of a controlled substance, felony possession with the intent to manufacture, sell or deliver a Schedule I controlled substance (psilocybin mushrooms), felony possession with the intent to sell or deliver marijuana, felony conspire to traffic in marijuana and misdemeanor possession of marijuana paraphernalia.
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.
I will soon celebrate my sixty-sixth birthday. In July, Polly and I will celebrate our forty-fifth wedding anniversary. We now have thirteen grandchildren. Two of our granddaughters will start their senior year of high school in the fall. Both are straight-A students, and both have boyfriends! OMG, where had the time gone? I am now, without question, an old man, a cranky curmudgeon. I have seen a few things and experienced a lot of this thing we humans call life. As I comb through my past, I have come to the conclusion that life is the sum of our choices (and, at times, the choices of others), held together by the mortar of luck and circumstance. As I carefully examine my life, I can see how certain decisions I made in the past materially affect my life today. For example, as a married, full-of-life, physically fit young preacher, I decided to opt out of Social Security. For the next seventeen years, I paid no social security/Medicare taxes on my ministry-related income. I leveraged the clergy housing allowance and other legal tax avoidance schemes in such a way that I often ended up showing no personal income on my tax return and paid zero taxes for the year. This went on for years. Not bad, right? My motivation was simple: as a die-hard right-wing Republican, I believed that the government didn’t deserve my money. In my mind, the less money local, state, and federal agencies had, the better. I thought, at the time, “Why should I pay real estate taxes? My children attend a private Christian school or are homeschooled. Why should I pay for the world’s children to be educated in government schools?” When I bought automobiles, I purchased them through the church, thus avoiding paying sales tax. I expensed everything I could, with the goal in mind that I was economically starving the government.
In the late 1990s, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized, for the first time, that I was one day going to be where I am now, and that I would need some sort of retirement income. I also started having niggling health problems, and in 1997, after months and months of unexplained fatigue and pain, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. At that moment, Bruce-with-a-big-S-on-his-chest learned that he was not invincible; that life was a kryptonite of sorts that will, in the end, lead to my demise.
I opted back into Social Security and started paying taxes again, but this was too little too late. Fortunately, over the course of my work career — from age fourteen to today — I worked numerous “secular” jobs:
janitor, gas station attendant, short order cook, newspaper motor route, life insurance salesman, sweeper salesman, restaurant general manager, network manager, durable medical equipment supply office manager, dairy department manager, grocery stock clerk, workfare/court offender program manager, litter control manager/officer, building code enforcement officer, grant manager, real estate updater for an auditor’s office, farm worker, auto mechanic, cable box repairman, shipping and receiving, turret lathe operator, and numerous general laborer jobs in factories
These jobs provided enough work quarters for me to qualify for a nominal monthly social security payment of about $800. While this is not a large amount of money, retirement-wise, it makes a meaningful difference for us. Neither of my parents lived long enough to collect social security, so I have outlived them and will win the prize. Woo-hoo! However, I can’t help but think about how much better off I would be as a disabled retired man had I paid social security/Medicare taxes on my ministerial income. The difference would be significant, but due to a singular decision made long before I ever had a thought about getting old, I am forced to live with the consequences of that decision.
I always made more money working secular jobs than I did working for God. The most I ever made income-wise as a pastor was $24,000. Most years, I made $8,000-$20,000 (including housing) pastoring churches. If it hadn’t been for secular work, government assistance, and Medicaid insurance, we would have been destitute. As it was, we were dirt poor for most of the years I spent in the ministry. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that things improved for us. Polly started working for Sauder Woodworking (she just celebrated her twentieth-seventh anniversary there) and our oldest sons started working jobs of their own.
It’s unfortunate, though, that I had decided as a young husband and father to let “God” take care of our wants and needs. As anyone who has ever done this has learned, “God” loves keeping his followers in the poor house. Why, if “God” had backed up a Brink’s truck to our home and unloaded some of the “treasure” he supposedly has, we wouldn’t have “needed” him any longer. So, “God” kept us on our knees, ever begging for divine assistance. I sincerely believed that “God” would meet our needs and even throw in a few wants from time to time, so I accepted that our poverty was God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will for our lives (Romans 12:1,2). Of course, I never asked Polly or our children what they thought of this arrangement I had with God. I was the family patriarch. End of discussion. I wonder how different our lives might have been had I put the financial and material welfare of my family first; had I built a career managing restaurants or working in government alongside my work as a pastor. Would we have been better off? Probably. But, who really knows for sure?
Have you ever thought about certain decisions you have made in your life and wondered how things might have turned out differently? I call this the what-if or would-of, could-of, should-of game. While we like to think that life would have been different if we had only made this or that decision, there are too many variables for us to know for sure how things might have turned out. For example, at age eighteen, I was madly in love with a twenty-year-old college girl named Anita Farr. (Please see 1975: Anita, My First Love.) For much of 1975, we had a torrid relationship — as no-sex-before-marriage Baptist relationships went, anyway. I was sure she was the one. However, our relationship didn’t last, and in late ’75, I packed up my meager belongings, hopped a Greyhound bus, and returned to Ohio. As I look back at this time in my life, I see two people who had similar personalities and dispositions. Both of us were quite outgoing, personable, and temperamental. I told Polly a while back, as we were talking about past choices, “If I had married Anita, one of us would have murdered the other and ended up in prison.” Our relationship was very much one of a lit match and gasoline. A year later, I enrolled in ministerial classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. My game plan, girl-wise, was to play the field. I thought at the time, “what a blessing from God, a dormitory filled with fine Baptist women!” Sure enough, I started dating a girl by the name of Peggie. After a few weeks, our casual relationship petered out and we moved on to other people. Next up for me was a seventeen-year-old dark-haired preacher’s daughter named Polly. She was (and is) a beauty, but I had no thoughts at the time that she was a woman I was ready to settle down with. It was not long, however, before Bruce, the player, was smitten and in love. On Valentine’s Day in 1976, I proposed and Polly said “yes.” So much for playing the field!
Choosing to marry Polly — a choice I would make again in a heartbeat — certainly changed the course of my life. On a hot day in July,1978, at the Newark Baptist Temple, we stood before our family and friends (and God, or so we thought at the time) and pledged our troth to one another. We were two mutually infatuated children, ill-prepared for the pressures and challenges of married life. Six weeks after we married, Polly informed me that she was pregnant. Six months after that I was laid off from my job. This forced us to leave school and move to the home of my birth, Bryan, Ohio. So much for our “plans,” or God’s, for that matter. From there, my ministerial career and our married life took a completely different path.
I have written this trip down memory lane — one that will receive the voluminous treatment it deserves in my book — to illustrate how the many choices we make, along with external influences, materially and permanently affect our lives. I don’t believe in soulmates. I don’t think for a moment that Polly is the only suitable woman on planet earth for me. She is, however, the woman I chose to love and marry, and together we have made a good life for ourselves. We have made a hell of a lot of bad decisions and wish we could have a do-over on more than a few things. But, on balance, we’ve had a good life. The sum of our choices has led to where we are today. Hopefully, we have learned a thing or two over the past forty-five years, but I am confident that we still have a few fuck-ups left in our lives. Live and learn, right? Or, well, live anyway . . .
Do you ponder the decisions you have made in your life and how things have turned out for you? Do you wonder about how different life might have been for you had you made different decisions? Do you have a simple philosophy by which you govern your life? Please share your erudite thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Last year, I participated in Defiance’s pride parade — a first for me. I came of age in the Evangelical church, attended an Evangelical college in the 1970s, married an Evangelical preacher’s daughter, and pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. I was virulently homophobic. Not that I knew any LGBTQ people — I didn’t. I would later learn that several of the people who called me pastor were, in fact, gay. Children, at the time, they were forced to endure attacks on their persons, complete with quoted Bible verses and a pulpit-pounding “thus saith the Lord.”
In the mid-90s, I met a gay man in the course of my work for a restaurant in Zanesville. We offered free drinks to mall employees. All they had to do is bring their refillable cup to the store and we would refill it. I vividly remember the first time this man handed me his cup to fill. I thought, “does he have AIDS? Could I get it?” Over time, I got to know him — a delightful human being. I wish meeting him put an end to my homophobia, but it didn’t. It was, however, a first step towards where I am today — an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ people.
What caused the transformation in my life? Certainly, leaving Evangelicalism helped, but the biggest influence was actually meeting and befriending LGBTQ people. Having a widely read blog helped too. This exposed me to people different from me. Sadly, many of the locals who angrily oppose LGBTQ people on social media and on the editorial page of the Crescent-News, live in religious monocultures, safely protected from icky gay people. One local Baptist preacher preached numerous sermons on the evil “transgenders.” No LGBTQ people attend his church, but much like the Jim Crow preachers of yesteryear, he wants his congregation to know who the real enemies are.
On Saturday, June 24, there will be another pride parade in Defiance. Hundreds of people attended the first one, and I hope even more will attend this one. Opposition to the parade is organizing, promising to picket the event. Some of these followers of Jesus are even encouraging people to “open carry,” subtly threatening violence toward peaceful parade participants.
I hope people will ignore the protesters, choosing instead to show their support for the LGBTQ community. It’s time for all of us to come out of the closet.
Bruce Gerencser Ney, Ohio
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The United Methodist Church is facing a split over the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of their congregations. Some churches are inclusive, others are not. Those who oppose LGBTQ people — and make no mistake about it, they ARE hatefully opposing real, flesh and blood people; people who are Christians — are leaving the Methodist denomination and either starting new sects, joining Fundamentalist Methodist denominations, or becoming independent churches.
One such church is Asbury United Methodist Church in Williams Center, Ohio. Asbury, a rural congregation of twenty or so people, has left the Methodist denomination, becoming an independent church named Calvary Community Church of Williams Center. Thomas N. Graves is listed as the church’s pastor.
Calvary Community posted the following on Facebook (their account is currently marked private):
Our Name has Changed to: Calvary Community Church of Williams Center
We have disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church, as of April 16, 2023.
We as a church would like to express some of our views to you, our community.
We want to minister to our community and families.
“YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH…YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD…” MATTHEW 5:13-16
We believe that The Family Can Be Redeemed by Restoring:
Marriage, which God created to be between one man and one woman only
The family unit of Father, Mother and Children as He has ordained it
Parents Authority over raising their own Children without government encroachment
Abolishing abortion, addressing sexual promiscuity, and acknowledging the harms of pornography
We see the Church’s Part in the Restoration of our Culture by:
Being Biblically Correct and not Politically Correct
Exercising our God-given right and using our voice
Refusing to be silenced and marginalized
Learning to love in Spirit and truth those with unbiblical doctrines and ideologies
Maintaining religious freedom as ordained by God and refusing state/governmental intervention on matters of conscience
We believe our government Can be Restored by:
Upholding the foundational, Judeo-Christian operating system of America.
Understanding that God is first. We, the people, answer to God-government answers to us.
Understanding that government originates with everyone, if we govern ourselves according to the Word of God, all will fall into place.
Those are our beliefs, come join us to bring them into the life of this community.
Pastor Tom [Graves]
Graves’ word salad is just his way of saying that Calvary Community is a homophobic Christian nationalist congregation, most of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Graves’ manifesto is a call to theocracy — God rule. Graves says “come join us.” However, LGBTQ people, liberals, progressives, and people different from him are not welcome. Graves wants a monoculture where his peculiar version of Christianity rules supreme.
Graves says that if “we govern ourselves according to the Word of God, all will fall in place.” I assume the good pastor supports stoning to death sodomites, adulterers, fornicators, rebellious sons, and anyone who worships any other God except his. Keeping it real! Thus saith the Lord.
Small Methodist churches dot the rural Ohio landscape. I suspect more congregations will come out of the closet in the coming weeks and months. I say, good for them. No more hiding their bigotry, racism, and homophobia. The only question I have is whether other local Methodist churches will take a stand against bigots such as Graves and his merry band of Christians, and say, everyone is welcome here.
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.
Local Christian churches are full of those who claim to be Christians but are not. The same goes for churches that claim to be Christian but are not. Many like to follow the man (preacher) & hold him up as an idol.
How could Richard possibly know this? Is he God? Shouldn’t who is and isn’t a Christian be left up to God? Richard, of course, KNOWS that he is a Christian; that his church is a True Christian church, so he uses his personal experiences and his church as the standard by which he judges others. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says: “or we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” It’s a bad idea to use ourselves as the standard by which we judge others.
You can use the excuse all day this is why you left this church, that or Christianity. If you never possessed the Holy Spirit you never were a Christian in the first place. There is no way Bruce was ever a Christian but if it’s true he was a pastor then he filled those typical fake Christian churches.
Welp, Richard, my boy, I did possess the Holy Ghost. My life gave evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. The arc of my life was towards holiness. I was a true-blue devoted follower of Jesus. That Richard can’t square my present life with my past is his problem, not mine. It is up to Richard to provide evidence for his claims. Talk to my wife and children. Talk to those who called me preacher. Talk to my colleagues in the ministry. I double-dog dare you to find one person who, at the time, said, I wasn’t a Christian.
If Richard is a Christian — and I don’t doubt that he is — so was I. When someone tells me that he is a Christian, I accept his self-identification at face value. I wish zealots such a Richard would do the same. Of course, he won’t. The testimonies of people such as myself are kryptonite to beliefs. Thus, he must, despite evidence to the contrary, maintain I never was a Christian.
He claims to have read the bible numerous times which says nothing. You can read the bible all you want but if you don’t have the Holy Spirit to take you through the Living Word of God then the mysteries will never be revealed and it will just be foolish to you.
Except it wasn’t, and the Holy Spirit did guide me through the Bible as I read it numerous times and preached 4,000 sermons. I spent, on average, 20 hours a week, reading and studying the Bible over the course of twenty-five years in the ministry. Does Richard really expect anyone to believe that I was a fraud; a liar; a deceiver; a false prophet? Even God is shaking his head. 🙂
Most of you have hardened your hearts & God has come in turned you over to that, nothing odd about that, your futures are sealed.
Richard now turns his judgment toward the readers of this blog, not knowing that many of them are Christians. In his addled mind, we are reprobates; people who have hardened hearts; people who cannot be saved (according to Romans 1 and 2).
It is hard not to conclude that Richard is a judgmental prick.
It is this that burns you up inside.
What burns me up inside is hot food. Evidently, Richard has psychic abilities he uses to see inside of us. Amazing, right?
I couldn’t imagine The feeling knowing God & His Holy Spirit abandoned me, of course you’d have to have known Him first to feel that.
So which is it? Did I know God and the Holy Spirit, or didn’t I? Come on, Richard, get it right!
Even though most of you never really have you do feel the guilt of where you are going, this is plainly written in your remarks.
Again, Richard changes his mind. This time, we don’t feel the hunka, hunka, hunka burning love of the Holy Ghost on our innards, but we do feel guilty about “where we are going.” Chicago? Detroit? New York? LA? London?
The only guilt I feel is the over past harm I caused as an Evangelical pastor, husband, and father.
I feel for you but then again I don’t, you clearly denied Him & continue to do so. It honestly sucks to be you
Richard, be honest. You don’t give a shit about me or the readers of this blog. If you did, you would have behaved differently. Instead, you are just the latest example of a judgmental Evangelical who only cares about preaching AT people. Good job. What, exactly, do you think you accomplished for the kingdom of God?
I would love to compare lives with you. I have been married for forty-five years. We have six adult children, thirteen grandchildren, and two cats. While it is true that I am quite sick and on the short side of life, I am blessed beyond measure, grateful for all that I have. And the Reds have won four straight! Woo! Hoo!
What sucks is people like you; people who have lost all sense of decency, kindness, and respect for others. You said your piece, Richard. I am sure God is pleased by how you represented him.
BTW, I haven’t denied God. What I have done is reject the insufficient evidence presented for his existence. If you have better evidence, Richard, please provide it. Maybe you will be the one to win me to Jesus. Oh wait, you can’t. You have already determined I am a reprobate; a man headed for Hell, without recourse. You better hope you are not wrong. Imagine what God will say to you come judgment day?
Saved by Reason,
Richard’s response to this post:
Wouldn’t expect anything less for a response to attempt to justify yourself as an atheist & what you claim as a humanist – LOL. I just find your love affair for the IFB very humorous as I stumbled onto to your blog that attempts to discredit it. Most interesting were the comments of poor followers that agreed with you all beaten down and claimed to have PTSD. LOL rebellion. Funny how anything fundamental scares people. How dare people in 2023 take the Word of God literally when we should be re-creating God in our own image. I mean after all, Hollywood, the state & government say marriage between a man and a man is good & legal, after all they claim now up to 150 genders. How dare the church say women shouldn’t wear them hot britches and spray on tops, I mean it’s up to them men not to be tempted of lust. I applaud those IFB’s that do this and turns off those that disagree. Obviously you have a refuge those that are hurt because no means no. It’s only humanistic to build an army of like minded antichrists & atheists to make you feel better. If them queer suspenders do it for you then be my guest.
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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Over the weekend, I received the following email from Marlene Strader.
Strader read all of two posts: Songs of Sacrilege: Need a Favor by Jelly Roll and Why I Hate Jesus before contacting me. She looked at the Why? page, but evidently didn’t have the finger strength necessary to click on any of the listed posts. So, her attack on my character is fueled by one Songs of Sacrilege post and a polemical post about why I hate Jesus — a post often misunderstood by Christians who lack comprehensive reading skills.
Here’s what Strader sent me:
Why all the hate? Hate is what’s wrong with the world. People selfishly worshiping themselves, their politics, and their own ideologies. So you’re an atheist? So you claim your own moral authority? Fine. What do you care what others believe if you believe in nothing? So what if you think they are wrong? You just come off like the hypocrites you despise. Full of hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness.
What hate, exactly, is Strader talking about? Maybe she confuses critique and challenge with hate. I don’t hate anyone. Life is too short to be hating people. I do, however, hate certain political, religious, and social beliefs. I make no apology for doing so. When beliefs cause harm — both psychological and physical — their proponents should expect pushback.
Yes, I am an atheist. Yes, I am my own moral authority, as are Christians and other religious people. Each of us decides what moral and ethical standard by which we will govern our lives.
Strader thinks I believe in “nothing.” Of course, I have all sorts of beliefs about everything from God and the designated hitter to socialism and which sex position I prefer. If Strader wants to know what I believe on any given subject, all she has to do is ask.
Had Strader bothered to read any of my autobiographical writing, she would have learned that I don’t care one whit about what people believe as long as said beliefs don’t materially affect me and my family. Unfortunately, Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons are determined to turn the United States into a theocratic state; one where Jesus rules supreme and the Bible is the law of the land. History tells us that when church and state are one, blood is shed, people die, and freedoms are lost. So, as long as Christians try to turn America into a “Christian country,” I plan to be on the front lines pushing back. As long as Christians try to criminalize abortion, ban birth control, demonize LGBTQ people, ban books, force public schools to teach creationism as science, demand teachers daily lead students in Bible reading and prayer, and promote abstinence-only sex education, you can count on me to publicly and vocally challenge their anti-democratic ideologies.
I have thirteen grandchildren, and all but two of them attend local public schools. Their futures matter to me, as do the futures of my six children and their spouses.
Strader attacks my character, yet she provides no evidence for her accusations. None. Anyone who reads more than a few posts on this site knows that I am not “full of hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness.” Strader has built a strawman of the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser in her mind. In doing so she has disobeyed God. Proverbs 18:13 says: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.
A minute or so after I received Strader’s email, I received another message, this time from a Southern Baptist pastor:
From one evangelical pastor to one previous evangelical pastor, I stumbled on your page, and I think you are witty and funny. I thought a kind, humorous word might be a small counterbalance to all the irritating things you have received from evangelicals. Rather than “God bless you,” I’ll just wish you good luck. LOL. Take care, my friend:)
I will leave it to readers to decide which commenter best describes me.
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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Over the weekend, A Christian man by the name of John sent me the following email. My response is indented and italicized. All spelling and grammar in the original.
After reading about your “mind reading ability” and your becoming a non-believer I wonder what changed you.
I have no idea what John is talking about when it comes to “mind reading ability.” I was unable to find a log reference for John’s IP address — an oddity, to be sure — so I don’t know what he read on this site. I suspect he didn’t read any of my autobiographical writing. Had John shown a bit of curiosity, he would have found the WHY? page. The posts listed on this page would have answered most, if not all, of John’s questions about “what changed me.”
I knew Father Jack Baker for years and I have zero doubt he was wrongfully convicted by an extremely woke, political attorney general.
Joseph “Jack” Baker is a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted last year on sexual assault charges and sentenced to 4-15 years in prison. He was convicted by a jury of his peers. Were they all “woke?” Does John really expect anyone to believe that Baker is innocent; that he was convicted because a “woke” attorney general was out to get him? Baker was convicted of sexually assaulting a child under the age of thirteen. In other words, he is a pedophile.
Baker actually got off easy. As I wrote at the time: “Baker was given a lighter sentence because of all the “good” things he did as a pastor. Does anyone seriously think that this was the only time that Baker took advantage of a church minor? I mean, really? As has been shown in countless Black Collar Crime stories, judges often give offending clergy what I call the “preacher’s discount,” sentencing them to lighter sentences than non-clerics receive. Lost on judges is the fact that these men abused the trust their victims had in them, causing untold physical and psychological harm. They should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
John says he knows Baker. Unfortunately, not well enough to know that he was a child molester. None of us knows people as well as we think we do; even our spouses, children, and best friends. We all have secrets. Baker’s “secret” landed him in prison.
The bible warns in the end times even the elect will be deceived. I wish no contact with you except to plead that you look into the world-wide drive toward woke and the perversion of over 2,000 years of Christian beliefs.
The Bible does not say that in the end times the “elect” will be deceived. Matthew 24:24 says: For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Note that it says, “if it were possible, they — the false Christs and false prophets — shall deceive the very elect.” The elect are those chosen IN Christ from before the foundation of the world. The elect will, without fail and at an appointed time, be saved, and they will persevere until the end. The elect might be deceived for a time, but they will always return to the faith. John might want to read the Bible again to see what it actually says about election and the elect.
In John’s mind, wokeness — which I doubt he could define — is some sort of evil that is destroying the world. Evidently, John is anti-progress. He likely pines for the good old days when Christianity ruled the roost; a time when women were keepers of the home; abortion was illegal; Blacks knew their place; LGBTQ people were still in their closets; teachers led public school students in daily Bible readings and prayers. John can’t stand equality, freedom, and justice for everyone. John doesn’t say exactly what he believes, but since I can read minds, I’m confident that what I have written here is correct.
I know two communist party members that are celebrating the “useful idiots” that now promote much of what is in our daily headlines.
John is one of those conspiracy theorists who believes that people in seats of powers are working towards turning the United States into a communist state. This, of course, is untrue. That two unnamed communists says otherwise means what, exactly? Nothing.
Perhaps John thinks socialism and communism are one and the same. They are not. The United States has always had socialist tendencies. John even benefits from socialist programs and laws. It is true socialism is making a comeback in the United States. I, for one, applaud this move towards a better future. Capitalism is a broken system. What rises out of its ashes remains to be seen.
I found God years ago, particularly living through four children dying in my hands. I know where they are and I know you have the option to learn why.
I have no idea what the backstory is about John “living through four children dying in his hands.” Certainly, the death of any child is tragic. That said, John does not know where these dead children are today. By faith, he believes they are in Heaven, but he has no evidence for this claim. None. All the evidence says that dead people stay dead, either buried in the ground or turned into ashes. Christians claim there is an afterlife, but the only evidence they provide for their claims are Bible verses. That’s it. Believing there is life after death in Heaven or Hell requires faith, a faith I do not have.
Further, historically, the Christian church has taught that people who die remain in the grave until the general resurrection of the dead. No one is currently physically in Heaven or Hell. All the Heaven and Hell nonsense spouted by primarily Evangelical preachers is feel-good nonsense meant to soothe the feelings of those who have lost loved ones. Heaven and Hell await, but not today.
John seems to think he can teach me a thing or two about these things. I await his lesson. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
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.
