In 2006, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), had 16 million members. Today, the sect has 13 million members. In 2022 alone, the SBC lost almost 500,000 members. Membership is now at a fifty-year low, and the 2022 loss was the largest in a century. (Please see Southern Baptists lost nearly half a million members in 2022.)
The membership decline has led to all sorts of pearl-clutching and finger-pointing among denominational leaders. Unfortunately, these leaders cannot see the forest for the trees. They refuse to take a hard look at what, exactly, is eating the life out of the SBC: Fundamentalism, Trumpism, misogyny, extreme beliefs on abortion and homosexuality, and other hot-button social issues. A number of SBC leaders and pastors are more than willing to burn the denomination to the ground. Presently, some Fundamentalists within the SBC are trying to change the denomination’s constitution. These pastors want the denomination to expel any church that has female pastors. That’s right, the pressing issue for Southern Baptists is the sex of their pastors. Sigh, right?
Instead of focusing on the SBC’s membership decline, I want to focus on its alarming Sunday attendance numbers. Membership numbers tell us very little about the health of the SBC. Most churches have widely inflated membership rolls. I pastored an SBC congregation in Clare, Michigan in 2003. The church had over 100 members. However, 60 percent of them never attended church. They were members in name only. One of my first acts as pastor was to clean up the roll. I sent letters to every member, asking them to declare their intentions towards the church by attending its services. If they did not attend the services, their names would be removed from the roll. Several families got upset at me, saying “How dare I expect them to attend church to be a member.” Most of the people I sent letters to did not respond. I sent them a second letter, and after several months, those who didn’t respond were removed as members.
The practical effect of doing this is that it restricts voting to people who actually attend the church. People who don’t attend the church shouldn’t be making its decisions. Church business meetings are often fractious, with dissenting groups lining up non-attending members to support their causes. Cleaning up the membership put an end to this kind of behavior.
While the SBC may have 13.2 million members, on any given Sunday, only 3.8 million people attend church, down 2.6 million attendance from 2008. On any given Sunday, 70 percent of Southern Baptist church members are nowhere to be found. They may be at the lake, picnicking, or sleeping in, but they sure as hell ain’t sitting in an SBC church listening to the gospel.
The Lifeway Research study also showed that the SBC closed or lost 416 churches and 165 missions. I suspect these numbers will continue to increase going forward. The SBC is dying before our eyes, one church, one member at a time. Of course, this can be said for most Christian denominations in the United States. Mainline denominations have been dying for decades. SBC preachers used to point to the liberal beliefs of mainline churches as the primary reason for their decline. Now they are facing a serious decline too. Time to get some popcorn and enjoy the show.
Prediction: SBC leadership will announce a NEW, yes, really, really, really, NEW evangelism program that will result in thousands of people getting saved and joining SBC churches.
Good luck with that, preachers.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
From 1995-2002, I pastored Our Father’s House — a nondenominational church in the small rural Ohio community of West Unity. I had started the church in a storefront in downtown West Unity — the former library building. We eventually bought the building for $20,000. For seven years, I pastored a delightful group of people. Outside of three older families leaving the church over our use of praise and worship music (they wanted hymns only with a smattering of southern gospel music), Our Father’s House was a kind, loving, unified body. The church never grew much, peaking attendance-wise in the 50s.
I have lots of stories to share about my time in West Unity, but none about conflict or disgruntled congregants. If I ever pastored a Kumbaya church, Our Father’s House was it. I could have easily pastored the church for decades. Unfortunately, as a driven church planter, I became bored. Everything was fine, but nothing of substance was happening. In 2002, I decided it was time for me to move on to new, more exciting experiences. The church body decided that if I wasn’t going to be their pastor, they didn’t want to continue. So in July 2002, we closed the church’s doors, sold the building, and everyone moved on to other congregations. Today, most of them are still involved with conservative Christian churches.
After seven months away from the pulpit, God (I) decided it was time for me to get back on the proverbial horse and find a church to pastor. I decided to see what churches were available with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in Ohio and Michigan. I sent my resume to several SBC associations. In a matter of days, I received calls from twelve different churches that were looking for a pastor. Most of them were small churches that were seeking a bi-vocational pastor. Bi-vocational is Greek for working your ass off, burning the candle at both ends for the sake of God and his kingdom.
One of the first churches to call me was Victory Baptist Church in Clare, Michigan — a congregation running 30 or so in attendance. On the Sunday before Easter 2003, we drove two and a half hours north to Clare so I could preach for the church. My preaching and our family were well received. I returned two weeks later, at which time church leaders told me that they were interested in me becoming their next pastor. I told them that “God” was telling me the same thing. Two or so weeks later, we moved to a beautiful home in a gated community near Farwell, Michigan, and I became the next pastor of Victory Baptist Church. Seven months later, tired, worn-out, and disillusioned, we returned to our family in rural northwest Ohio.
What happened? I saw Victory Baptist as a fixer-upper, of sorts; a church that needed the magical touch of Pastor Bruce. I had been successful in the past in resurrecting churches and helping them to grow, so I thought Victory was just another church that I could bring back to life. And sure enough, attendance began to grow. We remodeled the entire church building; “we” meaning my family and a couple of men in the church. We constructed a new auditorium, added Sunday school classrooms and offices, added a nursery, and laid carpet throughout. Before, the church looked like a cluttered, messy, disorganized warehouse. Now it looked like a real church; complete with a fancy new sign.
I was busy working in God’s vineyard. The church paid me a paltry salary, while Polly worked full-time for a local dry cleaner. We kept our heads above water — barely. I loved being “busy.” That had been my way my entire life. Work, work, work, do, do, do. Preach, teach, study, win souls, visit church members, and do it all over again week after week. Though that Bruce still lives inside of me, health problems have robbed me of the physical ability to continue on my workaholic path.
Seven months in, I had a disagreement with a woman in the church (who wanted to be a preacher and had been a member for years) over toys in the nursery. Her daughter had some toys she couldn’t sell at a yard sale, including those children could climb upon. She wanted to donate them to the church nursery. I took a look at the items and declined her offer. I told her that were not well suited for young children; that they could cause injury and harm. I thought that was the end of the matter.
The next day, I found out the toys had been put in the nursery, anyway. Pissed off, I removed them. This, of course, led to outrage and demands that I put the toys back. I said, no, telling people that we could not have unsafe toys in the nursery. Sometimes, pastors have to protect church members from themselves. The “noise” became so loud that I resigned from the church. A meeting was held to discuss the matter. Members showed up who hadn’t been to church in months. Nothing like a business meeting to bring members to church. I reminded the church that I had told them that I wouldn’t fight with them; that I no longer had it in me to deal with church cliques and power brokers. I had become a lover, and not a fighter.
At the close of the meeting, one member — a pastor’s wife — told me, “Bruce, your vision was never our vision,” Her words cut me to the quick, but she was right. The church was fine with wallowing in their dysfunction. They had no interest in being anything other than what they were. I had cleaned up their mess, balanced the church books that hadn’t been reconciled in five years, removed members from the roll who no longer attended the church, refinanced the church mortgage, cut their payment by a third, and brought a sense of order to church services. What I should have done is pay attention to their dysfunction and cliquishness. Instead, I minimized these things, thinking I could fix what ailed them. I thought all the church needed was fresh air. I should have known that all the fresh air in the world won’t bring a rotting corpse back to life.
No one spoke to us after the church meeting. Not one person called or offered to help us load our U-Haul. I had spent 40-60 hours a week trying to build a successful SBC work in Clare. None of that mattered. One elderly man by the name of Bob said that I was the best preacher he had heard in fifty years, but I had gone too far with removing the toys. If I was compiling a resume today, I would list Victory Baptist Church in Clare, Michigan. Where it says “reason for leaving,” I would write: toys.
As we were driving by the church for the last time, the toy lady was out front scraping my name off the sign with a paint scraper. This would be the last church I pastored. I was done. Done with the fussing and fighting and constant pettiness. I loved preaching and teaching the Bible. I loved ministering to others, and helping the “least of these,” but the petty bullshit? I put my shovel away.
After we left Victory, several other families decided to move to other Baptist congregations. Two years later, the church closed its doors.
In 2005, I would briefly consider re-entering the ministry. We were now living in Newark, Ohio. I sent out my resume to several SBC associations in West Virginia and Kentucky. And just like before, fifteen churches called to request my services. By then, I had become quite particular with what I required from churches: a living wage, medical insurance, vacation, and a parsonage. This quickly narrowed the list down to one church, Hedgesville Baptist Church in Hedgesville, West Virginia. I preached for the church, but I knew that my heart was no longer in the work. Hedgesville checked all my boxes. They were a growing congregation, in proximity to Hagerstown, Maryland, and Washington D.C. This could have been my dream church, but I suspect I already had one foot out of the door. This would be the last sermon I preached Forty-two months later I left Christianity and became an atheist.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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.
Trent Holbert, pastor of The Ridge Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was charged in October 2021 with one count of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of statutory sex offense. The Ridge Church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Kentucky Today reported at the time:
Trent Holbert, 41, former pastor of The Ridge Church, was arrested last month and has been charged with one count of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of statutory sex offense, the Biblical Recorder reported. He was previously the pastor of Epoch Fellowship Church in Owenton, Ky., as late as 2017.
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Both The Ridge Church and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina have released statements condemning Holbert’s alleged actions.
“Trent Holbert has resigned from his position as the head pastor of the Ridge Church,” said a statement released Friday from church elder Drew Wheeler. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the family of our former head pastor and the families of all of those involved. The care and protection of children and minors is a biblical and moral mandate that is taken seriously by the Ridge Church. We do not condone such actions as the alleged, and our prayers are with the victims of any such abuse.”
The North Carolina convention’s statement, released Thursday, said leaders were “deeply grieved” by the charges.
“As a pastor, Trent has been a speaker at convention-related events for adults in the recent past,” the statement said. “He underwent background and reference checks prior to his participation in those events. We are not aware that he had any contact or dealings with minors as part of those events. The care and protection of children and minors is both a biblical and moral mandate that we take very seriously. We are praying for everyone who has been impacted by these alleged heinous crimes. N.C. Baptists are offering support to the local association and the church as they face these challenging times, as well. We stand with any and all victims of abuse and are committed to cooperating with authorities during their investigation. We encourage you to contact the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office if you have any relevant information.”
According to WLOS news, on May 18, detectives with the Special Victims Unit of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at Holbert’s residence. During the execution of the warrant, Holbert was arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, and electronic devices were seized from the home.
Holbert’s church bio page (which has been scrubbed from the church’s website) states:
Pastor Trent is a gifted communicator and a relational junkie. He loves people and gets his fix from being a positive part of their lives. His ministry mindset is holistic. He believes that God’s plan and design for humans doesn’t stop at spiritual needs. He holds a degree in theology, but as a certified personal trainer and holistic health coach, Trent teaches us how to know our Creator better through optimal physical, emotional, and spiritual health. You can hear him weekly on the Fit For the Kingdom Podcast.
Newly returned warrants allege Trent Holbert groomed the teen by first befriending her parents who joined The Ridge Church.
Investigators said, because the parents had limited means, Holbert offered their daughter a bedroom in his home and began buying her undergarments as the two started a relationship.
Warrants also allege Holbert asked the teen’s parents to sign a parental waiver so that he would be able to take care of her in case they died. Investigators said Holbert called DSS on the teen’s parents as well, accusing them of neglect. Warrants show a DSS worker found this claim to be unsubstantial.
On May 18, 2021, detectives with the Special Victims Unit of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at a residence on Tucker Road in Black Mountain. During the execution of the search warrant, Holbert was arrested. He resigned from the church in June.
This week, Holbert pleaded guilty and will spend a minimum of seven years in prison.
A former Black Mountain pastor has pleaded guilty to attempted statutory sexual offense, ensuring that he will spend at least the next seven years behind bars.
Judge Sharon Tracey sentenced Trent Brandon Holbert, 43, to serve between 94 and 173 months imprisoned, according to Buncombe County District Attorney Todd Williams’ office. The victim approved of the plea, according to Williams. Williams announced the plea in a Jan. 25 tweet.
In search warrants reported on by the Citizen Times in 2021, the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office said that Holbert – former pastor at The Ridge Church – schemed against the victim’s parents.
The Sheriff’s Office began investigating after the parents contacted deputies about their child “engaging in a secret and sexual relationship with their former pastor,” one search warrant said.
Holbert bought the victim gifts, including clothes, underwear and feminine hygiene products. A search warrant said that he also gave the child one of his T-shirts after she told him that she had a bad dream so “his smell would help (the child) sleep.”
When Holbert reported the child’s parents to the N.C. Division of Social Services with allegations of neglect, the claims were found to be unsubstantiated.
According to one of the search warrants, Holbert asked the parents to sign a waiver giving him parental rights if they died. They declined and said the request bothered them.
According to a Google search, The Ridge Church has closed its doors.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Every week, without fail, I will get at least one email from an Evangelical who mistakes me for a Christian. I don’t know how this happens. My bio is on the top of every page and at the bottom of every post. It says:
Bruce Gerencser, 65, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 44 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I know that some Evangelicals are lazy readers, lacking basic curiosity. (Please see Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait.) When I read a new site, I always check out the bio page. I want to know more about the author, especially his or her background.
Several days ago, I received the following email from a Southern Baptist man:
I attend an SBC church and have been surprised lately to see a man who is admittedly a new Christian and former rock musician, come into the church, become a deacon in a short period of time, and then started wearing pony tails, hair clips, man buns, while he sings whatever emotionally filled song he can find. He was allowed to baptize recently and was obviously nervous doing so with him not even mentioning the name of Jesus Christ while he was doing so. I am very concerned and the pastor does not even care in spite of mentioning scripture regarding him being a novice and not qualifying to be a deacon as well as the I Corinthians scripture about long hair and men. The pastor states he believes in the inerrancy of scripture, but is fine with this going on stating that he thinks this guy may change with time. It is so discouraging to see such compromise. The church’s school dress code is in conflict with the man who is a leader in the church which hosts the school where my child attends. I don’t understand the complacency on this when we have a society bent on blurring the lines between men and women.
Think about all the things that are going on in the world today, yet this man is concerned with:
A ponytail-wearing, bun-wearing former rock musician who is now a Christian and sings emotionally filled songs in church; who said the wrong words when baptizing someone
A pastor who isn’t concerned about this affront to God and the Bible
The aforementioned man violates the church’s dress code (I had a hard time deciphering what he wrote on this issue)
The letter writer’s child attends the church’s Christian school, and allowing this man to wear his hair in an “obviously” female style is a sin and sets a bad example for church members and school students
The real issue is that the letter writer thinks it is a sin for a man to have long hair. I wonder if he thinks the same about women wearing short hair? The Bible condemns both. (Please see Is it a Sin for Men to Have Long Hair?) Of all the things to be worried about today: inflation, rising interest rates, the mid-term election, the threat of civil war or nuclear war, or a host of other serious problems facing not only the United States but the world, this man is worried about a longhaired man he doesn’t like singing songs in church.
Welcome to the world of Baptist Fundamentalism.
I sent the letter writer a one-sentence response: you do know I’m an atheist, right? I received no response from him.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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.
Michael Canter, pastor of Valley View Baptist Church in Abingdon, Virginia, stands accused of sexually abusing a church teenager at an overnight sleepover. Valley View is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
After receiving a report of an alleged sexual assault and after an investigation thereof, Washington County Virginia Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested Michael Canter, age 38 of Abingdon, Virginia, without incident on September 8, 2022 on multiple sexual assault charges against a juvenile female. At the time of his arrest, Michael Canter, a lifelong resident of Washington County, Virginia, was serving as the pastor at Valley View Baptist Church in Abingdon, Virginia. Canter was charged with Taking Indecent Liberties with a Child, two counts of Aggravated Sexual Battery and Attempted Object Sexual Penetration. Canter is currently being held at the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail without bond.
Michael Steven Canter, 38, faces charges of taking indecent liberties with a child; two charges of aggravated sexual battery; and one charge of attempted object sexual penetration, the sheriff’s office indicated in a press release.
When he was arrested, Canter was pastor of Valley View Baptist Church in Abingdon, in far west Virginia, the sheriff’s office stated. He has pastored the church since 2015, according to the church’s Facebook page.
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A 17-year-old told sheriff’s deputies last month that Canter had groped her multiple times a few days earlier, during an overnight church event he organized, the criminal complaint stated. The reported assault traumatized the girl, who has sought counseling and medication to cope, the complaint added.
The complaint also states a second person corroborated the girl’s account.
A detective told local TV station WJHL that there could be other victims, too. They encouraged anyone with information to come forward.
Canter has been held without bond in the Abingdon Regional Jail since late September 8, according to the sheriff’s office and VINELink inmate records.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
We now know that Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders hid, covered up, and ignored hundreds and hundreds of cases of sexual misconduct by SBC pastors, worship leaders, teachers, evangelists, youth leaders, missionaries, deacons, and college professors. The published list of the offenders is but the tip of the iceberg. It is likely that thousands of allegations of sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape, and other sex crimes were not investigated or taken seriously. Add to this number stories about preachers who used their position of authority and power to take sexual advantage of (primarily) women or were garden variety adulterers and fornicators, and it’s hard not to conclude that the SBC is many things, but it is definitely not Christian. We are not talking about a few bad apples here.
Several years ago, my wife and I, along with our children and grandchildren picked four thirty-gallon trash cans of apples from our trees. Due to Polly having serious bowel problems that resulted in her having major surgery and spending several weeks in the hospital, one of the cans of apples remained unprocessed. The apples sat in the can for weeks, and as they rotted, we could smell their sweet, alcohol-like aroma in the kitchen as the fall air wafted through the windows. Eventually, I dumped the apples on our compost pile. I view the current state of the SBC much like I do that rotting garbage can of apples. Sure, there were some unrotted apples in the can, but the decaying apples around the “good” apples made them unusable. I have no doubt that many SBC pastors are good men with character and high moral standards. However, in the midst of these good men are violent predators who used their positions of authority to prey on vulnerable children, teenagers, and women (and yes, boys and men too).
It is these “good” preachers I want to address. It has been fashionable of late for “good” Southern Baptist preachers to express outrage over the current sexual abuse scandal, often saying WE DIDN’T KNOW! It is to these preachers I say BULLSHIT! Don’t tell me you didn’t know. I know better. I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years. I knew a number of Baptist pastors, missionaries, and evangelists. I attended numerous pastor’s fellowships and conferences where preachers would get together for preaching, food, and fellowship. And what else did we do? We talked about rumors. We were the gossips we preached about on Sundays. I heard countless stories about preachers committing crimes, having affairs, and all sorts of immoral behavior. We knew, yet, for the most part, we did nothing.
While I did my best to deal with such misconduct within the churches I pastored (and deplatforming preachers I heard rumors about), when it came to these things happening in other churches, I did what many SBC pastors do now, I said “that’s a local church problem.” I hid behind my ecclesiology, saying that it was up to an offending pastor’s church to deal with his misconduct. When such things happened in the churches I pastored, I didn’t hesitate to call law enforcement or child protective services. Sadly, when I heard about similar behavior by preachers, deacons, and leaders in other churches, I took a “not my church, not my problem” approach. Oh, I might distance myself from an offending preacher, but I never went the extra mile by reporting these so-called men of God to the authorities or passing on what I had heard to their churches. I was taught at Bible college that a preacher should never meddle in another church’s problems. While that is generally good advice, when it comes to knowing that a preacher is engaging in criminal or harmful behavior, it is always right to say something. Of course, doing so could cause all sorts of problems and loss of friendships. Sadly, some churches don’t want to know if their pastor is engaging in immoral and unethical behavior. In their minds, protecting the church’s “testimony” is more important than rooting out predatory preachers.
So, to the SBC preachers saying “we didn’t know,” I say, yes you did. You heard the rumors; you heard the gossip; you saw and heard things that troubled you; you had suspicions. You had enough knowledge that you should have demanded the SBC executive committee do something. You knew enough to demand that your state convention or area missionary get rid of the rotting apples in your midst. While you can’t do much about the past, you can, going forward, stand with and protect victims. You can, and you must, demand that predators be removed from their churches, local church autonomy be damned. When asked to choose between theological beliefs and vulnerable people, you must choose the latter.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is known for starting new evangelism programs. SBC attendance has been in a freefall for years. Churches often have large membership rolls and much smaller actual attendance numbers. On any given Sunday, over half of Southern Baptist church members are somewhere other than the house of God. Over the years, the SBC has rolled out numerous programs meant to evangelize the lost and prop up attendance numbers. All of these programs have spectacularly failed. No matter how many new programs with catchy names the SBC comes up with, attendance numbers have continued to decline. SBC leaders can’t seem to figure out WHY people don’t want what they are selling.
One program cooked up by the SBC is the 3 Circles program.
This tool helps Christians to share the gospel using three simple circles. These represent (1) God’s
Design, (2) Brokenness, and (3) the Gospel. They also illustrate how accepting and submitting to Jesus will grow faith and lead to God’s perfect design.
“Three Circles” is something that people easily understand.
All you need to have is a pen and paper, or napkin, or hand!
The method provides quick answers to common questions of faith:
o What was GOD’s DESIGN?
o How did we depart from God’s Design through SIN?
o Can anyone escape BROKENNESS and what does BROKENNESS feel like
Last week, Kentucky Today had a story on how one church and pastor is indoctrinating children in the use of the 3 Circles program:
You may not find a more evangelistic person than Derrick Willis in Carrollton.
Unless, of course, you meet 8-year-old Timber Kincaid.
After Willis, the associate pastor of English Baptist Church, taught Timber the children’s version of the evangelistic 3 Circles tool, she’s been running circles around everybody. Timber shares the gospel seven times a day, seven days a week.
Willis knows that because she reports to him about every gospel conversation.
“She’s on fire,” Willis said “She calls me two or three times a week to tell me how many times she’s shared the gospel. She averages 7-8 times a day.”
The North American Mission Board put together the 3 Circles for children, which Willis said is a “knockout.”
But it’s not just Timber showing evangelistic chops. Willis said “the Lord has blessed our area here lately.”
He has two community Bible study groups and watched how God is changing lives. A man and his son who lived next door to the church for over 30 years but never attended are now scheduled to be baptized in a couple of weeks.
It was about six years ago that Willis felt God tugging on his own heart and, since then, sharing the gospel has become his pastime. He’s a bivocational minister, with a fulltime job, but he’s also all in on evangelism.
“To be truly honest, I didn’t become a believer until about six years ago,” Willis said. “I was there because my wife was there. The Lord got ahold of me and I’ve been working in ministry ever since.”
Willis has trained the youth in 3 Circles and has them excited and the church is taking the Gospel to Every Home seriously as well with regular weekly visitation. He has found that with COVID starting to fade a little, more and more people are open to having a gospel conversation.
“Maybe it’s just for the fellowship but they’re paying attention more and are more receptive to hearing what you have to say,” he said.
He said sometimes they only get in three or four visits because the conversations have become so rich. Willis said he started one day with 30 bags and only passed out a dozen because of how well the conversations were going.
During one of the Bible studies, a man’s son, who is a self-proclaimed atheist, was sitting in the corner as Willis shared from John. “He was kind of sitting in the corner but you could tell he was listening.”
The father sent Willis a text and told him they were in the car and his son turned it over to K-Love. “I’m telling you, good things are happening here. The Lord is opening up some doors for us.”
The senior pastor is Jon Elardo, who Willis said is strong in the ‘ships – discipleship and fellowship – and that they work well together. “We kind of piggyback off each other,” he said. “Jon is happy all the time. Sometimes, I’m not that way. We make a good team.”
The church is stirring more than it has in a long time with new members and baptisms. Meanwhile, Willis’ evangelistic touch is spreading like wildfire. Even to an 8-year-old girl.
What pastor Willis has done is rob the children of his church of their youth. Instead of letting kids be kids, Willis has turned them into the next generation of God-botherers in Carrollton, Kentucky. The eight-year-old mentioned in the article has been turned into a soulwinning machine (though I seriously doubt she is sharing the gospel forty-nine times a week in a community of 4,000 people). She is presently lauded for her evangelistic zeal, but there will come a day when she will regret having spent her young life bugging people to get saved (using a truncated, shallow, cheap gospel). And when she’s a mother with children someday, guess what? The SBC will have moved on to a new evangelism program, church attendance will be what it was a decade before, and “fire” will be gone. Why? That’s just the way it is . . . The fundamental problems of the Southern Baptist Convention are foundational. Evangelicals, in general, are one of the most hated sects in America. Trumpism. Misogyny. Anti-LGBTQ. Anti-abortion. Judgmental. Indifferent towards sexual abuse. Rock star culture. Indifferent towards the least of these. Shall I go on? All the circles in the world won’t change how unbelievers view the SBC until churches and pastors change their ways. They won’t, of course. They can’t. The SBC is married to the irrational notion that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Thus, they are forced to defend and live out all sorts of things that moderns consider immoral and irrational.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Southern Baptist executive member Joe Knotts recently stated:
I am terrified that we are breaching our long-standing position of being a voluntary association of independent churches, when we start telling churches that they should do this or do that to protect children or women.
I guarantee you women and children are going to be victimized no matter how much — and that is going to make us potentially targets of great class-action lawsuits, which could be the end of the Southern Baptist Convention.
I am speechless. Until the Joe Knotts of the world are run out of the Southern Baptist Convention, no real and lasting change will take place. He is part of the problem, not the solution. For Knotts and others like him, ecclesiology is more important than protecting children and women (and men too) from sexual predators who freely roam the halls of Southern Baptist churches. Why, if the SBC does anything to protect children and women from abuse, it could open the Convention to lawsuits. Your point, Joe? The executive committee, along with countless churches, pastors, and other leaders should be held accountable for the abuse that has happened on their watch. That’s the price that must be paid for decades of concealment and inaction.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
A week and a half ago, Southern Baptist Convention leaders released a list of alleged sex-abuse offenders that had been kept secret. Perhaps it is not fair of me to say that I am not surprised, as I have never had any connection with the SBC. On the other hand, having experienced childhood sexual abuse while serving as an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church—and hearing whispers about sexual harassment of women and teenaged girls in the Evangelical church of which I was later a part—I don’t think I was being cynical in saying to myself, “Well, what does anybody expect?” upon reading about the SBC report.
Perhaps even less surprising, to me, was the accompanying revelation: victims who alerted church authorities, at whatever level, were advised to “be quiet” or, worse, intimidated into silence. It sounded like an alternate-universe version, if you will, of my own story. Decades passed, and the priest who abused me died, before I spoke or wrote about my experience. For one thing, I had neither the language nor other cultural contexts for telling about what was done to me: there was no open discussion about such matters in the time and place in which I grew up, and priests and other church officials were seen as beyond reproach. In such an environment, even if I knew the names of the parts of my body that priest touched, I could not have told of my ordeal in a way that would have been more credible, in the eyes of my community, than anything that priest—or the priests to whom he reported—could have said. I can’t help but to think that if I could have described what the priest did to me—beyond that “it felt weird”—someone, whether a relative or a father in the church, would have told me to keep my story to myself.
That nobody had to tell me not to tell—at least at that time in my life—is a testament to, not only the esteem in which priests in the church were held in my community, but also the power the Church has wielded. It also says something about how powerless I was. Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from carrying my sexual abuse, alone—and, years later, seeing children bearing their burdens without a champion or mentor—is that nothing is more damaging than inculcating, or allowing a child to grow up, with a sense that their reality—or, more importantly, what they have to say about it—is not to be trusted or believed.
For that matter, invalidation of the fear, anger or whatever else one might feel about having been violated—which, by definition, is done by someone with more power or, at least, credibility—serves only to further traumatize the victim. That is what SBC officials did when they told people to “be quiet.” That is what my parish, and larger Church officials, could just as well have done after I was abused by a priest.
So, while the abuse I experienced as an altar boy in a Roman Catholic parish in Brooklyn, New York in the 1960s is different from what girls and women in the Southern Baptist Convention endured, we have this much in common: we suffered in silence for too long as a result of churches that were more interested in preserving their “institutional integrity” than in helping those of us who have been victimized. That silence—my “closet,” if you will—hindered my development in so many ways, not the least of which is that I didn’t affirm my identity as a woman until my mid-40s. I can only wish that those whom the SBC told to “keep quiet” didn’t lose as much—time, or anything else—by remaining in a “closet” I know all too well.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
An alternate headline would go something like this: OMG! The Southern Baptist Convention Has a Sex Abuse Problem — Who’d a Thunk It?
The media, much like a hog finding an acorn, breathlessly reports that notable Southern Baptist leaders knew that sexual predators were roaming the halls of SBC churches, colleges, seminaries, and youth camps. The media acts like the recently released Guidepost report on sexual abuse in the SBC (read full report here) is new information; that no one knew the depth of the depravity until the report was released. To that, I say, bullshit. Some of us have been writing about sexual abuse in Evangelicalism, in general, and the SBC and the IFB church movement, in particular, for decades. I know I have. (Please see the Black Collar Crime Series.) Our voices, for the most part, were ignored. I was routinely dismissed because I’m an atheist, a bitter, jaded ex-Evangelical with an ax to grind. Even if such claims are true, and they are not, this question remains: is what I write about sexual abuse, pastors abusing their positions of authority for sexual gain, and sundry other crimes committed by so-call men of God, true?
Countless Evangelicals have self-righteously told me: yes, preachers can and do commit crimes, but they are just a few rotten apples among a bushel of Red Delicious apples. As the latest report reveals, there are a lot more rotten apples in that bushel than Evangelical sects, churches, and colleges would have us believe. We are not talking about a few isolated incidences here. I suspect that there are thousands of preachers, evangelists, missionaries, college professors, deacons, Sunday school teachers, youth directors, bus workers, and church janitors who are sexual predators; men (and a few women) who prey on vulnerable children, teenagers, and adults — most of whom have never been prosecuted for their crimes (though this is changing thanks to the Internet and increasing pressure on law enforcement and prosecutors to aggressively investigate and prosecute preachers and other church leaders). We know that these predators will not stop until they are caught; until they are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
For years, SBC and IFB preachers gleefully pointed out the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal. “We preach the true gospel and personal holiness, so we don’t have such problems in our churches,” many preachers self-righteously said.
Reeves knows this is a bald-faced lie; a denial of the facts on the ground. As IFB and Southern Baptist preachers are wont to do, all that matters to Reeves is protecting the “good” name of the sect and its churches. That’s why the SBC executive committee, pastors, college presidents, and attorneys covered up sex crimes. All that matters is outward appearance, victims be damned.
Much like a mob family, SBC leaders buried countless sex abuse victims in non-descript, out-of-the-way plots of ground, never to be heard from again. The good news is that a true miracle is taking place. Those buried victims, long thought dead, are very much alive, shouting their stories from rooftops to all who will listen. And they will not be silenced. And as a small, insignificant voice in this battle against predatory preachers, I will continue to leverage this site’s traffic to continue to expose their crimes. As far as the SBC is concerned, several things need to happen
The FBI needs to begin an immediate investigation of the SBC Executive Committee and other denominational leaders. It’s evident that some SBC leaders engaged in organized criminal behavior, and, if warranted, should be prosecuted for their crimes.
The SBC should establish an accessible database of people accused of sex crimes. Not just those who have been prosecuted. Yes, there is a small — a very, very very small — chance someone could be wrongfully accused. That’s unfortunate, but the overwhelming majority of preachers and other church leaders accused of sex crimes are as guilty as Judas Iscariot. Often, guilty preachers escape punishment due to statutory limitations, so a lack of prosecution is not a statement of innocence.
Churches must enact policies that put the safety and welfare of children, teenagers, and church members first. Background checks on an annual basis (state and federal) must be required for a church to remain in the SBC. Churches must use outside investigators to thoroughly investigate new hires. Word of mouth is not good enough. Contacting a pastoral candidate’s previous church is not good enough. I candidated at a number of churches over the years. I still find it astounding what churches DIDN’T ask me. Not one church performed a background check or investigated my past. All that seemed to matter is that I was winsome, an excellent public speaker, and had a wife who could play the piano.
Churches should immediately shutter their youth programs and fire their youth pastors. The sheer number of youth pastors accused of sex crimes is such that the risk far outweighs the benefit. Young youth pastors have raging hormones, yet churches think it is a good idea to put them in ministries that afford them close, intimate interaction with teens and college students who also have raging hormones. What could possibly go wrong? According to the Black Collar Crime Series — a lot.
Accusations of sexual misconduct should be IMMEDIATELY reported to law enforcement. Don’t investigate, call for a church meeting, or interrogate the victim. It is up to law enforcement, not the church, to determine if a crime has been committed. If churches don’t do this, their leaders should be prosecuted for “failing to report.” Start throwing in jail preachers, deacons, and other church leaders for not reporting allegations of sexual abuse, and I suspect they might start taking the matter seriously.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
