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Tag Archive: Church Discipline
Why I Became a Calvinist — Part Two
Bruce Gerencser June 6, 2018 13 Comments
Three Calvinist Peas in a Pod: Pastors Joe Maldonado, Bruce Gerencser, and Pat Horner, Somerset Baptist Church, Fall of 1993
My first exposure to Calvinism came in 1988 when I began borrowing and listening to cassette sermon tapes from Chapel Library — a Calvinistic tape lending library and tract publisher in Pensacola, Florida. I had seen an ad for Chapel Library in a periodical I received, so I thought I would write to request a list of sermon tapes. Most of the preachers on the list were not familiar to me, but one name stood out: Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones, who died in 1981, was a well-known British Evangelical pastor. He was the pastor for many years of Westminster Chapel in London.
Along with a handful of Lloyd-Jones' sermon tapes, I ordered tapes of Rolfe Barnard, a Southern Baptist evangelist. While I thoroughly enjoyed Lloyd-Jones' sermons — and I would listen to dozens more of them over time — it was Barnard's sermons that blew me away. Here was a Calvinist who preached with the fervor of an old-fashioned fire and brimstone evangelist. I had never heard Calvinistic preaching before listening to Lloyd-Jones and Barnard. I had been told that Calvinistic preachers were dried up prunes with little zeal, passion, or power. I was big fan of nineteenth century Calvinistic Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, but having only read his sermons, I had no idea how Spurgeon sounded. I assumed he preached with great authority and power, but since there are no recordings of his preaching, all anyone can do is assume how Spurgeon preached.
I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from 1976-1979. Midwestern — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution — was resolutely opposed to Calvinism. Ironically, one of the college's men's societies carried Spurgeon's name. When questioned about having a society named after Charles Spurgeon, students were told that, yes, Spurgeon was a Calvinist, but God mightily used him in spite of his Calvinism. More than a few IFB preachers suggested that Spurgeon was not a "true" Calvinist; that his zeal for winning souls was inconsistent with his Calvinistic beliefs. I would later thoroughly study Spurgeon's published sermons, and I determined, without question, that Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an Evangelical five-point Calvinist.
While Spurgeon was my favorite nineteenth century preacher, Rolfe Barnard quickly became my favorite modern-day preacher. Many of his recorded sermons were preached at Thirteenth Street Baptist Church in Asheville, Kentucky. For many years, Henry Mahan was the pastor of Thirteenth Street. I called Henry one day to see if he had contact information for Barnard. I wanted to have him come preach a meeting at our church. Henry told me, well brother, Brother Barnard died in 1969. (Henry and I would later develop a friendship. I visited Thirteenth Street several times, and Henry came to Ohio to preach a conference at the church I was pastoring.)
Here's a sermon by Barnard that will give readers a good idea of his preaching style and sermon content:
Barnard's sermons made a deep, lasting impression on my life. As Barnard preached the Calvinistic gospel and spoke of God's sovereignty and grace, I found myself emotionally stirred. I asked myself, why hadn't I ever heard these "truths" before? Why hadn't my college professors told me of these "truths?" In time, I came to believe that my mentors and professors had lied to me about the gospel, salvation, and God's grace.
Barnard, then, opened the door for me to Evangelical Calvinism; and once the door was opened there was no going back. I began buying and reading books written by Calvinistic theologians and pastors — many of them from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Over time, I would buy almost one thousand theology books and Christian biographies. One time, a church teen walked into my study, looked at all my books, and said, preacher, have you read all these books? With great humble pride I replied, yes, every one of them. I was quite proud of my library, a common trait found among Calvinistic preachers. It was through these books and the preaching tapes from Chapel Library that Bruce Gerencser, a one-time IFB preacher, became an Evangelical Calvinist.
As newly minted Calvinists are wont to do, I made it my mission to convert my colleagues in the ministry to Calvinism. All my zeal accomplished was fractured relationships, including one man who got so mad at me — accusing me of being the keeper of the Book of Life — that he stomped out of a meeting we both were in, never to be in the same room with me again. Of course, I viewed his temper tantrum as him not being able to handle the "truth."
I started a monthly newsletter titled, The Sovereign Grace Reporter. I mailed this newsletter to hundreds of IFB and Calvinistic preachers. The Calvinists loved my newsletter, including several IFB preachers who were closeted lovers of John Calvin. Some IFB preachers got so upset with me that they sent me angry letters, demanding that I take them off the newsletter mailing list. This video clip from A Few Good Men pretty well says what I thought of these angry preachers:
One preacher, my best friend at the time, was sympathetic to my Calvinistic views. Through hours-long theological discussions and reading books I loaned him, he embraced certain aspects of Calvinism (though he certainly would never have called himself a Calvinist). He would later pull back from Calvinism. One mutual acquaintance of ours told my friend, Bruce Gerencser almost ruined you with that Calvinistic stuff.
My theological transformation came at a time when the church I was pastoring was facing attendance decline due to the fact that we decided to stop operating our bus routes. I determined, then, with my new-found beliefs in hand, to do three things:
Try to un-save all the people who were saved through my preaching of the IFB gospel. I was convinced that many of the people who attended Somerset Baptist Church were "saved" but lost. If Rolfe Barnard was right about the true condition of many Baptist churches — filled with lost people — then it was my duty and obligation to expose the false IFB gospel and preach to them the true gospel. I found that it was a lot harder to un-save people than it was to lead them to salvation.
Teach the congregation the doctrines of grace (Calvinism), line by line, week after week. I abandoned preaching topical and textual sermons, choosing instead to exegetically preach through books of the Bible. For example, I preached over one hundred sermons from the gospel of John (my favorite gospel).
Start a tuition-free private Christian school for our church's children. By doing so, I would not only teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic, but it would also allow me, through having students memorize the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith and read biographies of Calvinistic missionaries and preachers, to indoctrinate them in the one "true" faith.
In the next post in this series, I will talk about how Pastor Bruce becoming a Calvinist materially affected the church I was pastoring and how it altered my personal relationships with my wife, children, and friends.
Calvinism, Chapel Library, Church Discipline, Doctrines of Grace, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, Martyn Lloyd Jones, Reformed Baptist, Rolfe Barnard, Sovereign Grace Baptist
Why I Became a Calvinist — Part One
Bruce Gerencser June 1, 2018 0 Comments
A regular reader of this blog asked if I would write about my move from Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) theology to Evangelical Calvinism. While I have mentioned the fact of my move to Calvinism, I have never explained why I did so.
I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from 1976-1979. Midwestern was a small Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution started in the 1950s by Tom Malone, the pastor of nearby megachurch Emmanuel Baptist Church, to train men for the ministry. While there were women enrolled for classes at Midwestern, seeking either to hook a preacher boy and become his wife or become a Christian school teacher, everything revolved around manufacturing new soldiers for the IFB war machine.
In a post titled, What is an IFB Church? I listed the following doctrinal distinctives:
The inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible
The sinfulness, depravity of man
The virgin birth of Christ
The blood atonement of Christ for man's sin
The resurrection of Christ from the dead
The second coming of Christ
Salvation from sin is by and through Christ alone
Personal responsibility to share the gospel with sinners
Heaven and hell are literal places
Hierarchical authority (God, Jesus, church, pastor, husband, wife)
Autonomy and independence of the local church
While IFB churches and pastors are known for internecine wars over fine points of doctrine or whether certain behaviors are sinful, the aforementioned beliefs are nonnegotiable. Deny one or more of these doctrines and you will be labeled a compromiser or a heretic.
Some churches don't use the IFB moniker due to its negative associations; but using the doctrines listed above as the standard, many Southern Baptist congregations would be considered IFB churches. The same could be said for General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) congregations. I should also add, in passing, that many Reformed Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist, Conservative Baptist, and Missionary Baptist churches have the same doctrinal markers as churches who proudly claim the IFB label. This means, then, that there are tens of millions of Americans who attend churches that hold to IFB theological beliefs, even if many of them refuse to label themselves as such.
Calvinism was considered heresy at Midwestern, and students found discussing Calvinism or promoting its tenets were expelled. My systematic theology teacher, Ronald Jones, made it clear that Calvinism was not to be discussed. Students weren't taught anything about Calvinism, and most of them simply accepted the anathemas uttered by their teachers as fact. I know I did. Midwestern's goal, then, was to reinforce the doctrines taught to students in their home churches. Rare were classroom discussions that veered from IFB orthodoxy. According to Tom Malone and the professors at Midwestern, there was One Lord (Jesus), one faith (IFB doctrine and practice), and one baptism (Baptist immersion). While these promoters of the one true faith grudgingly admitted it was possible for non-IFB Christians to be True Christians®, most outsiders were considered religious, but lost (especially Catholics, who were considered the spawn of Satan).
Midwestern was also King James Only. Students were not allowed to use any Bible version but the 1769 revision of the King James Bible. Midwestern also promoted the belief that a certain Greek translation, commonly called the Textus Receptus, was the true Word of God in Greek, and all other translations, such as Wescott and Hort, were inferior and were not to be used in Midwestern's Greek classes. One professor disobeyed this edict, introducing students to the wonderful world of textual variants. He was summarily fired, even though on every other point of theological and social Fundamentalism he was a true-blue Baptist Fundamentalist.
When I began pastoring IFB churches in 1979, I didn't know one pastor who would have called himself a Calvinist. Today, Calvinism has made deep inroads in the IFB church movement, and in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In the SBC, Calvinistic pastors, led my men such as Al Mohler, are battling with non-Calvinistic pastors for the soul of the Convention.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Calvinism, here's the TULIP acronym for the five points:
Perseverance of the Saints (Preservation of the Saints)
Calvinists also hold to what is commonly called the Five Solas:
Sola Scriptura — By Scripture Alone
Sola Fide — By Faith Alone
Sola Gratia — By Grace Alone
Solus Christus — Through Christ Alone
Soli Deo Gloria — Glory to God Alone
Calvinism is a theological and philosophical system where each point builds upon the other. Remove any one point and the system collapses. As with any theological system, adherents endlessly debate the finer points of belief. There are numerous subsets of Calvinistic belief, each with peculiarities that set them apart from other Calvinists.
Calvinism is a complex theological system. I call it an intellectual's wet dream. Calvinistic pastors line their bookshelves with wordy tomes written by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritans and nineteenth-century Calvinistic Baptists and Presbyterians. IFB pastors have dick measuring contests, with church attendance being the measure of success. Calvinists also have dick measuring contests, with library size being the definitive proof of a pastor's prowess.
Many of the Reformed and Sovereign Grace Baptist pastors I knew were, at one time, IFB pastors. All that changed for them was their soteriology and, at times, their ecclesiology. The same social Fundamentalism found in IFB churches is often found in Evangelical churches of Calvinistic persuasion. For many years, I would drive once a month to a Calvinistic pastor's meeting in Mansfield, Ohio. Most of the men in this group were former IFB pastors — GARBC, SBC, and unaffiliated Baptist churches.
One big difference between Calvinistic Baptist churches and IFB churches is how the congregations handle church discipline. Typically, in IFB churches errant members are, behind the scenes, "encouraged" to leave so they can find a new church to better meet their needs. If this approach doesn't work, pastors use their sermons, complete with subtle prods, to run the offender off. I don't know of an IFB church that actually practices church discipline as laid out in Matthew 18:15-18:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Calvinistic Evangelical churches, on the other hand, are much more likely to use church discipline to punish unrepentant members who run afoul of morality codes and conduct standards or disobey orders from their pastor/elders. Supposedly, the goal of church discipline is to effect restoration, but more often than not, it is used as Biblical cover for kicking people out of the church or shaming them into submission. One church I pastored, Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, used church discipline for all sorts of offenses, including not regularly attending Sunday worship services. Even when the church was notified that the absent member was attending a new church, because the member didn't ask the church's permission to leave the church, he or she was excommunicated. The threat of church discipline was used to quash disagreement and keep congregants in line. (I was excommunicated from this church myself. You can read about my time at Community in the series titled, I am a Publican and a Heathen.)
My first exposure to Calvinism came in 1988 when I began borrowing and listening to cassette sermon tapes from Chapel Library — a Calvinistic tape lending library and tract publisher in Pensacola, Florida. I suppose, all told, that I listened to several hundred tapes. Before returning them, I would make copies of the tapes so other people in my church could listen to them. A year or so later, I started CHARIS Tape Library — a lending library patterned after Chapel Library. Tapes were sent free of charge to anyone who requested them. The goal was to spread the good news of the Calvinistic gospel — also known as the TRUE gospel, the faith once delivered to the saints.
In part two of this series, I will share how these tapes were instrumental in my theological move from IFB theology to Evangelical Calvinism.
Calvinism, Church Discipline, Doctrines of Grace, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist
Catch-All Bible Verses: I Will Set No Wicked Thing Before My Eyes
Last week, I wrote a post entitled, Catch-All Bible Verses: Is the Human Body the Temple of the Christian God? Today I want to deal with another catch-all Bible verse, Psalm 101:3:
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Evangelical preachers love this catch-all verse because it allows them to demand of congregants abstinence from seeing and using things or having contact with people, churches, and ministries they have deemed "wicked." Whether something is wicked is determined by the pastor's personal interpretations of the Bible, social, cultural, and religious experiences, and personal preferences. In other words, something is wicked because the pastor says it is, end of story. Since he is the man of God, the one chosen by Jesus to lead and teach the church, congregants are expected to believe and follow his "Biblical" pronouncements. If he says a certain behavior or inanimate item is wicked, then congregants are expected to nod their heads up and down and say, Amen brother, preach it!
Things labeled "wicked" are considered off-limits — Kryptonite to true Christians. Congregants, wanting to be obedient to God and his man, the pastor, bow — at least outwardly — to the subjective pronouncements of church leaders. Diversity of opinion and freedom are discouraged, if not outright forbidden. Congregants are expected to fall in line, obey, and follow Pastor Pied Piper. People who dare to think for themselves and publicly disagree with the man of God are told to either conform or leave. In some churches, non-conformity is viewed as rebellion against God's established order. Erring congregants are brought before the church to be critiqued, judged, and disciplined. People are given two choices: excommunication or submission.
In 1994, I found myself, as the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, at odds with my fellow pastor, Pat Horner. (See I Am a Publican and a Heathen.) I disagreed with Horner — the founder of the church — on a number of issues, and due to the increasing hostility of our disagreements, I decided to resign from the church and move back to Ohio. Horner informed me that I couldn't resign and that since the church decided whether I could be a member, it was up to them to decide whether or not I could resign. I, of course, refused to obey his pronouncements. I packed up my family and our meager belongings and returned to Ohio. As we were leaving, Horner had gathered congregants together for a disciplinary meeting. The subject? What to do about the Bruce Gerencser problem. I was deemed wicked and rebellious by Horner and his sycophants, and after the "facts" were presented, the church excommunicated their co-pastor. In their minds, my refusal to play by Horner's rules was grounds for excommunication. To this day, the church continues to consider me a heathen. My current atheistic beliefs and lifestyle are proof to them that excommunicating me was the right thing to do. Polly and our six children were not excommunicated. Horner and the church decided that my family was under my satanic control, and should not be held accountable for my "sins."
My excommunication is a good example of a pastor determining what is "wicked" and then demanding that congregants not set that wicked thing before their eyes; the wicked thing being a flesh-and-blood human being. This catch-all verse can be used to label people, inanimate objects, and behaviors "wicked." Pastors, then, are able to bend and mold congregants to their wishes; that is, unless they have a rebellious member such as Bruce Gerencser. Then, church discipline is used to cut the offender from the church and put the fear of God into the hearts of congregants.
The churches I pastored, with one exception, didn't excommunicate rebellious church members. Instead, I was the gatekeeper. I determined who stayed and who had to go. If I determined through much prayer and fasting — just kidding, my determinations were based on my personal opinions, beliefs and practices — that someone was no longer a good "fit," I would encourage them to seek out a church that would better meet their needs.
Over the twenty-five years I spent pastoring churches, I ran off a lot of good people whose only crime was that they disagreed with me on a matter of doctrine or practice. Instead of embracing differences of belief and practice, I demanded fealty to my beliefs, interpretations, and practices. For many years, I believed it was sinful to own and watch TV. In my mind, if there was ever a human invention that was wicked, it as the television. I am sure Polly and my children can remember our TV being unplugged and having a piece of paper taped over the screen that said, I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
Several years ago, I wrote a post titled, The Preacher and His TV. Here's some of what I had to say:
My wife and I married in 1978. One of our first purchases was a used tube console color TV that we purchased from Marv Hartman TV in Bryan, Ohio. We paid $125. We continued to watch TV for a few years, until one day I decided that watching TV was a sin. This was in the mid-1980s. After swearing off watching TV, I decided that no one, if he were a good Christian anyway, should be watching television. One Sunday, as pastor of Somerset Baptist Church in Mt Perry, Ohio, I preached a 90-minute sermon on the evils of watching television and going to the movies. I called on all true Christians to immediately get rid of their TVs and follow their preacher into the pure air of a Hollywood-free world.
To prove my point, I gathered the congregation out in front of the church for a physical demonstration of my commitment to following the TV-hating Jesus. I put our TV in the church yard and I hit it several times with a sledge-hammer, breaking the TV into pile of electronic rubble. Like the record burnings of the 1970s, my act was meant to show that I was willing to do whatever it took to be an on-fire, sold-out follower of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Just before I hit the TV with the sledge-hammer, a church member by the name of Gary said to me, Hey preacher, if you don't want that TV I'll take it. How dare he ruin my sin-hating demonstration! I thought at the time. I gave Gary a scowling look and proceeded to knock the devil right out of the TV. I am happy to report that not one church member followed in my TV-hating footsteps. What church members did do is make sure that their televisions were OFF when the man of God made an appearance at their home.
From 1998 through 2005, I purchased and got rid of at least six television sets. I gave one TV to the local crisis pregnancy center. I also gave one set to my son. The rest I sold at a loss. Why all the televisions? you might ask. Simple. After watching TV for a time, like a moth to a flame, I was drawn towards watching shows that I promised God I would never watch. Dear Lord, I promise I will only watch G or PG rated programming, and if there is any nudity, cursing, or gore I will immediately turn off the TV. No matter how much I wanted to be holy and righteous, I found that I loved watching programs that contained things that I considered sin.
My "sinning' would go on for a few weeks until the guilt would become so great that I would say to God, you are right God. This is sin. I will get rid of the TV and I promise to never, never watch it again. Out the TV would go, but months later I would get the hankering to watch TV again and I would, unbeknownst to Polly, go buy a television.
It is clear now that my beliefs made me mentally and emotionally unstable. I so wanted to be right with God and live a life untainted by the world, yet I loved to watch TV. One time, after I came to the decision to get rid of yet another TV, Polly arrived home from work and found me sitting on the steps of the porch, crying and despondent. I hated myself. I hated that I was so easily led astray by Satan. I hated that I was such a bad testimony. Look at ALL that Jesus did for me! Couldn't I, at the very least, go without watching TV for the sake of the kingdom of God?
I have written before about my perfectionist tendencies. I wanted to be the perfect Christian. God's Word said to abstain from the very appearance of evil. Psalm 101:3 was a driving force in my life: I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Television was a wicked thing, I told myself, yet I continued to battle with my desire to watch sports and other programs on TV. Needless to say, the advent of internet, brought into our home a new way for me to be tempted to sin against the thrice holy God I pledged to serve, even unto death. I'm sure that my children will remember me putting a sign above our computer that quoted Psalm 101:3. This was meant as a reminder that we should NEVER view inappropriate, sinful things on the internet.
My three oldest children, now in their 30s, continue to rib me about my TV-crazed days. One of them will periodically ask if I am ready to get rid of our flat-screen TV. Their good-natured ribbing hails back to the day when their Dad acted like a psycho, buying and selling televisions. At the time, I am sure they thought I was crazy, and I wouldn't blame them if they did.
I replayed the aforementioned battle over TV numerous times in my life. The object of my righteous anger changed, but the end result was the same: that which I deemed wicked had to go, and if congregants really, really, really loved Jesus, they would agree with me and excise from their lives that which the man of God labeled sinful. The goal was holiness, so who wouldn't want to be as pure and holy as possible? Congregants would try to conform to my pronouncements, but for the most part all this did was turn their lives into a game. Church members lived one way at church or in my presence and another way when away from the Holy Spirit — AKA the Preacher or Pastor Bruce. Little did they know that I did the same. Try as I might to live out the teachings of the Bible and to strictly govern my life according to my interpretations of the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, I failed too; not because of a lack of desire or commitment; but because I set for myself and others an impossible standard. I was human, as were the people I pastored. Much like the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world, Evangelicals have wants, needs, and desires. They do what they do because they are human. No matter how much Evangelicals preach, pray, and deny their humanity, in time their "flesh" wins.
And that's okay. Life is meant to be lived, not denied. Evangelicals love to say, only one life, twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. The humanist version, however, goes like this, only one life, twill soon be past, and then you'll be dead. There's no God, Jesus, church, or preacher to please. All that really matters is this present life. Love, laugh, and enjoy your brief existence on planet Earth. It's the only one you'll ever have. Each of us determines for ourselves how we want to live. As an atheist, I still have certain "wicked" things I won't set before my eyes; you know, things such as women with size 20 bodies in size 10 spandex, fat men like me parading around in public with no shirt, and Fox News. That's about it. Each to his own, I say.
Did you grow up in a church where Psalm 103:1 was used to label things, people, and behavior wicked? Did your pastor demand congregants live according to his moralistic pronouncements? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Atheism, Evangelicalism
Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, Excommunication, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, Pastor Pat Horner, Psalm 101 3, Sin, Television, Wickedness
Black Collar Crime: Evangelical South African Church Covered Up Sexual Abuse for Decades Says Victims
Bruce Gerencser November 28, 2017 1 Comment
George Donald, a former youth leader at Hatfield Christian Church in Pretoria, South Africa was convicted recently and sentenced prison for sexually abusing several young girls. Now, one of his victims is accusing Hatfield Christian of covering up sexual abuse.
Zelda Venter, a reporter for IO, writes:
For decades, pastors at Hatfield Christian Church covered up the sexual abuse of several young girls by one of its youth leaders.
In the same week that the Constitutional Court deliberated on the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases, George Donald, 67, was sentenced in the Pretoria Regional Court to a total of 11 years' imprisonment, of which he has to serve an effective six years.
This was for raping his biological daughter, Marijke Donald, now Mwathi, over several years in the 1980s, as well as his foster daughter – who does not want to be named – for months while she lived with the family in Pretoria.
The rape and sexual abuse of Marijke, 40, started around the time she was 3 and ended when she was about 12.
Her foster sister, who was about 10 at the time, eventually told Marijke's mother, who does not want to be identified. The mother turned to the church authorities for guidance.
Both parents received counselling and the advice of the church elders at the time was that they should pray and talk to each other.
In an e-mail exchange with Hatfield Christian Church last year, Marijke accused the then church leaders of turning a blind eye to the serial abuse and protecting a rapist. She said they told her mother that it was "church policy" not to go to the police or to take a "Christian brother before a heathen judge".
They also told her mother, Marijke said, that if she had been a better wife, Donald would not have abused the girls. But while the counselling with church elders continued, Donald continued to rape her, Marijke told the Pretoria News.
She now lives in Scotland, but returned to Pretoria last week, with her brother Jason Donald, author and award-winning filmmaker, who lives in Switzerland, to see their father go to jail.
"I don't hate him, but I wanted to see him go to jail for what he had done to me," she said.
Donald, who is wheelchair-bound, pleaded guilty to two charges of rape. Due to his advanced age and the fact that the crimes occurred in the 1980s, he was sentenced according to the law of the time.
If the rapes occurred after the new Sexual Offences Act came into effect, he could have faced life behind bars.
"The investigating officer asked whether I wanted to talk to him after he was sentenced," said his daughter. "I faced him after all these years and told him I no longer hated him, but he had to go to jail."
Donald, who lived in London, was extradited to South Africa to account for his crimes after about 30 years.
In a statement to court before sentencing, Marijke said: "As a child I lived in a home where our family portrait was that of God-loving people who served Christ through the church.
"We helped those in need, but behind this perfect family impression lay a sinister secret of a man who thrived on the ability to control, manipulate, lie and abuse many around him."
Marijke said it was not only sexual abuse she had been subjected to, but also emotional abuse. "As a child growing up in that environment, I lived in fear, confusion and hypervigilance If only the church went to the police or removed him as youth leader."
The abuse only stopped when the family moved to Scotland in 1990 and her mother eventually divorced him.
"Once it was discovered that George was abusing me, it was me who was punished. No one went to the police or had him arrested and charged to keep me safe.
"Not the church, not the doctor who examined me and not my mother. He even remained as a youth leader."
She said she decided a few years ago to report the rapes and sexual abuse to the authorities. "I decided to forgive him Not for him to be freed, but for me to release myself from him To live with what George has done to me is one thing, but I could not live with the knowledge that he has harmed others."
Around the same time Marijke was raped, another young member of the church, Elizabeth van der Merwe, was also being abused.
She said that while the church service was going on, he would take her to a room elsewhere on the premises, ostensibly to prepare for the youth service.
She counted the steps to this room, where he abused her. She could still remember exactly how many there were, she said.
Hatfield Christian Church apologizes to George Donald's victims.
Marijke Donald's foster sister, Cordelia, has decided to publicly tell her story. Annie Brown, a reporter for The Mirror-UK, writes:
A rapist who abused his daughter from the age of four told her "it is better for a girl to be broken in by her father rather than a stranger."
Devout Christian George Donald, 67, began abusing Cordelia Donald when she was two.
He raped her, sometimes twice a week, from the age of four until she was 10.
Now Cordelia, 40, has bravely spoken out about the horrific abuse which a church covered up, the Daily Record reports.
When Cordelia's mother found out about the abuse and went to pastors in the church where Donald was a volunteer youth leader, she was told that it was against "church policy" to take a "Christian brother before a heathen judge" or the police.
Her mother was also told the abuse wouldn't have happened if she had been a better wife.
This week Donald, from Dundee, who was living in South Africa at the time of the crimes, was sentenced to seven years in prison for raping Cordelia and a 10-year-old girl in the 1980s.
Cordelia has chosen to speak about her ordeal as she fears there are other victims of her father who have yet to come forward.
The family emigrated from Scotland to South Africa when Cordelia, who has three brothers, was 10 months old.
Donald began abusing her when she was two. He raped her, sometimes twice a week, from the age of four until she was 10.
The abuse only lessened when another female victim reported to Cordelia's mother that she had been abused.
But when her mother reported the abuse to pastors at Hatfield Christian Church in Pretoria, she was shrugged off.
To the outside world, Donald, a supermarket manager, was the epitome of the perfect husband and father, a charismatic and upright Christian who worked tirelessly with children.
Cordelia said: "Behind this perfect family impression lay a sinister secret of a man who thrived on the ability to control, manipulate, lie and abuse many around him. I was victim to sexual, physical, psychological and emotional abuse.
"As a child growing up in this environment, I lived in fear, confusion and hyper vigilance. I would jump if I heard a car pull up or a lock turned. I was constantly scared."
Cordelia was so traumatised that from the age of three, she pulled her hair out and bit her nails until her fingers bled.
She was so desperate not to be a girl and a target for her dad that she imitated being a boy, even trying to urinate standing up.
Her dad threatened to harm her mother and brothers or kill her family pets if she revealed their "secret".
She said: "I felt that by saying nothing, I was protecting my family."
Donald told her it was normal for dads to behave sexually with their little girls.
Black Collar Crime, Church Discipline, Cordelia Donald, George Donald, Hatfield Christian Church Pretoria, Marijke Donald, Sexual Abuse
I am a Publican and a Heathen Part Four
Bruce Gerencser November 21, 2016 7 Comments
Jose Maldonado. Bruce Gerencser, Pat Horner, Somerset Baptist Church
This post concludes the I Am a Publican and a Heathen series. This series details my experiences as co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf Texas. In March 1994, I left a pastorate of eleven years and moved to Texas so I could co-pastor a thriving, growing Sovereign Grace Baptist church. The church was founded by Pat Horner. Pat and I became acquainted through a newsletter I published — The Sovereign Grace Reporter. In March 1993, I packed up my family — five children in the backseat and two adults and a child in the front — and drove to Texas to preach at Community's annual Bible Conference. Polly and I were enthralled with the church and its growing motivated, young membership. Later in the year, Pat called and asked me if I would be willing to come and work with him. After talking it over with Polly, I decided that God wanted me to remain the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church. A few weeks later, in what can only be described as a deep emotional experience, I change my mind about working with Pat. I telephoned Pat and told him that I believed that God was now telling me to come to Texas. Several weeks later, Polly and I drove to Texas to meet with the church membership. They overwhelmingly were in favor of me becoming one of their pastors. Little did I know that less than a year later I would be packing up my family and, with a broken heart, moving back to Ohio. If you have not read the previous posts in this series (Part One Part Two Part Three), I encourage you to do so. They provide important context that will make this post easier to understand.
Community Baptist Church believed that since the church had to approve entrance into the membership, no one could leave the church without their permission. Leaving without church approval was viewed as a betrayal of the covenantal relationship between members. People who left the church or stopped attending were routinely disciplined (Matthew 18:15-20), resulting in excommunication. The church believed that excommunicated members were to be considered publicans and heathens. The only way disciplined members could remove this "mark" (Titus 3:10,11,Romans 16:17, and 2 Thessalonians 3:14,15) was to humbly come before the church, admit their sin, and plead for reinstatement.
Pat Horner was a former Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher, a fact that he, to this day, likes to hide. The reason this is important is that while Pat disavowed IFB theology when he embraced the five points of Calvinism, he continued to believe that God-honoring churches were to be ruled by pastors (elders). While Community had a plurality of elders, it was quite clear that Pat was the elder above all others. Looking back on my decision to co-pastor Community, I now know that I grossly overestimated the ability of both Pat and myself to work with each other. Both of us had spent our careers as men who controlled every aspect of the churches we pastored. We may have had elders and deacons who were supposedly equal in power and authority, but these officeholders were little more than façades that covered up ego-driven, authoritarian rule. While I did not remain such a pastor, it is, to this day, hard for me to think about how controlling I was. I know that authoritarianism robs people of self-determination and self-worth. Lording over people and treating them as subjects in one's own little kingdom causes great psychological damage. I suppose, then, my facing church discipline at the hands of Pat Horner was some sort of karmic justice. The monster that I had fed and used to control "sinful" church members finally devoured its creator. All I can do now is to use my experiences as a platform to help others who have been emotionally eviscerated by pastors and churches who believe that God has given them absolute control over the lives of others. While I am hesitant to say such beliefs and practices are cultic — who wants to admit they were a cultist? — any fair-minded person would conclude that they are.
During my time at Community, I participated in several public disciplinary meetings, including one in which I was in charge of the proceedings. Errant members were disciplined for all sorts of "sins," but most of them were excommunicated because they stopped attending church. Since these dropouts did not notify the church (Pat) about their leaving, they were, by church vote (almost always a rubber stamp to Pat's request) removed from the membership. In many instances, other local Calvinistic churches refused to accept as members those who had been excommunicated. The only way for excommunicated members to join the new church was for them to return to Community and confess their "sin" before the congregation. Once duly humbled, these wayward members would then be granted a release from their membership. They were then free to join up with a new church. This applied, of course, only to sound Calvinistic Baptist churches. Members leaving to join up with non-Calvinistic churches were not granted releases. Pat believed that Calvinism was the true gospel and that non-Calvinistic churches were heretical and taught a false gospel. This thinking permeated the church. I was asked on several occasions if I believed that Arminians (Methodists, Free Will Baptists, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, et al.) were Christians. I did my best to sidestep such questions, knowing that saying yes would cause church conflict. One leader in the church would later remark after I left that he knew I was never a "real" Calvinist. This man did not like my emphasis of God's love. He preferred Jonathan Edwards' brooding, violent, sin-hating God.
As I mentioned, I was in charge of one of the disciplinary meetings. Pat had gone to Mexico for a few weeks, so it was up to me to make sure that the authoritarian machine was firing on all eight cylinders. During this time, I began to have problems with a man who had been ordained by the church. He was unhappy with Pat and with me, revealing, at least in my mind, that he had a "rebellious" heart. This man was disloyal and refused to submit to pastoral authority, so I determined that the best course of action was to strip him of his ordination. After several conference calls with Pat, I brought the matter before the church and the man was defrocked. He would later humble himself before "God" and have his ordination reinstated. (The very threat of discipline was often enough to get church members to change their behaviors.)
In early October 1994, after all the events described in Part Three of this series, Pat decided to bring me before the church for the purposes of discipline and possible excommunication. Several days before this meeting a few church members pleaded with me to make things right with Pat. They knew that excommunicating me had nothing to do with sin. This was all about two arrogant, self-righteous, bull-headed men who couldn't get along with each other, yet I was the one who had to make things right. They knew that this was a power struggle over who would control the church, a power struggle I knew I couldn't win. And it is for this reason I decided not to attend the disciplinary meeting. Tim Conway, now the pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, told me that if I would straighten things out with Pat that perhaps he would be willing to help me start a new church in San Antonio. (Conway denies he ever said this.) I knew that a number of church members preferred me above Pat. Many of them found my congenial, at times humorous, preaching appealing. I knew that if I decided to stay in San Antonio and start a new church that a number of people would join with me. And it is for this reason that I chose not to stay and start a new church. I can say with a little bit of pride that, over the course of 25 years in the ministry, I never experienced or fomented a church split. Members would come and go, but I never had a large group of people leave at one time with the express purpose of starting a new church. While causing a split at Community would have been in some ways gratifying — a poking of my fingers in the eyes of Pat Horner — I knew that church splits rarely grew into successful, growing congregations.
It took Polly and me a matter of a few days to pack up our belongings in a U-Haul truck. Several church members helped us load our worldly goods on the truck and a few others stop by to plead with us to attend the disciplinary meeting scheduled for Saturday. Some of them were quite emotional, weeping as they begged me not to go. I told all of them that nothing good would come from the disciplinary meeting. Pat had his mind made up. Either Bruce Gerencser was going to submit himself to the will of Almighty Pat or Pat was going to kick his ass out of the church. I refused to submit myself to Pat's slander of my character, knowing that he had spent days making sure that key church members would vote his way. As anyone who has ever been a member of a Baptist Church knows, there are cliques and power groups within the church. Identifying these groups and appealing to them is the best way for a pastor to get what he wants. I had practiced this very method in the churches that I pastored. Since Pat had all his ducks in a row, it was futile for me to defend myself. As Kenny Rogers sang (The Gambler), You've got to know when to hold 'em / Know when to fold 'em / Know when to walk away / And know when to run. I knew that I did not have a winning hand, so I folded and moved back to Ohio.
Around 6 o'clock on an early October Saturday night, the Gerencser family tearfully drove out the long lane from their church provided-home to Labus Road. As we drove by the church, we passed a parking lot filled with cars. The meeting called for the purpose of dealing with the "Bruce Gerencser problem" was underway, and as I predicted, the church excommunicated me. To this day they consider me a publican and a heathen. My later loss of faith is proof to many of them that the decision they made on that October night in 1994 was right. Ironically, the church did not excommunicate Polly or our children. The church (Pat) determined that they were under my control and unable to think for themselves. This, of course, is exactly how I viewed the church. Under the control of Pat Horner, they pretty much did what he told them to do. My excommunication was a done deal the moment I stood up to Pat and he then determined that he would smack me down like a defiant teenager.
After returning to Ohio, Pat and I exchanged several nasty letters, the type you would expect from a couple who had gone through an acrimonious divorce. In later years, after a lot of reflection and soul-searching, I made several attempts to reconcile with Pat, hoping that in doing so it would put an end to all the gossip and lies that were being spread by not only him but other leaders in the church. Pat would have none of it, saying that the problem I had was with the church, not him. After trying several times to smoke the peace pipe, I gave up, believing, at the time, that the record would be set straight when we got to heaven. Since I now know that there is no heaven or God to adjudicate our disagreement, and Pat is unwilling to admit his part in my decision to resign from the church, all I am left with is this series of blog posts. People will believe what they want to believe. All I can do is tell my side of the story.
Pat left Community several years after I did, starting several churches and leaving them. He is no longer a pastor. (Community is now pastored by Kyle White.) He is still actively involved in "ministering" to Sovereign Grace churches in Mexico and India. Pastors Tim Conway and José Maldonado, both former members of Community Baptist Church, have in recent years publicly "exposed" Bruce Gerencser for who he really is. (Please read Jose Maldonado Says I Never Was a Christian and Gone but Not Forgotten: 22 Years Later San Antonio Calvinists Still Preaching Against Bruce Gerencser.) Evidently, in their eyes, my current atheism is a threat, and like their former fearless leader, Pat Horner, they want to do what they can to eliminate my influence on others. Sadly, for them anyway, their attempts to do so have miserably failed. This series of posts has been read by tens of thousands of people. In recent years, I have received letters from people who were also disciplined by Pat and Community Baptist Church. While all of these people are still Christians, they appreciated my willingness to shine the light on the horrific disciplinary practices used by many Calvinistic pastors and churches. An untold number of good people have been psychologically harmed by hammer-wielding pastors out to bludgeon them into submission.
While my time at Community Baptist left psychological scars that remain to this day, I do believe that being excommunicated helped make me into the man I am today. When I arrived at Community I was on a path that was sure to damage not only myself and my family, but also those who lovingly called me pastor. In Pat Horner and the church I was able to experience firsthand the logical conclusions of my authoritarianism and Calvinistic beliefs. I can only imagine what I might have become had I continued on this path. Thankfully, being filleted and hung out to dry forced me to take a hard look at my life and beliefs. My excommunication was the first step towards leaving Evangelicalism. In the following years, I realized how damaging authoritarianism was, not only to me and my family, but also to the churches I pastored. While I remained, to some degree, conservative, my view of people and my interaction with them greatly changed. I owe Pat Horner and Community Baptist Church a great debt of gratitude for helping me become a better man, ultimately leading me to renounce my Christian faith and embrace atheism. While they most likely view my de-conversion as a sure sign that I never was a Christian, I am grateful that Pat and the church were instrumental in forcing me to take a hard look at the kind of man I was and how my beliefs were harmful to others. My only regret is that the same did not happen for Pat. He remains unapologetically a hard-core Sovereign Grace Baptist preacher. The damage that he has caused his great, but those stories are best left untold. Perhaps someday members of his family or former congregants will dare to tell their stories, and maybe then Pat will have his own honest reckoning. I have done my best to be honest and open about the time I spent at Community Baptist Church. I willingly admit my culpability in the problems between Pat and I. Peel away all the theology and what's left is a story about two 30-something Type-A men who could not or would not find common ground to work with each other. Their failure to do so is a story that has repeated itself countless times in countless churches. Despite appeals to the Bible and God, one truth remains — people are people. Pastors such as Pat and I can easily be driven by personal wants, needs, and desires. In our case, both of us wanted to be the king of the hill, and as anyone who has ever played the game knows, there can only be one king.
[signoff]
Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Cultism, Excommunication, Grace Community Church San Antonio, Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church, Pastor Jose Maldonado, Pastor Pat Horner, Pastor Tim Conway
Gone but Not Forgotten: 22 Years Later San Antonio Calvinists Still Preaching Against Bruce Gerencser
Pastors Joe Maldonado, Bruce Gerencser, and Pat Horner, Somerset Baptist Church, Fall of 1993
In March of 1994, I became the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas. I have written extensively about my time at Community in the series I am a Publican and a Heathen. My seven-month tenure at Community quickly turned into buyer's remorse and in late September I resigned and returned to Ohio. Community is a Calvinistic Baptist church, started by Pat Horner — a former Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher. Horner ruled the church with a rod of iron, using church discipline to "deal" will all those who crossed him. Of course, Community's disciplinary practices weren't viewed as a tyrant's attempt to silence those who refused to play by his rulebook. Instead, church disciplinary meetings were dressed up with Bible verses meant to give the illusion that the church (Horner) was following the teachings of the Apostle Paul and Jesus when errant, unrepentant church members were excommunicated. Numerous members were "disciplined" during my tenure. People were excommunicated for everything from not regularly attending church to refusing to submit to pastoral authority. On the day that I resigned, Horner informed the me that I could not resign without the church's permission. Taking a "watch me" approach, I packed up my family and moved back to Ohio. As we were pulling out of the church's compound, Horner was addressing the church about the "Bruce Gerencser problem." I was excommunicated and to this day I am considered a publican and a heathen (Matthew 18:15-19).
Fifteen years later, I wrote the letter titled Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners. In this letter — which was sent to numerous pastors, family members, and former church members — I detailed the reasons why I was no longer a Christian. Of course, the Calvinistic preachers in San Antonio — men such as Pat Horner, Tim Conway, and Jose Maldonado — saw my letter as "proof" that my excommunication from Community Baptist Church was justified. See! See! See! Bruce Gerencser never was a "real" Christian! One would think that having thrown me out of the church, that would be the end of story. However, what Horner and his fellow Calvinists didn't count on is me publicly writing about my time in San Antonio. When Horner and the Church excommunicated me in 1994, they could control the story line. Horner could lie about me and there was little I could about it (He told several people that the church I was pastoring in Ohio was filled with unsaved people). The internet, of course, changed things dramatically, allowing me to tell my side of the story to thousands of people. Karma's a bitch.
I check the search logs on a daily basis, and not a day goes by without someone doing a search for Pastor Pat Horner (2), Pastor Jose Maldonado (2), Pastor Tim Conway (10), Grace Community Church San Antonio (16), Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church (5) or Community Baptist Church Elmendorf (7) that brings them to this blog (Google page ranking in parentheses). To combat the influence I might have on people, the San Antonio Calvinists have taken to mentioning me in their sermons. Here are two examples:
In November 2015, Tim Conway, pastor of Grace Community Church, San Antonio preached a sermon titled The Futility of the Mind. In the sermon Conway said:
Futile, vain, empty, pointless, to no avail. And right here in Ephesians chapter 4, futility of mind is the characterization of the Gentiles. That's how you are no longer to be. Christian, we are to put away futility. No longer. You must no longer. Futility of mind is a picture of people using their mind in ways that are just a waste of time. They are a waste of effort. You want some examples? Brethren, I know this about all of us. We all want to be happy. That is what mankind is striving after. Mankind wants to feel good, and mankind strives after that. You want an example of futility of mind? Futility of mind is man who is forever and always trying to figure out how to be happy while he is an enemy of God. That, folks, is futility. That is vain. That is worthless.
Or how about this: The futility that people walking around just spending their time; I was thinking about, some of you know about Bruce Gerencser, who was one of the co-elders down at Community Baptist Church when Ruby and I were down there, who apostatized and basically became an Atheist. What futility to spend your life trying to convince yourself there is no God. You see, these are the futile ways or futility that comes to nothing. Nothing at all.
Conway mentions me at the 25:48 mark.
In 2010, Jose Maldonado, pastor of Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church, (link no longer active) preached a four-part sermon series about my apostasy. Here's a short audio clip from one of the sermons:
https://brucegerencser.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/joe_maldonado_sermon-2.mp3
If you have the stomach for it, you can listen to Apostasy and It's Awful Consequences! on the Sermon Audio website.
If you would like to read the sermons and not listen to them, here are PDF transcriptions of the sermons.
Why are preachers such as Conway and Maldonado still preaching about me 22 years later? What is it about my story they find so threatening? Perhaps they just want to use my story as warning or a cautionary tale, as Ralph Wingate, Jr. did in a 2013 sermon at Calvary Baptist Church in Normal, Illinois:
https://brucegerencser.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ralph_wingate.mp3
Whatever the reasons, my story remains a burr in the saddle of those who once considered me their colleague or pastor. Numerous prayers have been uttered on my behalf, yet God has not seen fit to save or kill me. I remain a red flashing light reminder of the fact that pastors — men who once preached the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ — can and do apostatize. And if men of God can lose their faith, well, anyone can.
Calvinism, Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, Excommunication, Grace Community Church San Antonio, Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church, Pastor Jose Maldonado, Pastor Pat Horner, Pastor Tim Conway
I am a Publican and a Heathen Part Three
Bruce Gerencser March 8, 2015 7 Comments
Pat Horner and I had a common theology: Calvinism. Outside of that, we were very different from one another. From the way we preached to how we interacted with parishioners, we were as different as night and day. I thought it was important for me to get to know each family in the church, so I did a lot of in-home visiting. When someone was in the hospital, I would visit them. When someone had a family member die, I would attend the funeral. Pat did none of these things. He was much more standoffish than I was. This is not a criticism of him as much as it is an example of how different our personalities were.
This difference began to be a problem when parishioners started to favor me over Pat. After services, I would talk theology with the young men of the church, and they found me easy to talk to. It wasn't long before Pat began to criticize for being too familiar with parishioners. He told me that it was important to maintain a space between pastor and parishioner. I was told the same thing in college: the pastor can't be friends with anyone in the church because it will hinder his ability to minister.
Both Pat and I preached expositionally (preaching verse-by-verse, in context), but our styles were very different. I tended to be more human, earthy, and at times humorous in my preaching. Pat tended to be more dogmatic and rarely used illustrations. To him, it was all about doctrine. While I thought it was important, I knew that it was also imperative for me to make a human connection with parishioners. More than once, Pat criticized my preaching for being too light or not doctrinal enough. Again, I suspect this had to do with the fact that, personality-wise, we were very different from one another.
After a few months, I gathered up a few willing church members and we started two new Sovereign Grace churches, one in Floresville, Texas and the other in Stockdale, Texas. Every Sunday morning we would hold a service at Floresville and then drive 20 miles to Stockdale and hold another service. During the week, I would take groups from Community down to Floresville and Stockdale and go door to door evangelizing and inviting people to church. While we worked hard to get the churches established, neither church did well attendance-wise.
I also started a street preaching ministry and a nursing home ministry. Being the workaholic I am, I was busy and I loved it. Later in the summer of 1994, I helped the church start a Christian school. There were fifty children in the school. Many of the church families homeschooled before the school was started. Several teachers were hired, along with a school principal. Once the school was up and running, I had little to do with it.
Community Baptist Church, Elmendorf, Texas, 1994
During this time, Community was building a new 10,000 square foot building. Pat had a construction background, so he was well suited for overseeing the project. A group of Calvinistic church builders came in and helped frame, roof, and side the building. The concrete slab was poured by a group of undocumented immigrants, and various men in the church took care of the plumbing, electric, and HVAC.
The busy-ness helped to distance me from the increasing conflict between Pat and I. It seemed like every time we got together there was conflict and we bickered like two old married people. Neither of us was a shining example of temperance, deference, or respect. In the fall of 1994, I realized that things were not going to work out for me at Community, so I talked to Pat and the elders about it. Things quickly went south, like Mexico-City-south, and it became evident to me that Pat and I were headed for a messy divorce.
I told Pat that they we needed to sit down and talk. I asked John Sytsma, one of the elders, to join the meeting. John did his best to bring peace, but it was not to be. We got into an angry shouting match and I finally told Pat to leave my office. The next day or so, Pat gathered the elders together at John Sytsma's house and had a secret meeting where I was the topic of discussion. I found out about the meeting and crashed it. I was still a pastor and I should have been included in the meeting.
Bruce Gerencser, preaching at Community Baptist Church, Stockdale, Texas, 1994
Pat and I exchanged angry words and he told me that I had to stop pastoring the churches in Floresville and Stockdale and come and sit in the services at Community for a while. He told me that I was not fit to be a pastor. I suggested that I was willing to leave the church and pastor one of the new churches I started, but Pat would have none of it. Finally, when it became evident Pat had his mind made up, I said, Fine, I resign. Pat replied, You can't resign without our permission. My last words to him were, Really? Watch me. A few days later, Polly and I packed everything up in a U-Haul truck and we moved back to Ohio. As we were driving down the lane from our home, the church was holding a special meeting to deal with the "Bruce Gerencser problem." Of course, Pat was the moderator of the meeting.
Several church families begged us to stay. Some even suggested that Pat should be the one to go. But, I was not going to be party to a church split. Besides, all those that were in my corner when we moved later went over to Pat's side. I knew that nothing I said or did would make a difference. As the old gambler said, You got to know when to hold them, and know when to fold them. It was definitely time for me to fold my hand.
I am often asked, What happened? I think what happened was that two strong-willed men with very different personalities wanted to own the same piece of real estate. Due to the fact that we both were quick-tempered, conflict came easily. I regret the conflict, but my time as co-pastor of Community Baptist Church taught me a lot about myself and I left Texas a very different man. For the first time I saw what I had become, and I didn't like what I saw. It was at this point that my fundamentalism began to die. It was a slow death, but this was the moment when I saw what fundamentalism had done to me and I knew that I needed to change. Pat, however, is still a fundamentalist Calvinistic Baptist. He later left the church, started another church, and last I heard was working a secular job and doing mission work in India.
In my final post in this series, I want to write about how the church dealt with the "Bruce Gerencser problem." I also want to write about the vicious discipline the church (Pat Horner) used to manipulate and control parishioners.
Calvinism, Church Discipline, Church Planting, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, John Sytsma, Pastor Pat Horner, Sovereign Grace
I am a Publican and a Heathen Part Two
Our family arrived in Elmendorf, Texas the first week of March, 1994. I had resigned from Somerset Baptist Church in Somerset, Ohio, and after closing down the church and Christian school, I packed up my family and moved us to Elmendorf so I could become co-pastor of Community Baptist Church.
Community Baptist Church was an Sovereign Grace (Calvinistic) Independent Baptist church started in the 1980s by Pat Horner. The church worshiped at a ramshackle former Southern Baptist church building on Labus Road outside of Elmendorf. The church property included several acres of land that housed a double-wide mobile home in which Pat Horner and his family lived, an old mobile home where Joe Buitron, the groundskeeper/handyman, and his family lived, and a brand-new 14×70 mobile home the church purchased for my family.
Our girls playing in a sand pile near our mobile home. This was before we learned what fire ants were!
This enclave of mobile homes was called The Compound. Each mobile home was close enough to the other two that the occupants could easily see what was going on at each mobile home. When we moved to Texas, we did not watch TV. I remember how judgmental I felt when I saw the glare of a TV in the bedroom window of Pat Horner's home, late on almost every Saturday night. I thought then, why is he watching TV? Shouldn't he be praying and preparing for the Lord's Day as I am?
The church was quite welcoming and we were excited to be there. Community Baptist Church was a vibrant church, filled with young adults and their children. There was an air of excitement in the church, a hunger for the preaching and teaching of God's Word. I spent many a Sunday evening after church talking theology with the men of the church. They had questions and I was delighted to dispense to them what knowledge I had about the Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible.
Tim Conway, preaching at a nursing home. Conway is now pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio.
There was quite a bit of movement in and out of the church membership. Not long before I became co-pastor of the church, two men from Kalamazoo, Michigan moved to Elmendorf so they could be part of the church. Their names were Craig Mussulman and Tim Conway. Conway is now the Calvinistic Fundamentalist pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. Mussulman still live in San Antonio, but I do not know where he attends church. Joe Maldonado, who had preached for me in Somerset in 1993, had left the church by the time I got there. He became the pastor Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church. A few Hispanic families from the church, with Horner's blessing, joined with Maldonado at the Hillburn Drive church.
When we moved to Elmendorf, a family from Ohio moved with us. Larry and Linda Johnson were members of Somerset Baptist Church, and when we decided to move they packed up their belongings and moved to Elmendorf a week or so later. Larry and Linda had three children and Larry was a heating and air conditioning contractor.
The Gerencser's first act as co-pastor and family was to officially join the Community Baptist Church. The church, a Sovereign Grace (Calvinistic) church, had strict membership requirements. The church's Covenant had this to say about church membership:
…In recognizing the church's authority to receive me into, and dismiss me from, its membership, I purpose when seeking to remove myself from her membership to seek the counsel, the approval, and the blessing of the church in seeking to join myself to another church of like faith and practice…
…If, however, the church does not agree with my reasons for leaving, I recognize that the church may release me from its membership disagreeing with me and expressing their displeasure of my actions but, at the same time, allowing me the liberty of conscience to leave…
…Finally, in the event of sin on my part with regard to any biblical matter, I recognize the church's biblical right to take disciplinary action toward me, which seeks my restoration…
As I would later learn, church members were routinely disciplined for violating the membership requirements.
One requirement stood out above all others. Since people had to have the church's permission to join the church, they also had to have the church's permission to leave the church. Members could not just leave and go somewhere else. If they did not ask for the church's permission to leave, the church (Pat Horner) would call a meeting and discipline the errant church member. I would suffer this same fate when I resigned and moved back to Ohio.
Larry and Linda Johnson, a couple from Ohio that moved to Texas when we did. They still live there.
A week or so after we joined the church, the Johnson family arrived in Elmendorf, and as we did, they joined the church. However, before the Johnsons joined the church, Pat Horner and I had our first conflict. Before potential members could join the church, they had to meet with Horner so he could grill them about their salvation experience and what they believed. Larry Johnson met with Horner and afterward Horner came to me and said he doubted Larry was a "real" Christian. The reason? Larry talked too much about God and not enough about Jesus.
I was able to convince Horner that Larry was a "real" Christian and he permitted the Johnsons to join the church. I was quite sad when the Johnson family, convinced by Horner that I was a bad man, later turned against me.
Every year, in March, Community Baptist Church held a week-long Bible conference. I preached several times during the 1993 conference and I was scheduled to preach several times during the 1994 conference.
The conferences were housed in a large tent that held several hundred people. Calvinistic Baptist pastors from around the state of Texas would come to the Bible conference, and Calvinistic Baptist pastors from as far away as Ohio and Louisiana would preach during the conference. The women of the church would provide meals each day for everyone in attendance. The food, music, and preaching were outstanding.
The 1994 conference took place a week or so after we moved to Elmendorf. After we settled into our new mobile home, I began helping with conference preparations. Along with John Sytsma, a wealthy owner of a nearby ostrich farm, I set up the sound system for the conference. Our "work" would fuel the second conflict I had with Pat Horner.
On the first morning of the conference, the sound kept cutting in and out. John and I could not figure out why this was happening. During lunch, Horner angrily lit into me about the sound problem and he let me know that I had better get it fixed. I had never seen the angry side of Pat Horner before, and I would see a lot more of it before I left the church. Horner must have realized that his angry display was inappropriate because he came to me later in the day and apologized. This would be the first and last time Horner apologized for anything. John Sytsma later left the church and is now an elder at Tim Conway's church, Grace Community Church, San Antonio, Texas.
Over the next seven months, Pat Horner and I would have skirmishes that became increasingly combative and angry. I do not blame Horner for this. Each of us was temperamental with aggressive type-A personalities. We were both in charge of the same real estate and this led to frequent conflict. Sometimes I would win these battles, but most of the time Horner was the victor.
We argued about everything from my dog getting under the church and chewing the phone line to whether or not it was okay to shoot the neighbor's feral pig. Horner threatened to shoot my dog if it ever did any like this again, and he wanted to shoot the pig, but I was able to convince him that it was wrong to shoot the neighbor's pig.
We argued over the church budget and the church bulletin. I was of the opinion that the church needed to know everything about church finances. Horner took the position, How much do they need to know? I won this battle and the church was provided with a complete statement of income and expenses each month. This exposed the slush fund Horner had used for years to give money to preachers and families in the church. I am in no way suggesting he was dishonest. Our disagreement was over whether the church should know about the fund.
Since I was quite proficient when it came to computers and desktop publishing, I took on the responsibility of the church bulletin. Horner was a micro-manager, and he refused to let me print the bulletin until he reviewed it first. Every week, I would get the bulletin back with things circled he felt needed to be corrected. His micromanaging quickly got under my skin.
Our conflict over the bulletin turned into open warfare and it took an English major in the church to settle it. Horner was a Texan and I hailed from the rural Midwest. Our speech and writing patterns were very different from each other. Let me give you an example: I would say "the barn needs to be painted." Horner would object and say, no, "the barn needs painting."
We frequently butted heads over things such as this. Finally, Rhonda Galaviz, wife of Mexican missionary Andres Galaviz, told Horner and me that my usage was technically correct and it was considered a colloquialism from the Midwest. While this settled the proper English debate, Horner would continue to have a problem with the way I did the bulletin. Not long after that incident, I gave the bulletin job to someone else.
Joe Buitron, the church handyman
Joe Buitron and his family lived on The Compound directly across the street from my home. Joe took care of the grounds and fixed whatever needed fixing. He was a jack-of-all-trades. There was nothing he couldn't fix or repair. Joe worked long hours, especially when we began building a new church facility. The church paid him $200 a week and allowed him and his family to live in a small mobile home on church property. Joe was grossly underpaid, and making ends meet was a constant struggle. I finally brought his financial struggles to Horner and the elders, and after a bit of shaming, they gave Joe a pay raise.
The Buitrons were in need of a washer (and maybe a dryer). This need was brought before the church so they could "pray" about it. The praying went on for weeks, yet God had not yet directed the church to buy the hardworking family of six a washer. Finally, I had enough of all the praying and I bought a washer for the Buitrons. I never understood the whole praying thing when it was in my power or the church's power to take care of a need. To this day, I wonder if some church members thought I played "God."
In my next post in this series, I will discuss how my conflicts with Horner came to a head, and how I ultimately left Community Baptist Church.
Christianity, Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, Excommunication, John Sytsma, Pastor Jose Maldonado, Pastor Pat Horner, Pastor Tim Conway, Sovereign Grace
I am a Publican and a Heathen Part One
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. (Matthew 18:15-17)
Should church members be allowed to leave the church without permission? Bobby Jamieson, writing for 9Marks, answered the question this way:
…I think the biblical answer is a resounding "No." Here's why: When your church made that person a member, you were declaring to the world that this person belongs to the kingdom of Jesus. By regarding this person as a member, your church affirmed that he is indeed a "brother" in Christ…
…So what's the problem? Hebrews 10:24-25 commands us not to forsake assembling together. Therefore, any professing Christian who quits going to church is living in habitual, unrepentant sin. And the way a church addresses unrepentant sin is not by merrily sending that person on his way, but by removing their affirmation of "member" and "brother". When the player quits showing up on game day, the team has to take back his jersey.
So pastors, just as you pay careful attention to the front door of your church, keep a close eye on the back door, too. Make sure that the sheep can't simply open the gate themselves and disappear from sight. Refuse to allow people to resign into thin air, both for the sake of your church's witness to the gospel and for the good of every single sheep—especially those who tend to wander off."…
The purpose of the aforementioned quotations will become readily evident once you have read this series. I had planned for this to be one post, but as I started writing, I realized I need to split it into several posts.
In July of 1983, I started the Somerset Baptist in Somerset, Ohio. I pastored the church until March of 1994. In the late 1980s, I became quite disenchanted with the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. I came to the conclusion that the IFB gospel was a bastardized, corrupt gospel that made no demands of those who said they were a follower of Jesus Christ.
Through the writings of Charles Finney, I came to see that repentance, a turning FROM sin and a turning TO Christ, was an essential component of the gospel. In 1989, I read John MacArthur's book, The Gospel According to Jesus, and this fundamentally changed my soteriology (theology concerning salvation).
I began to read books written by the Puritans: men such as Thomas Watson and John Owens. I also read the works of men such as John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, JC Ryle, AW Pink, Andrew Fuller, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I also began listening to Calvinistic preaching tapes from the Chapel Tape Library.
One preacher's taped sermons really got my attention, and that was the sermons by the late Rolfe Barnard. Barnard was a fiery Southern Baptist preacher of the Calvinist gospel. I listened to his sermons over and over, and it became clear to me that I had been preaching a false gospel. I also felt that my college professors and mentors had lied to me. Why had they never shared with me the sovereign grace gospel? (Short bio of Rolfe Barnard)
In a sermon titled, Seeking the Lord, Rolfe Barnard said:
…This generation would like to get to heaven, but they just haven't got time. They had time to make a profession and join a church, but they just haven't got time to seek the Lord. When I started to preach 36 years ago, people would come hear me preach and I could keep a crowd for a while, and in that way somebody would listen to the Word of God. And since no man has saving faith, and God has to give it to men, He gives it as men hear His Word, and after a while they say "that's God talking".
You must hear the law of God preached long enough for God to reveal to you that you are a guilty lost sinner before you will be interested in hearing the good news of the Gospel of Christ. If God can get you lost, He will save you. If God can get you to sit still long enough to let a little of His Word sink in and grant you repentance and faith, He will save you. If you don't have time to seek the Lord till He is pleased to reveal Himself to you and speak peace to you, why you will just live on a little while, then go to hell. You haven't had time to hear what is being said.
A personal confrontation of the soul by a gracious redeeming God; this leads to repentance and faith, this leads to the terminating of a self-centered existence, and the beginning of a Christ indwelled life. You will lay down the arms of rebellion and run up the white flag of surrender. That's what it means to be saved. I don't know how long it will take you to get there, but it would be time well spent if you got to Christ…
In a sermon titled, A Lack of Repentance Preaching has Filled Modern Churches with Hypocrites, (link no longer active) Barnard said:
…I am dead certain that the mess we are in religiously and spiritually now, the love-sick so-called "church" people, the sickly sentimental crop of so-called "believers" who are enthusiastic about a fair or a frolic but are conspicuously absent from prayer meeting — I am sure that this is due to the fact that our churches are full of people who are not born right…
Somehow or another they got into our professing churches without ever having come face to face with the holy demands of a Holy God, and being brought in the face of those demands to the place of throwing up all hands of self-effort and self-confidence and turning one's self over lock, stock and barrel to the Sovereign Christ. Somehow or another they have missed the main business. Somehow or another they got in what we call the church without turning in abhorrence and in utter conviction against sin, without turning from their sin to obedience unto God.
And, of course, their lives fail! If we dodge this step [repentance], we miss out on salvation!…
As a result of the aforementioned books and tapes, I embraced five-point Calvinism. At the time, I thought God had taken the blinders off my IFB-darkened eyes. In classic, there is no middle ground, charge hell with an empty squirt gun fashion, I became a vocal proponent of Calvinism. This change of soteriology (doctrines concerning salvation), and a later a change of ecclesiology (doctrines concerning church polity, discipline) and eschatology (doctrines concerning end times), destroyed whatever connections I had with pastors and churches in the IFB church movement.
I spent the last five years of my time as pastor of Somerset Baptist Church radically changing and restructuring the church. I stopped giving altar calls and I went from preaching topical/textual sermons to preaching expository sermons. Instead of choosing a new and different text each week, I began preaching systematically through various books of the Bible. I preached over one hundred sermons from the gospel of John.
It was not uncommon for me to spend several full days studying and preparing a sermon. This study and preparation became the focus of my ministry. (Calvinism appeals to people such as myself who love reading and who enjoy intellectual pursuits.) I also came to see that I had a duty to reach the members of Somerset Baptist Church with the TRUE gospel, the gospel of sovereign grace. I feared that many of the church members were unsaved. I spent the first half of time in Somerset getting them saved and I spent that last half trying to get them unsaved.
I began traveling to preaching meetings at Calvinistic churches. At these meetings I met men such as Don Fortner and Henry Mahan. Mahan would later come to Somerset and hold a meeting. I also began associating with Reformed Baptist pastors. Men such as Al Martin and Walt Chantry were prominent voices in the Reformed Baptist movement, as were men associated with the Southern Baptist Founder's Group. Al Mohler is a prominent member of the Founder's Group.
Every month, I would travel seventy miles to a General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) church in Mansfield, Ohio, pastored by Mark Furman, a Calvinistic pastor, so I could attend a meeting of like-minded pastors. This meeting was called The Pastor's Clinic. Several pastors would present a paper on a particular theological subject, we would discuss the papers, and then eat lunch before heading for home. I found the meetings intellectually stimulating and they helped assure me that the Calvinistic gospel was the TRUE gospel.
Under my leadership, Somerset Baptist Church began a tape lending library similar to that of the Chapel Library. We sent preaching tapes free of charge to anyone who requested them. I also began publishing a monthly newsletter titled, The Sovereign Grace Reporter. This newsletter was sent to hundreds of Calvinistic and non-Calvinistic pastors. The newsletter incited rage among my non-Calvinistic friends and their outrage ruined a fifteen-church Youth Fellowship I had started years before. I knew that the newsletter would provoke some of the pastors, but I didn't care. I thought, they need to hear about the TRUE gospel.
I lost almost all of my professional connections, save a friendship I had with Keith Troyer and another with Polly's uncle James (Jim) Dennis. At the time, Keith was pastor of the Fallsburg Baptist Church in Fallsburg, Ohio and Jim was the pastor of the Newark Baptist Temple in Heath Ohio.
Jim Dennis was not a five-point Calvinist, in the classic sense of the word, but his soteriological beliefs were closer to the Calvinistic position than the one-point Calvinist/Arminian position of the IFB church movement. Keith Troyer was a young pastor when I met him. I think I am about ten years older than he. I began to give Keith books written by Calvinistic writers, and, for a time, he was greatly influenced by me and the books I gave him. Many people believe that I had a negative influence on Keith. Whatever influence I may or may not have had, Keith is not a Calvinistic pastor. He currently pastors Grace Baptist Church in Greenville, Pennsylvania. With both of these men, I could freely talk about Calvinism. Both men would later come and preach for me, not only at Somerset, but at Our Father's House in West Unity, Ohio (which was originally named Grace Baptist Church).
Through the publication of the Sovereign Grace Reporter, I came into contact with men such as Andy Sandlin and Pat Horner. Both Sandlin and Horner were originally part of the IFB church movement. Sandlin, for many years, was associated with Rousas Rushdoony and the Chalcedon Foundation. Horner was a sovereign grace Baptist pastor who pastored Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas.
While Andy I had much more of a casual relationship, Pat and I began to develop a friendship. Over time, Pat become comfortable enough with me that he invited me to speak at his church's annual Bible conference in March of 1993. At this conference, I came into contact with numerous sovereign grace Baptist pastors. Both Polly and I were overwhelmed by the friendliness and vibrancy of Community Baptist Church.
Over the course of the summer, Pat Horner and I continued to keep in touch. Pat eventually asked if I would consider coming to Elmendorf to be the co-pastor of the church. He knew I was beginning to "feel" that my work in Somerset was done and that perhaps God was leading me to go somewhere else. He also knew I was gifted when it came to evangelism and he hoped I could help with planting new churches, along with starting a Christian school. After considering Pat's offer for several weeks, I came to the conclusion that God wanted me to stay in Somerset. I called Pat and declined his offer.
A few weeks later, I was sitting in my office and suddenly a flood of emotion came over me. I began weeping uncontrollably. I began thinking about the church in Texas and Pat's offer. And, in that moment, I changed my mind and decided to accept the offer to become the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas.
One of the trailers used to move our belongings to Community Baptist Church
I called Pat and asked him if the offer was still open. He said, yes, and a few weeks later Polly and I drove to Texas to meet with the church elders and the church family. They overwhelmingly agreed that I should come to Texas and become the co-pastor of the church. In March of 1994, men from Community Baptist Church came to Ohio, helped us pack up our furniture and goods, and we moved 1,400 miles to a new and exciting ministry opportunity.
What should have been a wonderful time for my family and me, over the course of seven months, turned into disaster that resulted in me resigning from the church and Pat Horner and the church excommunicating me.
From late September, 1994 to today, Pat Horner and the Community Baptist Church consider me a publican and a heathen.
In the next post in this series, I will discuss how we settled into Elmendorf and my conflicts with the church that ultimately led to our leaving.
Christianity, Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, Excommunication, Pastor Pat Horner, Reformed Baptist, Rolfe Barnard, Salvation, Somerset Baptist Church Mt Perry, Sovereign Grace
Taking Off the Sheep Clothes — the Musings of a Wolf
Bruce Gerencser February 6, 2015 4 Comments
As my fame continues to spread across the internet, people who used to know me are finding out that I am no longer a pastor, a Christian, a believer in God, etc. I suppose this is how it must be. If I am going to write publicly, use my real name, and talk about my life as a minister, I am going to be "found out."
I know I am responsible for this. I choose to write what I write. I choose to be honest and direct. I choose to recount my past and present life as I understand it (and I say this because I realize others may see my life and the past differently).
I could have chosen to write anonymously. I could have made this blog (and the previous iterations of it) private. But, that's not me. I have always been direct and open. Rarely have I heard someone say about me "I don't know what you mean." In my younger years, directness and openness were better described as blunt and abusive. As a minister-in-training, I was taught to speak the truth without regard to the feelings of others.
This way of speaking my mind has served me well over the years, but it also has provided me many opportunities to apologize for the times when silence would have been the better course of action. I continue to be schooled in the fine art of shutting up, whether with the words I speak or the words I write.
Just recently, I had the opportunity to apologize to a former church member for running her family out of the church because she wore pants. Her husband asked me if I thought his wife wearing pants was a sin. In no uncertain terms I said YES! In every way this couple were fine church members, dedicated followers of Jesus. The husband drove one of our church buses. Yet, because I thought women wearing pants was a sin, the church lost a good family. How much better would things have turned out if I had said, Well that's between you and God. But I couldn't do so. I was God's man and directness was the only way to speak God's truth.
These days, I suspect my openness and directness threatens some people, especially those who have had an intimate relationship with me in the past. They would rather I leave things alone. They would rather I leave the past buried in the past. No need to talk about old times best forgotten. One former pastor friend told me that I shouldn't talk about the past and my defection from the faith lest I cause others to lose their faith.
I can't do that. While I don't want to be a person who lives in the past, I realize that understanding the past is essential to my well-being in the future. If I learn nothing from the past, there can be no growth in my life in the present. The key is not to be shackled by the past. I must learn from it, embrace it, but I must not allow the past to keep me from moving forward in my life.
It seems my "outing" is working its way down my résumé and list of family and friends. I told my wife the other day that I thought most everyone now knows about my apostasy from the Christian faith. Well, maybe my first grade teacher doesn't know.
In First Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul writes about it being commonly reported that there was incest going on in First Baptist Church of Corinth. Based on these common reports, Paul made a judgment about what was going on in the church. So it is with me. It is now commonly reported that Bruce Gerencser has apostatized. Sermons are even preached about me. (here, here, and here)
As many of you know. I co-pastored the Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas. I was excommunicated from the Church in 1994. Several years ago, a member of the church stumbled upon my deconversion story at John Loftus's blog, Debunking Christianity. Here's the comment left by her:
So the wolf has finally taken off his sheep's clothes. Took a while.
When the Church officials excommunicated me in 1994, they declared that I was a publican and a heathen. The Bible says in Matthew 18:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
My apostasy makes perfect sense to the people in San Antonio. It is simply the full manifestation of what they declared I was in 1994, a publican and a heathen. I was a wolf in sheep's clothing (John 10:12 and Matthew 7:15) , a satanic angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-15) , a false prophet (2 Peter 2).
But what does this say about them? They were certain it was the will of God for me to be their pastor. Evidently, they were not as discerning as they should have been. This lack of discernment has been a common problem for them. Prior to my excommunication, they had excommunicated 2 other pastors, and countless Church members.
I was not excommunicated for anything one might consider grounds for being booted out of a church. No stealing of church funds or screwing the church secretary. No trying to foment a church split (although I could have). No deep, dark, secret sins. No, my transgression was that I butted heads with the man who started the church. He was bull-headed, arrogant, opinionated, and temperamental and so was I. Like two little children, we both wanted our own way. Eventually, I decided I no longer wanted to play and I was excommunicated for my refusal to play.
In a church service akin to a scene from a Catholic Inquisition, I was in absentia found guilty and excommunicated, not only from Community Baptist Church, but from Christianity altogether. For a few years, I tried to resolve the conflict between me and the other pastor (Pat Horner). He rebuffed every attempt at reconciliation. I saw the conflict as a personal matter. He saw it as a matter between me and the Church and God. (Horner is no longer the pastor; Kyle White is.) In the eyes of Community Baptist Church, I am, and will always remain, a publican and a heathen. Unless I return on hands and knees to the church and repent of my sins, there is no salvation for me.
Well, that's not going happen. I am having too much fun enjoying my life as a publican and heathen.
Christianity, Church Discipline, Community Baptist Church Elmendorf Texas, Evangelicalism, Leaving Christianity, Pastor Pat Horner
MARLENE on Dear Evangelical Church Leaders: It's Time to Get Rid of Your Youth Pastors and Youth Departments


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Q: Display displot in separate subplots - Seaborn I'm aiming to insert a Seaborn display into separate subplots. Using below, I want to pass Label1 to ax1 and Label2 to df2. However, I'm getting a warning: UserWarning: displot is a figure-level function and does not accept the ax= paramter. You may wish to try histplot. warnings.warn(msg, UserWarning)
Is there a way around this? I've had issues with histplot previously in regards to the hue parameter. I'm reluctant to use that if necessary.
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1,2, figsize = (12,6))

df = pd.DataFrame({
    'Num' : [1,2,1,2,3,2,1,3,2,2,1,2,3,3,1,3],
    'Label1' : ['A','B','C','B','B','C','C','B','B','A','C','A','B','A','C','A'],
    'Label2' : ['D','E','D','F','E','D','F','E','F','D','E','F','E','D','D','F'],
    'Item' : ['Up','Left','Up','Left','Down','Right','Up','Down','Right','Down','Right','Up','Up','Right','Down','Left'],
   })

ax1 = sns.displot(data = df,
               x = 'Label1',
               hue = 'Num',
               row = 'Item',
               row_order = ['Up','Down','Left','Right'],
               shrink = 0.9,
               discrete = True,
               aspect = 4,
               height = 2,
               ax = ax1
               )

ax2 = sns.displot(data = df,
               x = 'Label2',
               hue = 'Num',
               row = 'Item',
               row_order = ['Up','Down','Left','Right'],
               shrink = 0.9,
               discrete = True,
               aspect = 4,
               height = 2,
               ax = ax2
               )

A: If you want to avoid histplot(), I think the closest you can get with displot() is to melt() the data and use col to put Label1 and Label2 into two columns:
sns.displot(
    data = df.melt(['Num', 'Item'], var_name='Group', value_name='Label'),
    y = 'Label',
    hue = 'Num',
    row = 'Item',
    col = 'Group',
    row_order = ['Up', 'Down', 'Left', 'Right'],
    shrink = 0.9,
    discrete = True,
    aspect = 4,
    height = 2,
)

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