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We Once Were Family....Until The Preacher....

I found the world to be a much stranger place after leaving the church.   Even the small city where we lived for 22 years seemed darkly strange and foreign after leaving.   I can remember going into the local Walmart where I had shopped for so many years and feeling envious of the other people shopping there because they all seemed comfortable, lighthearted-- carefree even.    I ached to feel this comfortable again.   But these feelings lessened as we immediately went about the work of rebuilding our lives.   One of the first things we did was get some counseling and advice from seasoned pastors in the area who knew us and knew plenty about the church we left.    The first pastor we spoke with was Clifford Clark. He had pastored Tulsa Baptist Temple for many years until he retired. He had also been a favored guest speaker for Missions Conferences in our former church for many years.    There is not a wiser, kinder, more gracious and belo...
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Baptist Gurus To The Rescue!!

In October of 2000 we took our family to Galveston for a vacation.     This was before we moved into our new house, before we sold our old house, before we joined Eastland Baptist Church, before we had done much of anything except make plans.   We had joined the little church in Glenpool and quickly got to work.   But all the busy-ness in the world could not adequately distract us from the nagging strangeness of starting over.   So, we went to Galveston!   I grew up in Sugar Land.     Galveston was only an hour away.    I had driven there many times with friends as a teen and loved most the sound of the ocean, the salty air (especially at night) and the beachy caw of the sea gulls.   Over the 24 years of our relationship, Paul and I made many short trips there, but this trip would be very different from all the rest.   This time we would rent a beach house and stay there for a whole week!    Our previous trips th...
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And Now For Some Good Stuff

  It took us a long time after leaving to decide which of our former beliefs we still believed to be true and right, and which ones were just... crazy.   The illegitimate feelings of guilt and shame attached to all those beliefs and practices will probably plague us for life.     Although we immediately abandoned the most extreme standards we only practiced because they were required of us as leaders, plenty of them hung on for a while.   The reason it took so long probably had to do with the degree with which these regulations became a test of genuine spirituality. Why would any truly committed believer object to abiding by rules their preacher established to guard the ‘purity of his church?    This was the subject of many, many sermons.      The Preacher required all teachers and other leaders (including us) to sign a paper detailing rules we were expected to obey to continue in any leadership position. This included piano pl...
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