Childhood Memories

I am a sports fanatic (fan for short). My parents were not. They paid very little attention to even pro sports. Why my brother and I became such avid fans, I have no idea. Before one Christmas, we both asked for Cincinnati Bengal helmets. We loved to watch the NFL highlights and then go out and tackle each other. On the big day, we both rushed to unwrap what had to be the boxes containing helmets. Yes, we got them! 2 NFL helmets just our size. The only problem was they were Cleveland Browns helmets, not Cincinnati Bengal helmets. We both looked at each other. Not the Browns, the hated rivals! However, in a surprising display of maturity, neither of us said anything. Not even when mom said she got a great deal on them. Of course, she did. Nobody in Cincinnati wanted a Browns helmet! We took our helmets to our Grandparents’ house. It started to snow. There is nothing like football in the snow. We put on our helmets, went outside and played tackle football. Actually, it worked out well, because we each saw the other wearing that hated Cleveland Browns helmet and tried that much harder to take each other’s head off. It is still one of my favorite Christmas days.

My two grandmas were exact opposites. Grandma Taylor would give you the duster off her back. You could never visit her and grandpa without leaving with something you didn’t come with. Even as a married man with a good job, she would slip me a five-dollar bill as I kissed her goodbye. She kept us supplied with government cheese. Her refrigerator was always stocked with our favorite pop and she had chilled mugs in the freezer. Somehow she got the idea that I liked cherry pie. I don’t. But she always baked one for me to take home. I loved spending the night at her house. I hated going to Grandma Wilson’s. When I was about 8 or 9, my brother and I were staying over. She gave each of us a quarter for the ice cream truck. We went out on the front porch to wait for Mister Softee. At last, we heard that sweet music approaching. In his excitement, my brother dropped his quarter. It fell between the concrete slab and the brick wall. We couldn’t rescue it. We told grandma we were a quarter short. She replied that was too bad, we should be more careful. We did not get another quarter. Maybe I shared my cone with my brother, maybe not. That I don’t remember. The great irony is Grandma Taylor was poor. She and Grandpa never owned a home until very late in life, and then only because my parents helped them. Grandma Wilson was wealthy. And although over the course of my life, she gave me much more money than my other grandma, it never meant as much as that cherry pie.

Teen Years

Like many independent fundamental Baptist (IFB) churches in the ’70s, our congregation grew rapidly. We believed that numbers were a sign of God’s blessing. IFB churches were among the largest in the nation. We were challenged to be the biggest church in our state. If we could not be that, then be the biggest church in our county (we were). If not, be the biggest church in our city. If not that, then the biggest on our block. Bigness was a blessing. Numbers proved God’s approval. Now that IFBs are shrinking and most megachurches are “liberal” (in IFB thinking) I wonder how the old guard would respond to bigness?

When I was twelve, our church built another new auditorium. My dad was the general contractor. On opening day (the first Sunday service) my brother woke up sick. We didn’t miss church just because we were sick. Dad would ask if you had thrown up or not. If you had, then you would feel better, so go to church. If you hadn’t, then you weren’t really sick, so go to church. We were the first to arrive on the big day. As we crossed the new lobby and entered into the beautiful modern auditorium and stepped on to the new plush carpet, my brother threw up. Right in the center of the aisle. The stain remained there until we built the next auditorium.

After the new auditorium was opened, we remodeled the old one. A large glass chandelier was left hanging in the remodeled entryway. One day Gary and I were hanging out at the church (we did that a lot). We were tossing a football. Gary went deep and I lofted a bomb. The chandelier intercepted it. Glass came raining down. We took off. Years later I was pastoring. A young boy was throwing a ball around the church lobby. He hit the chandelier and broke a glass pane. His mom made him come to me and confess. I told him mistakes happen. I guess this is my confession.

One winter evening after the service, a bunch of us teen boys were having a “slushball” fight outside. Ice and snow were turned into missiles. Gary and I were outnumbered and losing the battle. We decided to stage a strategic retreat into the church lobby. As we opened one of the glass doors an opponent launched an attack. An older lady fatefully chose to step outside at the very wrong moment. A slushball hit her right between the eyes. She went down like she had been shot. Out cold. I escaped; Gary was left holding the door. It’s tough being the preacher’s kid.

Because of our growth, the church rented space from a local school to use on Sunday mornings. Gary, my brother and I had the pleasure of moving the supplies back and forth each week. On Sunday afternoon, we would load up a Sunday School bus and someone would drive it back to the church where we would unload. We had happily done this for some weeks. One Sunday afternoon, the pastor walked up to me and handed me some money. I asked what’s this for? He said this is your pay. What pay? The pay I have been giving Gary every week for your guys’ help. Gary had been pocketing the money. Preacher’s kids, what are you going to do?

Of course, every year we went to church camp, Ohio Baptist Acres. The first year I went I got very homesick. I was holding it in pretty well until the second day. I was running down the hallway and collided with a kid coming out of his room. We butted heads. It hurt, I got a knot on my head. I began to cry. I wanted to go home. The counselor (who happened to be a young adult my dad had led to the Lord) took me to the canteen and bought me a chocolate shake. I felt better.

I am short. I guess I always knew that, but it really wasn’t an issue until I went to church camp. Shorty, peewee, and less flattering terms became my nicknames. The bigger boys loved to pick me up and toss me around. Now I am short and fat. Nobody picks me up now.

On the bus ride home from camp that first year, I had to go to the bathroom. Peewee had to pee. We had been riding for hours. We had hours to go. But I had to go now. I went up to the bus driver, that nice counselor who had bought me a chocolate shake. He said we didn’t have time to stop. Hold it, he said. I went back to my seat. I held it, literally. My resolve was strong, but my bladder was weak. I peed my pants. It ran down my leg. It ran down to the floor. It ran under my seat. It ran between Gary’s legs. My best friend announced to a bus full of my peers “Greg peed his pants!” Preacher’s kids.

It was at a youth camp I felt called to preach. The theme of the week was “Dare to be a Daniel.” The speaker was Dr. Dallas Billington (fundamentalism has a lot of honorary “Doctors”). He pastored the largest church in Ohio. In fact, at one time it was the largest church in the United States. It was one of the first “megachurches”. It was the church where my pastor was saved. Each night he preached under the roof of the huge pavilion and each night he gave an invitation.

On the final night, I felt the urge to go forward and “surrender” to preach. From that moment on I have never wanted to do anything else. Since graduating from college, it is the only thing I have done for a living. I have never had a real job.

It’s tough being a preacher boy in public high school. For a while, I carried my Bible to school. Our youth group had jackets; I wore mine throughout the school day. People called me Mr. Straight. In English we had to write a paper on our career choice, I wrote about going into the ministry. The teacher acted dumbfounded.

One morning I was walking down the hallway at school and one of the teachers called me a celebrity. He said he had just read about me in “Sports Illustrated.” I hurried to the library, where he had been reading. I hadn’t received my issue at home yet. Sure enough, I had a letter to the editor published. Greg Wilson, Milford Ohio. You see, my other great love in life was the Cincinnati Reds. They had just won back-to-back world series titles (1975 & 1976). I worshiped (as much as Christian can worship someone other than God) Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and the rest of the Big Red Machine. I despised their hated rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sports Illustrated had a big write up on the Dodgers new manager, Tommy Lasorda. It was said that he bled “Dodger blue.” I wrote in to say that at the end of this season, he would bleed red, “Cincinnati Red.” The Dodgers went the World Series that year. I still bleed red and Peter Edward Rose should be in the Hall of Fame (and Mark McGwire too).

College days

I went to an Independent Fundamental Baptist College. At the time it seemed to be the thing to do. My Pastor, Youth Pastor, Music Pastor and our missionaries all went there. It was the same school my dad had contemplated attending. Our church sent a lot of people there. I will not name the school which, like many other IFB schools, is struggling for survival. I don’t think that they would appreciate my kind of PR. It wouldn’t take Mr. Monk too long to figure it out (not to be confused with imonk.) In fact, they have recently been trying to enthuse their alumni. They started sending out a quarterly newsletter. They asked for alumni to send in a brief update about themselves and ministries. So I did. I sent an email with a short bio and a brief description of the church I pastor. I also included a link to our church’s website. The next day I received an email back. Only I wasn’t supposed to receive it. It was supposed to have been forwarded to another recipient. However, this person had hit reply instead of forward. It had a note attached. It said, “Here is another one. I checked out his website. He seems to have gone contemporary. Maybe we should not include the website address.” Now, I wanted to respond, “well at least I am contemporary enough to know how to use email.” But I didn’t respond at all. They are not worth it. There is nothing about contemporary on our website. By the way, when an IFB says “contemporary” he means “liberal.” There is nothing about music or Bible versions on our website. That is the problem. If you don’t condemn, then you must condone (in their minds). If you don’t have “KJV 1611” on your church sign, website, bulletin, tracts, newsletters, forehead, then you are obviously a liberal. If your logo doesn’t resemble Billy Sunday, then you are obviously a liberal.

When I went to college I was a moderate “King James Only” (KJVO). After I got there I became a radical one. I fell into a group of “Ruckmanites.” Up until then, I didn’t know who Peter S. Ruckman was. I soon read his books, listened to his tapes. The college was not KJVO at that time. The Greek professor taught us about some shoddy word translations in the KJV. We felt he was an apostate. If the King James was good enough for Paul and Silas, it was good enough for us. We spread our KJV onlyism around campus. It finally got us in trouble. The president and founder of the college called three of us into his office. He chewed us out. He threatened to expel us. He informed us that he was not KJV only; that the KJV was not perfect. He specifically referred to Revelation 22:19 and how Erasmus had hurried his Greek translation which led to the KJV translators using “book of life” instead of “tree of life.” I tell you this not to bore you, and I will give more details about this incident later, but to show how ridiculous this all is. Only after the Bible version issue became so big among IFBs, the school and its president promoted themselves as being King James only. Now they are the very thing they wanted to kick me out for being, and now I am not that. Then, they were right, and I was wrong. Now that I agree with what I was taught back then, apparently I am still wrong. I will have more to say on this later.

In the most recent edition of the alumni newsletter, the editors included an article about John Calvin. It was a negative assessment of course. On the 500th anniversary of his birth, they included a picture of him with a circle/slash through it. Hilarious.

I graduated from high school a year early. I skipped my junior year. So at the age of 17, I headed off to Bible college. I remember the day my parents dropped me off. I watched them drive off down the driveway. I went back to my dorm room and cried my eyes out. My freshman class had 99 students. Four years later, about 30 of us graduated. Twenty-five years later about five of us are still in the ministry. Some of my preacher boy classmates ended up doing jail time (all sex-related), more than a few ended up divorced. I say this sadly. It is a shame, but it is an epidemic among IFBs. I blame the legalism of the movement. It was the letter of the law without the spirit.

Several of us from my home church all went to college together. We all got jobs at a local factory that made fiberglass boats. For a kid paying his own way through college (you could actually do that back in the 70s) it paid well. After we had been working there for a year, we had a new guy from the college hire on. His name was Joe, also from my home church. On his first day, we told him to ask Steve (a married student who worked there) how his wife’s piano lessons were going. So, as we sat in the worker’s lunchroom, we called Steve over. Joe asked him how are your wife’s piano lessons going. Steve gets this horrible look on his face, he looks crushed and angry. He says I can’t believe that you asked me that and storms off. We all start shaking our heads. So Joe says “What did I say?” We reply that we can’t believe Joe actually asked that. We were joking, we didn’t think you would actually do it. What are you talking about Joe asks? Steve’s wife has polio, we say, she can’t move her hands. Joe was stunned. The whole evening Steve would give him mean glances. Joe was afraid for his life. Finally at the end of the shift, Steve walks over to Joe and says, she doesn’t really have polio and besides, that affects your legs, not your hands. We laughed our heads off.

We worked the second shift. A group of us would carpool. Often, while driving back to the dorm late at night, we would fall asleep. One evening I was the driver. There were three others asleep in the car. Our route took us across some train tracks. This particular evening, a train had stopped near the crossing. Its big light was shining. I couldn’t resist. I stopped on the track. The train was right outside the driver’s side window. The light was glaring into the car. I hit the brakes, blew the horn and screamed. They all woke up and looked out the window and screamed louder than I did. I never laughed so hard. It was beautiful! It was a wonder they didn’t wet themselves. I wish Gary had, it would have been payback.

I bought a brand new 1978 Pinto. Over Christmas break, I was traveling on the Ohio Turnpike to a girl friend’s house. The car broke down. This was before call boxes and the next exit was miles down the road. I started to walk. On the way to the exit, I passed up a broken down semi. A few hundred yards past the semi, another semi pulled over and told me to hop in. Now it was Christmas break. I hadn’t shaved and was wearing a flannel shirt, no coat, and a wool winter cap. I could hardly climb up into the cab. He didn’t have a passenger seat, just a concrete block sitting there. He asked if that was me broke down back there. I said yes. He said it looked like my air brakes locked up. Air breaks? Do Pintos have air breaks? I realized he was referring to the truck, not my car. I wasn’t about to tell him I wasn’t a truck driver, but a preacher boy from bible college. I was afraid of getting thrown out of a moving semi. It was a long way down to the road. The rest of the story is more humiliating. I had to have the car towed back to college. A friend of mine came and towed my Pinto. He towed it with his car. His car? A 1978 Pacer! By the way, if you know what I drive now, you might want to check this out.

Most of us students worked our way through school. Nearly all the guys in the dorm got back late at night. There was this one student on our wing who didn’t have to work. We hated him. One evening his roommates decided to play a joke on him. He was sound asleep like always. As guys starting coming in from work (around midnight or so) the roommates gathered us all together and hatched their plan. Instead of us all heading for bed, we pretended it was morning. We went to the bathroom (there was one big bathroom for each wing of the dorm). Some got in the shower. Some were shaving, others brushing their teeth. The roommates moved up the kid’s clock to close to 8:00 am. He had an 8:00 am class. They got dressed. We had to wear jackets and ties. They shook him awake. They told him he had overslept. He sprang out of bed, looked at his clock, said it felt like he had just fallen asleep. He rushed to the bathroom, then hurriedly put on his clothes. He grabbed his books and headed out the door to class. We were all watching. He was very gullible. It was dark out, yet he kept walking. He passed up a guy in the parking lot who was just coming home from work. Yet on he went until he got to the building and the doors were locked. We all hurried and got into bed and acted like we were asleep. He actually came back, didn’t say a word and got back into bed. To this day he might still think it was all a dream.

One evening, it was just two of us in the car. Of course, we had a curfew. You had a certain amount of time after you got back to the dorm to have the lights out. So, we would sometimes sit in the car and talk. As we were sitting there talking, we saw a car pull into the driveway. It kind of weaved itself alongside of us. It was two guys we had never seen before, obviously not students and just as obviously drunk. One shouted out his window, “hey are you guys tough?” Stupidly, I answer, “yea we’re tough”. We weren’t tough. Both of us weighed together maybe 280 pounds. Together. The drunks got out of their car. They probably each weighed 280 a piece. One walked over to my side of the car, the other to the other (Joe’s) side. Joe said, let’s get out of here. It sounded like a good idea to me, except for the fact that I had taken the keys out of the ignition and could not for the life of me find them. I checked every pocket, on the floor, above the visor, but they had disappeared. We were frantic. I managed to lock my door, but Joe hadn’t, so his guy had it opened, trying to pull him out. My guy said, “A guy at the bar (down the street) paid us to come beat up a couple of preacher boys!” Joe was talking to the other guy. He told him they had the wrong guys. We were just a couple of working stiffs. Joe showed him his employee card from work. Remember, they were intoxicated. Joe’s guy looked at the card. He was convinced. He said to his buddy, “we’ve got the wrong guys.” They got back into their car. They were so blasted, they missed the driveway and pulled out through the grass. Joe’s quick thinking had saved us a beating. I, on the other hand, couldn’t even find my stupid keys. They were in my shirt pocket. I had never put them there before or since and didn’t think to look there. We never wanted to get into the dorm so fast.

Our college had a lot of fundraisers. I hate fundraisers. I never sold anything in my life. I would never sign up sponsors, or I would buy all the candy bars myself. We were not given a choice about the fundraisers. We weren’t given a choice about a lot of things. The common announcement in the daily chapel was you will do it and you will like it! One semester the fundraiser was a walk-a-thon. We had to walk five miles. I did not have even one sponsor, but I still had to walk. There were a couple of runners at the school. They had been long-distance runners in high school. They decided they would run the route, which went about 2.5 miles and then doubled back. I admired them, but I didn’t even want to walk. At the start, these 2 guys took off running. The rest of us took off walking. I was in the lead pack. Figured I might as well get it over with as soon as possible. I don’t know how far I had walked when we came upon a convenience store. I and another guy stopped in and bought a pop and sat down to drink it. As we were sitting there, the runners had already run the 2.5 miles and were coming back. I and the other guy fell in behind them and starting running back. As we passed all those lazy walkers, we waved and smiled as they shouted encouragement. Then we went and took a well-deserved nap.

Understandably, after Gary got married our friendship began to deteriorate. Joe became and remains my best friend. I love him like a brother. We only ever had one fight. Not a fistfight but almost. It was over a Rook game. If you went to an IFB college you know what Rook is. Growing up we weren’t allowed to “play cards.” Rook was our Poker. We played a lot of Rook in college and Joe and I were partners. We did not lose. We would not lose. Even if it involved a small amount of “deal manipulation.” The other team always got to cut the deck. It was totally up to them how they cut it. It was random. Except our bitter rivals had this habit of cutting the deck by taking the top card only and placing it on the bottom. That was their choice. They could have cut it any way they wanted. It was free will. However, I was very good at shuffling until I knew that the Rook bird was on top. They could have cut it and it would have ended up anywhere in the deck. But, if it was on top, and they cut it so it was on the bottom and I happened to deal in such a way that I always got the last card, that was not my fault. Joe and I had other secrets too. We played with a “kitty” in the middle. After the cards were dealt, one of us would straighten up the kitty and either push it a little towards the other or back towards our self. If I neatly stacked the pile a little closer to Joe, he was to take the bid, I didn’t have anything. If I moved it a little towards me, then I had a good hand, and it was ok for me to bid unless of course he also had a great hand. We were very good at knowing where the cards were, what had been played, how many of each color were out, what numbers were left. Once we played a joke on Joe. He had to go to the restroom. So we dealt him with the perfect hand. All one color, Rook on down. The hand of your dreams. We waited for Joe to come back. He picked up his cards. His face turned pale. His eyes grew large. The corners of his lips curled up. Then he realized he had been had. If he hadn’t I think I would have pulled a muscle trying not to laugh. The way we played Rook (the game has many variations), you picked up the five cards in the kitty and then you have to discard five cards. I have many faults. They especially come out while playing games. I am obsessive and sarcastic. I often asked my partner if they discarded the right amount of cards. Not to results in an automatic loss. Joe got tired of this. During one match, we were winning as always. We got down to the last hand and Joe had two cards left. We lost. I was mad. The very next hand, I asked him if he had discarded the right amount this time. He got so mad that we almost came to blows. The other team broke us up. We didn’t play together for a while. But he soon got over it. He liked winning too much to stay mad at me for long.

Most of the students who started out single in our college got married before graduation. In fact, for that reason and several other reasons, in the course of four years, I had twenty-three different roommates. Twenty-three in four years! Yes, I was hard to live with, but that wasn’t the reason. We had a large dropout rate, many of my roommates got married, and every year we would be reassigned. We had very strict rules in the dorm. Curfews, inspections, lights out, no TVs (which didn’t stop us from having one for a while), surprise hair checks (above our ears and off our collars) and other minutiae. I managed to break every rule there ever was, including the “six-inch” rule. We were not allowed to be within six inches of the opposite sex. Back then there were only two sexes. I was one of the few, and the proud, who made it through four years of dorm life. Not that I didn’t try to get married. Came close once, but the Lord in His infinite wisdom had other plans (her name is Sharon, my perfect wife). I will tell our tale later.

I mentioned that we had a hair code. In my first year there, the school had a mandatory recall of the school yearbook. It seems that after they were distributed, the college president ordered them confiscated so that two photos could be cut out of each book with a penknife. The first was a photo of a young man who apparently was visiting the campus. He was not a student but his hair was too long for our standards. Since outsiders who viewed the yearbook would not realize that he was not a student, the offending picture had to be removed. The second photo was of a male student taken from a side angle. There was a second male student beside him, but not visible to the camera. However, this second head of hair stuck out behind the first student’s hair making it look like his hair was too long. So it had to be cut out also. As a matter of principle, I told the administration to just keep my book. Now I wish I hadn’t been so principled, I would love to have that “altered” book now.
Living in the dorm was a blast. We had tackle football games in the hallways, grew a mushroom in the shower (it sprang up on its own, it was not transplanted), emptied the fire extinguishers on each other, stayed up all night playing Rook, and even occasionally did something spiritual together.

We had a male faculty member who was single who lived on our wing. We liked him. He treated us like adults. Late one night we were having a shaving cream war. We would hide and then jump out of the dark and spray each other. I was hiding in the water fountain enclave when a figure appeared in the dark. I let him have it. It was him. He could have turned me in (for a lot of things) but he didn’t.

He also happened to be manic-depressive (as it was called back then). While taking his meds, he was very normal. However, about once a year he would attend some type of revival meeting where he would become convinced that if he had enough faith, he wouldn’t need to take his medication. So he would stop. We could always tell. The first thing he would do is stop sleeping and shaving. Then his behavior became more erratic. We tried to help him. One time we picked him up after the police called because he was standing in the middle of an intersection directing traffic, with his shirt off (not a pretty sight). On another occasion, we had to track down his car after he had given the keys away to a homeless guy. Once, he went to the college’s prop room and put on gladiator gear. He then went out onto the chapel’s outdoor balcony and shouted for Bathsheba to come out. We had him committed a couple of times, it was the only way to get him back on his medication. One of my roommates was getting married, so he had just rented an apartment. While we were trying to get “Doc” (He had a Ph.D.) committed, we took him to the apartment to keep him there. I was to stay up all night watching him (he did not sleep). He appeared to doze off. I fell asleep. Soon I was awakened to the sight of him on all fours, straddling me, asking if I wanted to wrestle. I replied in the negative and had no trouble staying awake for the rest of the night.

A group of us went to visit him at the psychiatric hospital. It was a scary place. When we got ready to leave, one of the guys we went with said, “ok get your passes out.” There really weren’t any passes, which all of us knew, but one. He didn’t have a pass. We said if you don’t have a pass, they are not going to let you out. He was freaking out until he figured out the joke was on him.

To the school’s credit, they tried to help “Doc”, but eventually had to release him. He got in his car and drove around the administration building seven times. On the seventh time, he blew his horn all the way around. The walls did not fall down, however.

We had a much older single student who was the dorm supervisor. He had very little tolerance for the foolishness of youth. He had been a truck driver all of his life, who now felt called into the ministry. He told me once that the dispatcher where he worked was a woman. A woman with a very foul mouth. She cursed constantly. Once he told her to please watch her mouth, there were truck drivers present. He oversaw the whole dorm, I was the wing supervisor. We had a guy (Tim) who was constantly in trouble. He was “campused.” Meaning he could not leave the campus unless working. He had a girlfriend in town, she was not a student. He was forbidden to see her (they had been caught breaking the six-inch rule). Since everyone knew his car, he swapped cars with another student so he could go to his girlfriend’s house without being seen there. The only problem was his car broke down while the other student was driving it. So this guy left it on the side of the road. The dorm sup saw it and came looking for the owner. He asked me where Tim was, but I was trying not to snitch. While the dorm sup is in my room asking where Tim was, Tim was outside my (second story) window, throwing snowballs to get my attention, because it was after hours and he was locked out. I looked out my window and shook my head, now is not a good time. Instead, Tim points to the fire escape, for me to let him in. That was a definite no-no. The dorm sup looked out my window and saw footprints in the snow leading to the fire escape. Tim knocked, the dorm sup opened the door and Tim was history.

I played basketball and soccer in college. We tried to play other schools that were similar to ours but occasionally played way out of our league. My worst sports memory was a basketball game against Ohio Northern University. They called wanting to schedule a game because they were in the area playing a Friday night game against a college we had played in the past. They asked for a Saturday afternoon game. Stupidly, we agreed. Little did we realize that the college they were playing on Friday had recently upgraded to NCAA Division III. We weren’t NCAA Division anything. We weren’t even NCCAA. Ohio Northern’s shortest player was taller than our tallest player. To make matters worse, our two starting guards were not allowed to start because of team violations, so I started the one and only basketball game of my career. It was humiliating. Their guard playing against me had at least eight inches on me. The only shot I took, he blocked. Final score, Them 141, Us 40. We lost by over 100 points. You can go to the link above for Ohio Northern and go to the team game records and find how bad it was (look for 1978-79 twice). By the way, I played two seasons and never scored a basket. It’s hard to score from the bench.

We were sports crazy. Although we had intercollegiate sports teams, we also had intramural teams. Instead of fraternities, we had societies. For a few years, my society was the champion in flag football and basketball. We didn’t mind reminding people either. Since I wasn’t much of a player, I was the athletic director. My pastor (& boss) once accused me of having a Napoleon complex. He didn’t use that exact term, but he may have been right. I have struggled with my temper at times. It often comes out in the sporting arena. We had a basketball game scheduled one afternoon after lunch. I was the coach. I was off-campus and needed a ride to get back for the game. They needed me, I was the coach. You can’t play and expect to win without the coach. My ride never showed. I could not believe it! Didn’t they realize they needed me? I was the coach! Since I had no ride, I walked back to campus. It wasn’t that far and I got there at the start of the second half. When I arrived at the gym, I was furious. I went to the top of the bleachers and glared at the team with no coach. To make matters worse, my team won big. I stormed down the bleachers, through the lobby and slammed open the glass doors in the lobby. I hit them as hard as I could. Bad mistake. The door swung around and somehow (the providence of God) smashed into the other glass door, shattering it. That was bad enough, but the president of the college was walking through the other glass doors at the exact same time (providence of God). Up until then, he didn’t know my name. It would cost me more than just the price of a new door.

After one basketball game, in which we demolished our opponents, I had the team run wind sprints, just to rub it in. That landed me yet another trip to the dean’s office. We had “D.C.” which stood for discipline committee. Once a week, the administration would post a list with those who had to report to D.C. I was always on the list. The joke was that before they photocopied the blank sheets to use, they would just type my name on top and then run them off. In my four years at college, I had four different deans of men. Faculty came and went. The president was hard to work for. One I loved, One I hated and the other two were forgettable. With the one, I would appear before D.C. and have a seat and talk my way out of trouble. With the other, I will never forget the first time I came in. I walked into the office and sat down like I always had. He gave me a mean look. He asked if I saw the piece of tape on the floor behind me. He said from now on I was to stand behind the tape when I came in. I was glad I was graduating that year, I may not have made it another year.

I almost didn’t make anyway. I was kicked out before graduation my senior year. I was told to leave but didn’t. And it eventually was forgotten. God was gracious, I didn’t deserve to be let off the hook. I was in the wrong. It was over the King James Version. The student body President, Vice-President and I (the student body chaplain) were all Ruckmanites. The President was a married student, the Vice-President and I lived in the dorm. The Vice-President had a large collection of material put out by Peter Ruckman. Books, commentaries, tapes, all hidden in a footlocker. He was also the young adults’ teacher at the church which ran the college. I filled in for him occasionally. A few weeks before graduation I got the opportunity to teach the young adult class. I abused this privilege by teaching on the “Alexandrian Cult” which is what we called people who did not hold the KJVO position. That included, of course, the pastor who was also the president of the college. So in my arrogance, I was teaching contrary to the pastor (and therefore the church’s) belief. Word got back to the pastor. After chapel that Monday, his secretary was waiting for us and told us to immediately proceed to the president’s office. I had never been in there before. Although it was possible it was an honor, I was pretty sure it was not going to be. The three of us were ushered in to wait. And wait. And wait (nice tactic by the way). In stormed the president and he was hot. I have never seen a face so red. He exploded. We were ungrateful, untrustworthy, dishonest unbelievers. To his credit, he didn’t cuss. He did look at me and say I was so untrustworthy, that he would not leave me alone with his wife’s purse, for fear that I would steal from it. Then he asked the question we were dreading. It was not permitted to have Ruckman material. He looked at the Student Body President, do you have Ruckman books or tapes? No, he did not. Then he looked at me, do you have Ruckman books or tapes. Truthfully, I did not, I used the trunk full that the vice-president had. We held our breath expecting him to ask the VP. But he didn’t. He skipped right over him. Whew! He then proceeded to tell us why he wasn’t KJVO and why we weren’t welcome to stay in school because we believed that heresy. He told us to make up our minds. Be true to our convictions and leave or repent and stay. Then he threw us out of his office. The student body president, vice-president and chaplain.

That Sunday, during his message, he began to blast the fact that there were teachers in this church who were teaching falsehood (that would be me). I was sitting in the Sunday morning service while being the subject of the sermon. He was on a tirade. I remember a friend of mine, who had no idea what was going on, leaning over and saying to me, I’d hate to be that guy. I said, so would I!

That Monday, we were called to a meeting in the college’s vice-president’s office (which strangely enough was bigger than the president’s office.) The three of us heretics were there along with the college president, vice-president and academic dean. At that meeting, the president said as far as he was concerned we were expelled. Then he walked out. That was it. We all looked at each other. What did that mean, we asked. The dean and vice-president replied that they weren’t sure, but not to do anything, it might blow over. We never heard anything about it again. To the president’s credit, he always treated me kindly after that and it was never an issue. I considered him a friend years after graduation. I will admit that I was extremely relieved when I opened that black case at graduation to find my signed diploma inside. To the right is a picture as proof.

Back Home

After graduation, I was hired by my home church as a teacher in their Christian school. I taught seventh and eighth-grade math, history, Bible and Phys Ed. I loved teaching history and the Bible was a horrible math teacher and didn’t mind teaching the boys, physical education class. I also coached the Jr. High basketball team and was the assistant varsity soccer coach.

Jr. High is a tough group to teach. I taught math, Bible, Ohio History and gym. I enjoyed it all except for math. I could do the math, but not explain math. I still wonder how many of them to this day blame their math deficiencies on me. I remember the first time I tried to address a discipline problem. A young lady kept talking in class. I asked her to stay after the bell rang and began to scold her. She immediately began to cry. Please no crying, anything but crying. I told her it was ok, don’t worry about it. I knew from that point on, I was in over my head.

I remember one class period in particular. I had a student named Shane. His mouth was smarter than his mind. He was always making cracks during the lessons. This particular day he was especially vocal. I asked him to stay after class. I explained to him that this was my class, I was in charge. I didn’t need his help. Now the rest of the story.
The biggest problem was the class schedule. We had gym the second to last period of the day and Ohio history the last period. So after running around for 40 minutes, they had to come and sit still for 40 minutes of history. It was impossible to get them to concentrate for the full class period. So the truth was, I usually prepared for about 20 minutes, figuring if I got through that much I would be successful.

On the day that I had spoken to Shane, we had gym (if I remember correctly we were playing basketball). When we came back to class for Ohio History I immediately noticed that everyone was sitting quietly at their desks. I began to teach. There were no interruptions. I taught my 20 minutes of material and had time left. I said, well that’s enough for today; you may talk among yourselves until the bell rings. Nobody moved. Nobody said a peep. They just sat there until the bell rang. Shane was the last one to leave. He stepped up to my desk. He said, “Whose class is it?” And walked out.

I was not married. It was while teaching I met my future wife. She was also at the Christian school, but not as a teacher, as a student. No, not one of my students, she was a senior. We didn’t date till after graduation, but we did flirt. Now, of course, I would be deemed a sexual predator or at least a stalker. I always managed to be in the gym during my break, when she was there being a teacher’s helper. She helped me grade papers. Actually she had known my brother and sister from school for years, but we had never met. When she came in the eighth grade, I had already left for college. She and my sister were in the same grade. My best friend Joe introduced us the summer I came home after graduation. He told me he had met this girl that I should meet. Her name was Sharon. The youth group was about to leave on a bus to take a short-term mission trip to Mexico. He introduced us as she was getting on the bus. She was a babe. She had great legs. I was smitten. She graduated in June and we were married in April. I was 23, she was not quite 19.

We had to get married. No, not because she was pregnant! I was in the process of becoming the church’s youth pastor. The Senior Pastor did not believe the youth pastor should be single. That presented a dilemma. He would not offer me a full-time position unless I was married. My wife says our pastor arranged our marriage. Not true, but he certainly did speed up the engagement. By the next school year, I was no longer teaching at the Academy but was in full-time ministry as a Youth Pastor. I had no idea what I was doing. They should not make youth pastors out of people who have never had teenagers themselves. I was just a kid myself and yet was supposed to be the expert on raising kids. I felt the same way when I began pastoring at the age of 27. I was supposed to tell people how to have a successful marriage, how to raise godly kids, how to manage finances, etc, yet had no experience in any of that. I did have the Bible, however. I choose to simply teach and preach the Bible. I have tried to the best of my ability to keep my opinions and preferences out of my preaching. I seldom tell stories while preaching, that is why writing this story has been so awkward to me. Many of these things I have never told anybody, and certainly not from the pulpit. It was becoming a pastor for the first time and having to stick to the Bible that led to many of the changes in ministry and philosophy. I will deal with that later on.

My wife married into the staff of a large church. There is a lot of pressure on the staff of a large church. Even more in our situation. My wife always handled it well. I admire her for that. Being 19 years old and put on a pedestal is not easy. There was a lot expected of her. She went far and beyond the call of duty.

Soon after I joined the staff, our church decided to build a new building, including a 1500 seat auditorium, debt-free! It was an amazing accomplishment and extremely hard on the staff. For the first 18 months of our marriage, I put in 12-14 hour days. We were called upon to do our ministry while putting in time at the building site. We were free laborers. Not really free, but high paid gofers. Not really high paid either. Every night (except church nights) and every day off was put in at the building site. I realized I had gone to college to learn all the wrong things. I should have studied mixing mud (mortar), carrying brick, shoveling stone, hanging drywall, and various sundry duties. I don’t regret it now, but I hated it then.

A few years ago I was back at my home church for my nephew’s graduation. My pastor (now retired from the pastorate) was there. I met a man who asked when I served on staff. I replied, “1981-1987.” He said what did you do? I said “Construction.” My pastor replied, “glad to hear you say that because I never know what you did.” When my pastor had something for you to do which wasn’t in your job description (actually everything was in your job description), he would start by asking if you loved Jesus. That always irritated me, so I would respond, “I don’t know, what does Jesus want me to do this time?” My bad attitude must have been rubbing off on another staff member because one day my pastor approached him and said, “Do you love Jesus?” My co-worker replied, “what does Jesus want me to do?” My pastor shot back, “Jesus wants you to stop hanging around Greg.”

My family and the pastor went way back. I grew up at the church. My grandparents went there also. My grandmother and the pastor had a good relationship. My pastor is horrible at telling jokes. Especially from the pulpit. He would always mess up the punch line. The joke never turned out funny, but him messing it up was always funny. They used to sell these little battery-operated laughing boxes. When you hit the button, this voice would start laughing. The longer you played it, the more you couldn’t help but laugh along. Does anybody remember those? Well, one Sunday, my grandmother brought her’s to church. When my pastor tried to tell a joke she hit the button. Before long, the whole congregation was laughing hysterically. Back to the story, my wife and I did not have a day off together for the first year of our marriage. It was beginning to take a toll. My wife shared her frustration with my mom and grandmother. Shortly thereafter, my wife and I were both called into the pastor’s office. It seems grandmother had chewed out the pastor for not giving me a day off. He was not happy. He said we should have gone to him. He made my wife cry. I starting getting days off after that.

Another unpleasant memory from those days was how the pastor would have a certain staff member call me to give me assignments to do on my day off. I got so I hated answering the phone and hearing his voice (how I wish we had caller id back then!). I didn’t work for him, yet I got to despising him for being the bearer of bad news. I finally went to my pastor and told him he was being unfair to this other staff member because this person was the recipient of hard feelings because he was bearing the brunt of being the bad guy. I told my pastor that I didn’t work for this fellow and from now on, I felt the pastor should call me if he needed me to do something on my day off. To his credit, he was the one who called me from then on. Did I mention I wished we had caller id back then? My pastor was a very early riser. He had this habit of calling very early in the morning (like 6:00 am). Every single time he would say, “were you sleeping?” And every single time I would say “no, I was praying.” Of course, I was sleeping.

I once was blind, but now I see. During the construction of the new building, I was assigned to assist a welder. I didn’t know anything about welding. I wasn’t issued any protective goggles. All I was told was not to look at the light. We worked together for hours. That night, about 1:00 am I awoke in pain. I had trouble opening my eyes. I stumbled to the bathroom. I splashed water into my eyes. That was not the thing to do. The pain was horrible. I could not open my eyes. I yelled for my wife. She rushed me to the emergency room. As soon as the doctor saw me he said, “Were you helping someone weld today?” “Yes,” I replied. He said I had welder’s flash. He put some kind of suave in them and bandaged them shut. I was blind for 2 days. Since my wife was working, I went and stayed at my mom’s house during the day. My sister took revenge for my years of tormenting her by slipping me horrible things to eat.

There was a man at the church who had been a former pastor who was there to be “restored” after he had an affair. He was a heavy equipment operator. He did much of the digging for the new construction. He and I did not get along. We called him “Leg Man” because he went to the school principal and turned in the names of girls who he thought their dresses were too short. He went to one of the women at church and told her that the slit in her skirt was too high. Building a building without using a lot of outside contractors led to a lot of jobs being done poorly and being done over. We had a leaking wall. We needed to dig down to the foundation and patch it with tar. This man dug out some and then said that the rest would have been dug by hand, and gave me the job. After removing the mud, I covered the wall with tar. He replaced the dirt and the wall continued to leak. It had to be dug out again. The man said he could only get so close, so I would have to do the rest by hand. He said he could not possibly get any closer. I knew he could. I know he left as much for me to dig as he could get away with. So back I went. Did it all over again. Still leaked. This time, amazingly, he could dig right next to the wall. And you don’t believe in miracles. He eventually went back into the pastorate, then ran off with the church secretary.

The building had a seventy-foot tower covered with stone. There was scaffolding all around it, but for some reason, the two sections of scaffolding didn’t match up exactly. One day I was carrying a bucket of stone on the scaffolding. As I went to step from one section to the next, there was just the slightest difference in height. The section I was stepping onto was just a little lower than the one I had been walking on. For just that split second, it felt like I had accidentally stepped off the edge of the scaffolding. I thought I was falling to my death. After the tower was finished, a ten-foot-tall metal cross was attached to the outside. The music pastor and I had the job of climbing the scaffolding and drilling holes into where the bolts were to go to fasten the cross to the tower. We were obviously the best choice for the job (not). It was a large drill motor. I tied it off to the scaffold, in case I dropped it. We were not tied to the scaffold, however. As I was drilling, the bit got stuck and the drill began to twist. It was wrenched from my hands and I started to fall. I did the logical thing and grabbed on to the music pastor to keep me from falling. As we both started to fall, he was able to grab on the scaffolding. We sat there and did not move for a long time. We both thought we were dead. If I died in the line of duty would that qualify as a martyrs’ death? They could always say, he died building the church.

In due time, the building was completed. The last thing to be done was finishing the classrooms. Each class was assigned to get their room finished by the first service. We put hours into the youth room. We designed and painted it just like we wanted. The other youth workers and I worked hard to complete it on time. Shortly after we moved into the new building, they moved us into a different room.

One of the things I was privileged to do during my time there was to baptize believers. I had led a young man to Christ who was very tall. He was probably about 6’7″ being an all-state basketball and football player. While we were waiting to get into the baptistery, I warned him that when he came out, there might be a few laughs because of the difference in heights. I didn’t want him to feel bad, I said they would be laughing at me. His unsaved family was in attendance. I should also mention that the pastor was not there that morning. This is significant because the congregation always took their cues from him as he sat on the platform. If he didn’t laugh, no one else would either. I had already baptized several when this young man walked down into the pool. The entire congregation roared in laughter. I baptized him with no difficulty, but as he came out of the water he slung his hair to dry off, drenching the choir. The congregation laughed again. It was funny. I had no problem but was worried his family would be embarrassed. That week I told the pastor what had happened. I could tell he was not pleased. The next Sunday, in his sermon, he said something like “some things are sacred to me. Like, I would never laugh at a baptism, would you?” Not anymore. By the way, I still love baptizing people and every time I make a joke and get people to laugh. It is a joyous occasion, why not enjoy it?

The church had a softball team. Being a large church, we obviously had a much larger talent pool. The league we were in was made up of much smaller churches. They didn’t stand a chance. We took softball very seriously and did not mind beating the other teams by as much as possible. This rightly led to a lot of hard feelings, but we enjoyed it. After going 16(wins) & 1(loss) for the season, we decided to leave the church league and join a league that played at a new multi-field complex, complete with outfield fences, lights, and scoreboards. I went down to the park to sign us up for the next season. The man asked which division? I think there were A,B,C,&D, and each division had a high and low level. I said, well we are pretty good. Sign us up for B. He smiled. He said that was too high, he would sign us up for low C and if we did well, we could move up. That year we went 1 & 16. Quite a turnaround! The next year we didn’t have a church team, so I joined a team sponsored by a local bank that some of our players worked at. In the first game, I went 0 for 4. That, of course, is horrible for softball. After the game, I stopped by the church to pick up something. I was still in uniform. My pastor was there. He looked at my uniform. He asked what I was wearing. I told him I played softball for the bank. He said, “In the beer league?” I said, “no, it’s not a beer league.” He replied, “do some of the players drink beer after the game?” I responded, “Probably, but I don’t, and it’s not a beer league.” He said I could not play anymore, he didn’t want his staff playing in a beer league. I asked if I could play one more night, please don’t make me retire with an 0-fer (Zero for four batting). I had to quit with a .000 batting average. How embarrassing.

My pastor was not a sports fan. He never talked sports, was oblivious concerning sports. Here’s an example. Before I left the church to go pastor a church in Florida, the pastor’s son came on staff to eventually take my place. We always had an early Sunday Morning staff meeting in the pastor’s office before the Sunday services. One Sunday morning, we were meeting and his son (Gary) told how his kids how been sick and how his wife had not been out of the house for days and hadn’t been to church in a couple of weeks. He asked if it would be alright for him to stay home that evening and let his wife come to church. The pastor (his dad) said that seemed OK. We (there were probably 5 or 6 of us on the pastoral staff) all started laughing. The pastor asked what was so funny. I replied that it was kind of convenient since the Superbowl happened to be on that night. The pastor changed his mind and Gary came to church that evening. (Of course, this was long before the Superbowl became the national holiday it is today).

Did I mention I am a big Cincinnati Sports fan? When Pete Rose was chasing the all-time hits record, during the offseason, my brother and I looked ahead to the upcoming season and bought tickets to several games in which we projected that Pete might set the record. There was this Tuesday night game at Riverfront after an off day on Monday following a long road trip. Anybody who loved Pete and knew his love for Cincinnati knew Pete would not allow himself to break the record while playing an away game. Since he was a player/manager, he could control his number of at-bats. Sure enough, on a Sunday night in Chicago, Pete tied Ty Cobb for the all-time number of hits in the Major Leagues. Tuesday was the big day and my brother and I had tickets! On our way into the sold-out stadium, where the networks were carrying each at-bat live and where the commissioner of baseball was in attendance, people were begging for tickets. I think we were offered as much as $500. No way was I selling that ticket. This was the (nonspiritual & non-marital) highlight of my entire existence. We were so pumped. Every time Pete came to bat the capacity crowd roared, the cameras flashed and TV broadcasts were interrupted. Four times this happened and four times we sat down disappointed. 0 for 4. He broke the record the next night. I couldn’t even see it on TV because it was visitation night at the church, so I sat in the parking lot at UDF and listened to it on the radio.

That wasn’t the only big Red’s moment I missed. Besides Pete, my other big hero was Johnny Bench. Greatest catcher ever. I hadn’t been married long when Bench announced his retirement. Again, my brother and I bought tickets, but this time we had to bring our wives. Newlywed mistake. The Reds were playing the Astros. Johnny had been playing third base (if management had let him play first, he would not have been retiring), but for this game, he played catcher one last time. Somewhere around the fourth inning, my wife began to nag me about needing something to drink. She did not understand what a momentous occasion this was, she should be fasting. She continued to nag me (I love you honey). Finally, the Astros were coming to bat. I figured I had plenty of time to get to the concession stand and back before the Reds were up, I mean what idiot would be at the concession stand at such a time as this! Imagine my surprise when I find a large line. I finally arrived at the window and placed my order. At the very instant I received my wife’s drink, the stadium erupted. It literally shook. I know what had happened. I rushed up the stairs, just in time to see Johnny come out of the dugout and tip his cap. His last home run and I am buying my wife a Pepsi. When I got to the top of the steps a guy I did not even know looked at me, he said, “did you miss it?” I couldn’t even speak, but I managed to nod my head. He said, “I am so sorry.” I said, “not as sorry as my ex-wife is going to be.” We did not own a television in those days. So I did not see the replay on the news, in fact, I have never seen number 398. No, we have never been to a ball game together again. Yes, we are still married.

I have always worked Sundays. Therefore, I have had very few opportunities to go to Bengal’s games. I have gone to exactly one Sunday game. The Bengals were playing Joe Montana and the Forty-niners. To go to the game, my brother and I had to leave after the morning service and I had to be back by Sunday night pre-service prayer meeting (5:00 pm). We arrived at the game just a little after kick-off. Late in the fourth quarter, the Bengals had a five-point lead and the ball. There was very little time remaining on the clock. There was no way they could lose. We left the stadium and headed for our car. As we were walking down Pete Rose Way we heard a collective groan escape from the stadium. We stared at each other in confusion. About this time a guy drove by in a pickup truck. He yelled out the window, the Bengals lost! No way, it was impossible. We ran to the car and turned on the radio. Long time Bengals announcer Phil Samp was incredulous. The Bengals had failed to run out the clock and turned the ball over on downs with ONE second remaining. Montana hit Rice for a TD. Bengals lose. Now the rest of the story…

The next day I am riding in the car with the pastor (i.e. my boss). He states what an incredible game that was yesterday. Now he never ever talked about football. We never discussed sports (except boxing). Now I am between a rock and a hard place. Does he know I went to the game? Is he waiting for me to fess up? If I don’t admit I went, what will the fallout be? If I do fess up and he doesn’t know I went, then what will be the repercussions? Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

What to do? The pressure was intense, he kept talking about it. Finally, I sobbed, yes I know, I was there! It got eerily quiet. He didn’t know I was in attendance at the game. I have shot myself in the foot. The next day the staff all got a letter in our mailboxes. It had one point. We do not go to sporting events on the Lord’s Day!

Married Life

On April 23, 1983, Sharon and I were married. Besides being a beautiful, Christian young lady, she was the perfect pastor’s wife. She could type, sing and play the piano! One of the best magazine cartoons I’ve seen, shows a woman pastor being interviewed by a pulpit committee. They ask her, “so does your husband play the piano?” I know there have been many times that Sharon wishes she didn’t play the piano because for many years she was never able to worship like everybody else, but always had things to do. I accept that as coming with the territory as a pastor, but I realize she wasn’t called to be a pastor, she just married one. She has been a huge part of my ministry while being a godly wife and mother.

Poor Sharon, I am not a romantic. I didn’t consult her about her style of engagement ring, I didn’t propose to her during a candlelight dinner. I did everything wrong. I didn’t have any money saved up for a real honeymoon. God has blessed us with two fine sons-in-law. They did everything right. I picked the perfect rings, asked my permission first and then surprised my daughters with romantic proposals. It was all very nice and memorable. I was a dope. We never did have a real honeymoon and the 25th-anniversary cruise we talked about taking for years still hasn’t happened. I am amazed at how quickly time flies.

We had about 600 people at our wedding. Our church was in the midst of a church-wide campaign called, “Please Him” taken from John 8:29. In our wedding pictures, there is this large banner above our heads that reads, “Please Him.” She always has. When Sharon went back to work after the wedding and showed the wedding pictures to her unchurched co-workers, they thought the banner was part of the wedding decorations. Everything they thought about fundamentalism was true after all.

On Sunday mornings the pastoral staff had to wear suits, ties and white shirts. But dress codes didn’t just apply to us men. The wives of the pastors had a dress code too. Ours just applied to church time, the wives were 24/7. Well, thankfully not at bedtime. Pantyhose had to be worn to all church functions, including the 4th of July picnics. Sharon had graduated from the church’s school so she was used to wearing culottes and no slacks, but dressing up every time you’re in public was a chore. Yes, we still believe in modesty.

This is a good time to clarify something. I don’t regret my time spent on the staff at my home church. I will be eternally grateful that my pastor hired a 21-year-old kid, that he overlooked my blunders. I learned a lot. My pastor was my mentor. We have a good relationship. He taught me a lot about leadership. He taught me to have a high work ethic (as did my dad) and regular office hours. He taught me to have a love for missions and a heart for missionaries. He taught me to have compassion on the sick and elderly. I am who I am today because of my time spent there. I am a pastor because of him. I believe I am the logical outcome of what I was taught. I was taught to love the Word of God. I was taught that the Bible is to be the final standard. I was taught to be an independent thinker. I am all of those, but being that has led me to see things differently. My love for the Word prevents me from preaching man’s opinion as if it is the gospel truth. It keeps me from holding to the IFB party line. I am not an Independent Fundamental Baptist anymore. I do not want to be in that movement. However, I am as independent, fundamental and baptistic has ever, in fact maybe more so. I know what the fundamentals of our faith are, and they have nothing to do with clothing or hair or music styles, or Bible versions. I am independent enough to stand on what I know the Bible teaches while others who should know better refuse to speak up. I know that Baptists historically were Calvinists.

My time at my home church prepared me to make decisions later in life that changed me. I don’t regret that. Later, I will detail how becoming a pastor forced me to confront some of the things I was taught to hold dear. I will explain what and why I changed.

Parenthood

January 11, 1986, was one of the happiest days of my life. January 11, 1986, was one of the saddest days of my life. Every January 11 since 1986 has been a day of celebration. Every January 11 since 1986 has been twinged with “what if?” January 11, 1986, started out earlier than most days. About 5 o’clock in the morning, my wife woke me, saying she thought she was in labor. Now, she wasn’t due until the end of February, so I said what every loving, concerned, intelligent man would say, I told her to go back to sleep. She did what every submissive, patient, loving wife would do, she called her mother. Her mother responded, what are you calling me for, you should be on your way to the hospital. So off we went. The hospital was about thirty minutes away via the expressway. I remember speeding along the expressway, hoping a policeman would pull me over, so I could say, “My wife’s having twins!” Then he would say, follow me! And I would fly behind a police escort all the way to Christ Hospital. No such luck.

Side note. On the day I found out that we were having multiple births, I did wreck our brand new car. I can still recall the details vividly. I was driving down the road and noticed that a cup of pop had soaked through and filled our holder with pop. So as I was trying to clean it up with some Kleenex, I wasn’t watching the road. Like it was in slow motion, I looked up to see that I had missed a slight curve and was headed straight for a telephone pole. I can remember glancing to my left and seeing a man watering his lawn and watching me head for the pole. I remember thinking, he must think I am an idiot. I hit the pole head-on, snapped it in half. Live wires were draped over the hood. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, and it was before airbags, but by the grace of God, I wasn’t too badly injured. Sprained wrists (bent the steering wheel) and stitches in a busted chin. The man ran over and said he had called the police, but he wasn’t going to touch the car (totaled by the way) because of the wires. Eventually, they got me out with the “jaws of life.” The EMTs insisted on a neck brace and a backboard on the way to the hospital, in spite of my protests. In the ambulance, I asked them if they were going to check my underwear. Mom always said to wear clean underwear, you’d never know when you might be in an accident. I was quite disappointed to find that they didn’t check to make sure. All that laundry for nothing.

Sharon’s OBGYN met us at the hospital. He said that being six weeks early, that they would give her medicine in an IV to stop the contractions and hopefully buy more time. So they started the meds. Later he came in with a portable sonogram machine to check on the babies. He grew very quiet. He kept going over the same area. He looked puzzled. Eventually, he said that these small machines weren’t very accurate (sonograms then looked nothing like today’s!) and that he was sending us downstairs to the big machine. They wheeled Sharon downstairs with me following. For a reason I have never understood, the technician made me wait outside, as she did the exam. I waited in the hallway for a long time. Suddenly she came rushing out of the room and ran down the hall. When she returned she was with two doctors. A few minutes later the doctors came out into the hallway. “Mr. Wilson, your wife is having triplets.” We were expecting twins. They continued, “One of them is not viable.” I replied, “You mean one is dead?” “Yes, and we need to deliver the others immediately because they are in distress.” Cynthia Suzanne was stillborn. Jacqueline Nicole and Lauren Danielle were born at 3 lbs and 4 oz but otherwise healthy. Six weeks later we brought them home. And now they are gone, with families of their own. Six and a half years later God gave us a son, Christopher Brett. They won’t admit it, but every dad wants a boy. God gave me a fine son and I am proud of him.

When the twins were about three years old and we were living in another state, The OBGYN that delivered the twins called our home. He said that one of the doctors who had assisted him in the birth of the girls had recently died of AIDS. He felt that it would be prudent for Sharon to be tested for the virus. So we went to the doctor for her to have an AIDS test. This was in the early days of the AIDS scare, everybody was terrified of the word. The test had to be sent to the lab and the results would take two (nerve-wracking) weeks. A few days later, the phone rang at my office at church. Why they rang that number I do not know, but they asked for Sharon Wilson. I said this is her husband. The person calling replied that she had the results of the test, but that she could not tell me! I had to have Sharon call. We lived in a parsonage. I remember walking from the church to my house with a lump in my throat. One thought was in my head. If it had been good news, the lady would have told me. Since she had to tell Sharon, it must be bad news. It was the longest walk of my life. Nonchalantly I walked in the door and said, Oh yeah, the doctor called, you are supposed to call them back. No big deal. I didn’t tell her I was nauseous with worry. She called, everything was fine, praise the Lord.

Christopher has always been very insightful. He is a thinker. When he was five years old, the church was in the process of selling our property and relocating. The membership had given a unanimous vote to proceed. A man started coming during this time, who was not a member and was very vocal about his belief that we should not be wasting money on a new building. One evening during a Bible study, he used the opportunity to express publicly his disagreement with the church’s direction. I finally had enough. After the service, I asked him and the deacons to join me in my office. I proceeded to explain to him in no uncertain terms that what he has just done was inappropriate and also that since he was not a member it was none of his business. I then told him to keep his mouth shut or do not come back to the services. After everyone left my office, I found Christopher hiding under my desk! He had heard the whole ordeal. On the way home, he said to his mom, “Daddy talked to that man like he was his daddy!”

When he was younger, Christopher was fascinated by the fact that my job was at the church. He realized this was not normal. He asked me how I got paid. I told him that I got a paycheck just like everybody else. He wanted to know where the paycheck came from. I told him the church paid me. How did the church pay me? I told him that the men took up the offering and the treasurer deposited it in the bank and then wrote me a check. That week he was over at the house of a couple in the church. They wanted to order pizza but didn’t have any cash. Christopher said, why don’t you do like my daddy does for cash, he gets it out of the offering plate!

Christopher and I went to see the movie Valkyrie recently. It is a true story about a failed assassination attempt on Hitler. On the ride home, he asked me what I thought the effect would have been on the war if the plot had succeeded. I said, not much, some lives saved, but the war was almost over by that time, so not a huge difference. He said I was wrong. If the assassination had been successful and Germany had surrendered then, Russia would have never made it to Germany and there would have never been a Berlin Wall or a communist East Germany, and the U.S.S.R would have been radically altered. Wow. I told you he was a thinker.

I was reading a book in which the author was making the point that TV executives were in the business of selling viewers, not commercials. The commercials sell themselves (i.e. The Superbowl) if there are enough viewers. So what really was being sold was us. I had never thought of it that way. That day, as Christopher and I were driving somewhere, I told him I had read something that was profound. I asked him, what are TV executives selling? He thought for a moment and then replied. Us. I said what? He said yea if we aren’t watching, nobody is going to purchase commercial time, so they aren’t selling commercials, they are selling us. Little brat.

First Pastorate

In December of 1987, after serving seven years at my home church, I was called to be the new pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Ft. Pierce, Florida. It was a big change and it changed me. I would say changed for the good, others would say for the bad. When I was the youth pastor at my home church, I was assisted by a large number of youth workers. I had as many as 13 couples at a time, working in the Jr. & Sr. High ministries (by the way, five of those couples ended up divorced). We often had over 100 kids attend youth group activities. I remember my first service at Immanuel. As I scanned the crowd, it dawned on me that there were fewer people in attendance that night than I had working for me in the youth ministry. There were other shocks about to come.

Immanuel Baptist had a tumultuous history. Under the founding pastor, it had grown to nearly 400 attendees. It had a record high attendance of over 1,000 (remember it was in the heyday of the bus ministry era). The church was situated on a nice piece of property and had an auditorium that sat about 300 and a nice, but unfinished Sunday School wing that housed a small Christian School. It’s better days were behind it. By the time I arrived on the scene, the attendance (not counting the bus ministry) was about 30-40 and we were about to go broke.

I had no idea (at the age of 27) what I was getting into. All I knew was, I wanted to pastor and they would have me. That was enough. I don’t regret it, although I would do so many things differently now. God was gracious to us for the five years I was there. We didn’t always get paid, and our son was born without any maternity insurance coverage, which put us in a financial hole that we have never really recovered from (Sharon & I were totally debt-free before he was born, but of course we lived in a parsonage).

Twelve years after starting the church, the founding pastor left to become a traveling evangelist. The church then called a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I don’t fault anybody but him (I will call him Dr. Wolf, he was another of those fundamentalist doctors). However, there were signs that Dr. Wolf should not have been called. He had been a candidate while pastoring another congregation up north. Another man was called by Immanuel to become the pastor, so Dr. Wolf took a church in the Northeast. After Dr. Wolf had been there for one month, the man who Immanuel called decided not to accept. Immanuel then contacted Dr. Wolf and offered him the position, which he immediately took, leaving his new flock behind. Obviously a hireling, as would become more evident.

I can only report on what I have been told. I believe the things I am about to say are true because I lived the aftermath. During his time at Immanuel, Dr. Wolf embezzled money, committed insurance fraud, had an extramarital affair and punched the school principal in the face before a church business meeting. He often lost his temper, challenged others to fight him during Christian School athletic events and lied about many things. Of course, I found out most of this after I became pastor. His legacy was a ruined reputation for Immanuel Baptist Church (some of these transgressions made the media). Here is the first thing I would do differently. We should have changed the name of the church. Every time I would invite someone to church, they would say, “Isn’t that the church where…?” When we did manage to get someone to attend, they were greeted with a 300 seat auditorium with less than 50 people in it. So, the second thing I should have done was somehow remodeled the size of the auditorium. Perhaps removed pews, added walls, used a different configuration, anything. Guests in a mostly empty auditorium quickly realize something is amiss, besides the impossibility of filling that space with good sounding singing, etc.

Shortly after becoming the pastor, we got a notice that the church’s electric bill was overdue and they were going to shut off the power. I called the power company to see if we could work something out. They said they would check and get back with me. They called me back to say that for a long time we had mistakenly been billed for a street light that wasn’t really on our property. After crediting us with the refund, we were paid in full! The next crisis was when I discovered that the church had not been able to make regular payments into the church bond “sinking fund” and there were bonds due with no money to pay them off. Add to that fact, none of the bondholders had anything to do with Immanuel any more! Again, God graciously intervened. I was able to track down the bondholders, several of them agreed to not cash them and instead give them back (which they did not have to do). The rest was held by one old man in town who had been friends with the founding pastor, but who was not a believer and had never attended Immanuel. The founding pastor put in a good word for me and the man agreed to hold the bonds until we were able to pay (which we eventually did). Praise the Lord!

So, as I said, a big change from what I was used to. Youth pastors never have to worry about church finances. Youth pastors benefit from the good reputation of the church. Youth pastors don’t have to worry about much. And they don’t have to preach four times a week. This led to the next big change. Me!

I am a pastor because God gifted me to be one. I don’t know what I think any more about the “call.” If the only thing I had to go on was that at the age of 12 I felt “called” to preach, I would not still be doing it. If a 12-year-old boy came to me and said he felt “called” to preach, I would tell him not so fast! I am still pastoring because that gift has been reaffirmed many times. I have been very blessed by those who have been blessed by my preaching and teaching. I know God gifted me to teach the Bible. I am a pastor because of God and because of my pastor. He inspired me, encouraged me, mentored me, and pointed me toward the pastorate. However, I am the pastor I am today, because of John MacArthur. I know some of you reading this are thinking that is what went wrong with me. So be it. I was not raised on expository preaching, in fact, we were warned against it. When I discovered the joy, the power, the thrill of expository preaching, I was a changed man. I began to understand what Paul meant when he said: “Preach the Word!” I began to comprehend that the authority was in the word preached, not the preacher. I have no authority outside of God’s word. My opinions, my preferences, my likes and dislikes have no authority. I am not to preach the opinions of men, but the Word of God.

This revelation led to a crisis in my life. I no longer could preach on (actually against) many of the Independent Fundamental Baptist themes. Women wearing slacks, going to the movies, card playing, smoking, dancing, mixed bathing (swimming) just weren’t addressed in the Bible. I wanted to preach the Bible. I could not in good conscience preach against these things, they were only man’s opinion. Now I know there are IFBs that don’t preach these things. I just didn’t know it then.

I love to read. Leaders are readers. Not all IFBs are readers. I had an IFB evangelist brag to me that he never read a book in his life, only the KJV Bible. I believed him, his preaching showed it. I had a young pastor visit our church while on vacation. I took him into my office to talk. He noticed all my books. He said until he had read everything John R. Rice had written, he wasn’t going to read anything else. I thought he was joking. I laughed, and he got upset.

My father and my pastor passed on their love for reading to me. I began to see the bigger picture, and that there were good, Bible-believing, separated Christians outside of IFBs. In fact, their books were deep, not the pablum I had been exposed to in college. I began to read real theology. It stretched me, challenged me, changed me. Which led to my next crisis of faith. How could all these godly theologians be so wrong about the Bible? I mean the King James Bible. Didn’t they know that other versions were perversions? How could they be so blind? Wait, was it possible that I was the one blind?

I had left the Ruckmanism behind after college. I now took the Textus Receptus approach. The KJV wasn’t perfect, but it was based on better manuscripts. So I started to read about textual criticism. I studied the difference between the Textus Receptus and the Majority Text. I began to waver in my convictions. However, I still was not ready to leave the KJV fold, at least not while I was pastoring a church that had been taught the KJV only position.

I spent a month in Haiti one week. I was only there for seven days, but it seemed much longer. I took a short term mission trip with another pastor friend to visit his missionary in Haiti. It was quite an adventure. To start with, we were warned that the Airline that flew into Haiti often overbooked, so it was advisable to get to the airport very early, to ensure you got a seat on your flight. We arrived at our gate at least an hour early. There was no one else there. We sat down to wait right next to the gate. We would be the first three guys (he brought another man from his church) in line. Gradually the seating area began to fill up. Then it became crowded. We were glad to be right next to the boarding area. We were perched on the edge of our seats ready to spring into action. Finally, an employee stepped behind the counter. He grabbed the microphone and began to talk in Creole. Everybody except us was from Haiti. So they used Creole before English. So everybody got in line while we sat there wondering what the guy was saying. After waiting for over an hour, we were the last in line. As we boarded, the stewardess asked us (the only three white guys) if we were together! I said, what gave it away? This was the beginning of the “boom box” era. Everybody in line, except us, had a boom box as their carry on. I am not kidding. I guess boom boxes were hard to get in Haiti, so if you get to the states, pick one up and bring it home.

My pastor friend was a very large man. He weighed over 300 pounds. You don’t see any fat people in Haiti. It is such a poor country. In fact, the missionary told us he didn’t any longer bring the Haitian pastors to the states because once they actually experienced our standard of living, it ruined them. They did not want to go back and live like a Haitian. He told me of one Haitian pastor standing in the food aisle at the grocery store in tears looking at all the food. The only slightly overweight person we saw in Haiti was an army officer. Undoubtedly, he ate at other people’s expense. It was definitely a military state at that time. You had to have your “papers” and a bribe to move around the country.

They called my pastor friend “gro blonde” (my transliteration). It meant “big whitey.” People stared at him everywhere we went. They would follow him around and try to poke him. He was the Pillsbury doughboy personified. We were in a taxi in Port-au-prince. I think we were stopped at the only traffic light in Haiti. People began to congregate on the corner to look into the taxi. There were waving at passerbys to come and look. You don’t see many white people in Haiti to start with, but fat white people are a special treat.

We were speaking at a national pastor’s training camp in the mountains. To get there, we had to cross a river (no bridge). The water was up, but the missionary who was driving the jeep said not to worry. We got about 1/3 of the way across when water began to flow in. The jeep started to float. This was quite a feat considering “gro blond” was in it. We were no longer heading across the river, but down it! We were told to abandon ship. There was a group of Haitian men on the other side watching this unfold. I know they were thinking, stupid Americans. I grabbed the closest briefcase and held it over my head. My pastor friend grabbed a briefcase and held it over his head. We began to walk across the river. The current was strong. I did not think I was going to make it. I was going to drown for the cause of Christ. It was very scary. When we made it across, we had saved each other’s briefcases (which held our Bibles), but everything else was wet. We paid the men that were standing there laughing to get a rope and pull the jeep to shore.

Speaking of the river, I will never forget the scene. Upstream there were some folks using the river as a toilet. A little downstream, some people were taking a bath. Downstream from there, some women were washing their dishes. I thought, could you at least reverse that process, please.

We stayed in a compound in a small mountain village. The only electric power was from a generator that only ran a few hours a day. The only toilet was an outhouse that was exclusively for the guest pastors. We slept in a concrete block storage room. We had to bring our own food and water. At night, it was pitch black. You could hear the voodoo drums. My pastor friend and I slept on cots in the storage room. It held our food supplies. It was as black as could be inside. I could hear the rats rummaging through our cans. As I was lying there in the dark, something landed on my chest. It was there for a few seconds then jumped off. I knew it had to be a rat. I said to my friend, are you awake? He just snored. I stayed awake the rest of the evening worrying that another rat was going to jump on me and start eating my face. In the morning, my friend asked if I had said something during the night. I said yea. He said, well I remember flopping my arm over and hitting you in the chest but was too tired to worry about it. That’s ok, I did enough worrying for both of us.

On our last day, we were staying in Port-au-prince. Our room had a short wave radio. We were listening to an American newscast. You may have read that I was a big Pete Rose fan. The baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti had only a few days ago banned Pete Rose from baseball. Six days later, Mr. Giamatti was dead. I said to my friend “touch not the Lord’s anointed.”

While living in Florida, we often heard about the attempts of Haitians to reach the United States. Whole families would try to cross over in makeshift rafts. Many would not survive the journey. I used to wonder why they would attempt such a dangerous trip. Until I visited Haiti. I am telling you, the Haitian who makes it to the United States and who lives under a freeway overpass has it better off than he did in Haiti.

One afternoon, the secretary buzzed my office and told me that there was a very famous (now infamous) preacher on the phone who wanted to talk to me. Now, I am a joker. I have played many practical jokes. I didn’t believe that this big shot preacher was really calling little old me. I figured it had to be one of my buddies, so I picked up the phone, “Dr. So and So, what a joy to speak to you!” The man began to talk small talk. He was trying to be gracious. I, however, am trying to figure out from the voice who this was pulling my leg. I finally decided it was a friend of mine name Bob _____. I interrupted, Dr. So and So, do you know Bob ______? No, he replied, don’t believe I do. Well, I said, he’s a real jerk. Silence filled the phone line. After a few awkward moments, the man said, well the reason I am calling is, I call all the IFB preachers in Florida and invite them to bring their young people to our church camp. It dawns on me, I am an idiot. This is really Dr. So and So, and I have made the biggest fool of myself. I thanked him and hung up the phone. I didn’t try to explain. I lived in a parsonage about 30 yards from the church. I ran out of my office, to my house. I burst through the door and huffed and puffed to my wife, I am an idiot! She replied that was old news.

Several months later, I was at the college Dr. So and So founded and was eating lunch with him. He never mentioned the phone call, but I know he was thinking, this is that idiot I called. I remember discussing the Pete Rose ban. I told him, as I told many people over the years, Pete is a whore monger (he cheated on his wife) he is profane, he is arrogant, but he would never, ever bet on baseball. Did I mention I am an idiot?

After five years, in which I made some dear friends, I realized that Immanuel was never going to overcome its obstacles. I began to pray and think about what to do. By this time, we had closed our Christian School. My girls went to kindergarten at a Christian School on the other side of town. The church and school had outgrown its location. They were landlocked. The church’s beliefs were very similar to ours. I respected the pastor. I decided to approach him with a radical idea. I asked him to pray with me about it. We would not share it with anyone else until we prayed it over and thought it through. I felt that we should merge the congregations. They could sell their property, move the church and school to our site, take the money from the sale and finish our building. He would stay as the pastor, I would resign. I had nowhere to go, I hadn’t been looking for greener pastures. In fact, I was crushed to discover that I was not going to pastor there my whole ministry. My pastor had stayed at one church his whole ministry, and I wanted to do that also. It was not to be. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to pastor again. I knew I couldn’t be an IFB pastor anymore. I was perfectly content to leave the ministry and be a faithful layman.

Eventually, that pastor and I decided it was a workable plan and that we should approach our respective deacon boards about the possibility. Then as boards, we began to think and pray it through. After both boards were in agreement, we approached the congregations. I had to make one thing clear to the good folks at Immanuel. I was leaving either way. I wasn’t leaving for a better place, I was just leaving. They could call another pastor, or they could admit our lack of a viable future and merge. Both groups overwhelmingly agreed to merge. The other congregation sold their property, paid off all the debts and finished the building, making a very nice Christian School facility. A stronger church was produced, instead of two more churches of like faith in the same town, there was one less. It was a good move that I don’t regret.

There is a final irony, however. The only sticking point was the KJV. The other congregation was not as strict about other versions as we were. The pastor only preached from the KJV, but nothing in their constitution required it. So a vote was taken to make an official policy to only use the KJV from the pulpit. It was my parting gift to the good folks at Immanuel, even though I know I was not KJV only anymore. Immanuel Baptist Church went out of existence and I headed north to who knew what.

Between Pastorates

Isn’t a sign of a cult, a group who thinks they know a spiritual truth that the rest of Christianity doesn’t know? Shouldn’t you be leery of a group that claims to have a corner on truth, who are the only true defenders of a doctrine that the rest of Christianity rejects? Doesn’t that make you a little suspicious? If the King James Only movement was right, won’t God let more people in on it? Why is it that only independent fundamental baptists hold to this truth? Are there no good spiritually sensitive people outside of the IFB? If you are wrong on something as basic as the Word of God, how can you be right on other spiritually discerned matters?

Now I realize there are many variations within the King James Only movement. For some, to put it on the level of doctrine would be an overstatement. They are willing to call it a preference. I’m ok with that. But when you state it in your doctrinal statement or place it in your statement of faith, that seems to me to border on heresy. When talking to people who are unfamiliar with the KJVO movement, they are surprised when I tell them there is no consistent agreement on why people are KJVO. If you locked 10 KJVO preachers in a room and forced them to come up with a mutually agreed-upon statement of why they are KJVO, you would soon see blood running out from under the door. Is it inspired, divinely preserved, or just better because of the manuscripts used? Can you correct the Greek with the KJV? Were the translators inspired? Did you need to know the original languages at all? What about foreign translations? Can a person be saved reading another version? I have heard all these viewpoints defended & debated.

One thing that had always bothered me when I preached, was how much time I had to spend on explaining the King James English to my listeners. I love interpreting the scriptures, but not teaching old English. By the way, that is another thing that bothers me, it is disingenuous to put “1611” on a Bible that is not from 1611. Have you ever seen a page from the 1611 edition? You can hardly read it. The edition of the King James used today is from 1769.

After leaving Florida, I went to work for a friend of mine who pastored a church near Dayton, Ohio. I was primarily the youth pastor, but had other duties also. As I began to teach teenagers again, I was still using the KJV. I was shocked by how poorly the students read. Having someone read out loud was embarrassing, to me and to them. It was especially troubling to see them try to read the KJV. It was like a foreign language to them. Yes, this says something about the state of public education, but it also presents obstacles to those of us who teach the Bible. I am not for dumbing down scripture, but what good is a Bible that no one can comprehend? Are we doing anyone any good by holding to the majesty of the KJV?

In 1995 James White wrote “The Kings James Only Controversy.” Reading it helped clear up those nagging thoughts I had about other versions. His side-by-side comparisons of newer versions and the KJV really opened my eyes. Now I realize I could have and should have made those comparisons myself, but I had been too afraid to find the truth. I think I recently saw that a new updated edition of the book is coming out, I look forward to seeing the new information.

The final straw in my conversion from KJVO was a debate I saw from the John Ankerberg Show. It was a few KJVO guys and translators from other versions. It’s been a long time since I saw it, so the details are fuzzy, but I do remember that if it had been a ball game, the score was Non-KJV 100 KJVO 0. It was embarrassing. What really struck me was the man representing the New King James. He did a better job defending the KJV than the supposed King James proponents. I was impressed by his sincerity to have the New King James as close to the King James as possible. His attitude alone was enough to convince me that I had be misled about other translations. The matter was closed as far as I was concerned. If God allowed me to pastor again, my only non-negotiable was that I was going to preach from the New American Standard Bible. A close second was that it not be an IFB church.

My life now

Occasionally I will watch one of those biography shows. I remember viewing the life story of a certain female rock star. She had a series of broken relationships. She had been addicted to a number of substances. She had been in and out of rehab many times and had almost died of an overdose. At the end of the episode, as they closed with a final interview, this woman said, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” What? Hadn’t she been watching the show? Drugs had obviously messed with her mind.

I can’t say that I wouldn’t change a thing about my life if I got a do-over. My wife and I often say that we do not regret our experiences among independent, fundamental Baptist churches. Those experiences made us what we are today. We are happy with where we are today, even if others are not. The lessons, trials, legalisms all worked together to shape us into Christ-likeness. It forced us to form our own convictions and to be able to back them up with Scripture. It led us to where we serve God today and we are at peace with it. Praise the Lord.

I would change my educational background. I would have gone to a different college and I would have gone straight into seminary. Even as I write this, I realize God’s sovereignty, for if I had done those things how would I have ever met my wife? I wouldn’t trade her for all the education in the world. Nevertheless, I regret my lack of education. I was able to take a few seminary classes. I have 6 hours down and only 90 to go! However, that was a long time ago and I don’t have the time or the money to pursue that M.Div now. Maybe something sometime will change my mind.

Five years after moving back to Ohio, I decided I wanted to try again. I felt I was secure enough in my new philosophy to pastor a congregation once again. One of the major drawbacks of independent churches is, how do congregations find pastors? We have no central headquarters, no denominational hierarchy. Often churches look to the college that their previous pastor attended, providing he is leaving under pleasant circumstances. Many IFB movements (groups of churches) are built around a certain college. I didn’t want to pastor a church like that. God intervened in my situation through the internet. It was definitely God, as I will make clear shortly.

In 1997 the world wide web was still in its infancy. In fact, I think I was still paying for AOL by the hour. I decided to post my resume (as meager as it was) on the web. I found a few sites that did such things. Eventually, I got a call from a man in Pennsylvania. They were looking for a pastor, and even though they were looking for somebody above 40, they felt at 37 I might be a good fit. They sent me some information about the congregation and an application to fill out. I filled it out and began to wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, I got a call back from the same man who proceeded to interview me on the phone. I felt we hit it off. He used the NASB when he taught Sunday School. They were also calling others who knew me, including my references. They even had 2 couples drop by and visit the merged church in Florida! They invited me to come preach for them in November 1997. I preached from the NASB. Then they sent us home to wait some more. December, January, February…in March they called to say they would like me to come and be voted on for the office of Pastor of Community Bible Church. On the second Sunday in April of 1998, I was called as their pastor. Although I got a very high percentage, it was not unanimous. There were 4 dissenting votes, which I found out later were because of the fact I was not KJVO. Those folks eventually left the church.

Now for the rest of the story. The church had contacted an online ministry that took the information that the church submitted and matched it with resumes that preachers had submitted. Then this ministry would contact the church and send them the resume if they were interested. So we found each other over the internet. When I arrived here, I discovered that the church didn’t even have a computer, much less the internet. They were still typing the weekly church bulletin on a typewriter! The first thing we did was have the church buy a computer and sign up for the internet.

The typewriter was not the only piece of antiquated equipment at the church. They had a very old copier. One day as I was using it, a smudge was on the glass, I reached for the Windex bottle that was kept on the shelf above the copier. I had done this before, but this time I realized something. It was not a Windex bottle, it was a can. A can of Windex. Are you even old enough to remember when Windex came in spray cans? I looked at the can, the only date on it was 1978! We have a candlelight service on Christmas eve. While I was gathering the candles I reached into the box and got out the matchbook they used. It was from a wedding in 1982! Man did I have my work cut out for me.

A pastor was challenging his board. He kept saying, “We need to get this church into the 20th century!” He said this repeatedly. Finally, embarrassed, a deacon said, “Pastor don’t you mean the 21st century?” The pastor replied “One century at a time brother!”

They had used the same bulletin design for many years. It was a nice drawing of our building. The only problem was, that we were in the process of buying property to build a new building. So I felt it was counter-productive to have a picture of the old building on the bulletin if we were trying to focus on a new building. We didn’t yet have a logo for the church, so I printed new bulletins with a color splash on the front. It was temporary, it wasn’t really a design, it looked kind of like the Nike swoosh. The deacon emeritus came to see me. He was visibly upset, yet very gracious. He asked why I put a hex sign on the bulletin! I had heard of hex signs, but I didn’t really know what one was, or what one looked like. He was Pennsylvania Dutch. A lot of the old-timers at church were brought up that way. It has required that my family and I learn a whole new vocabulary.

We had never owned a home until we moved here. We had always lived in parsonages right next to the church. I hadn’t driven to work in over a decade and walked home for lunch every day. We bought the house next to the old church building because we knew the church was moving to a different location and we would not be living on church property again. The first day I had to drive to the new church, to go to the office, the first day I had driven to work in over 13 years, my car broke down on the way. Seriously, I had to call a tow truck.

In December of 1998, the congregation paid cash for a ten-acre piece of property outside of town. It has proven to be a great location. God blessed us with a prime spot in the middle of steady growth. God is good. In April of 2001 and moved into our new multi-purpose building. In doing most of the construction ourselves, we completed the building in only seven months. The building committee said we could have completed it in six months, but I kept insisting on helping. I am like lightning with a hammer. I never strike the same place twice.

In November of 2008, we paid it off! We were debt-free, for about 3 months, until we started adding on to the building. In September 2009, we moved into our new educational wing. Anytime you are in the area, stop by and see it!

Soli Deo Gloria