My grandpa, Edwin Penner, mortgaged his house to build our hometown Baptist church in Chico, Calif.
Once built, he drove his Dodge pickup over every Sunday at 6 a.m. to turn on the heat or air conditioning for the comfort of those arriving at 8 a.m. for Sunday school. He mowed our enormous lawn every week in the 100-degree Sacramento Valley heat with his push mower. Admirably, as an example of Christian witness to his grandchildren, he tithed part of every dollar he ever made as a U.S. Postal worker. Best of all and to the delight of my little brother, he even changed the steeple’s red lightbulb once a year by climbing up into the bat-ridden belfry.
But as a legalistic Oklahoma Mennonite turned Baptist, he also drove people away from our church before they ever became a part of us by criticizing their dress or their smoking or the fact that they went to a movie or danced. He kept seekers away from the very church he put his heart, soul and money into to create.
Kirsten Christensen Roberts
Then along came a Nevada family farmer named Pastor Dave who had “gotten the call” and knew he had to go to seminary instead of grow food. He wanted to become the pastor of a church that would be different. He had heard of something called “friendship evangelism.” Pastor Dave taught our congregation to reach out to our neighbors in love and show them what Jesus is like. It took more than 10 years, and a lot of anger and grief from Deacon Penner, to start to see fruit, but today, 40 years later, my little hometown Baptist church has become a thriving community church briming with three services and a gymnasium where they run a city-wide kids’ basketball camp.
In my first little opinion piece I sent to BNG, I wrote “it’s our personal experiences, the people we know that change us.” Of all the things I know, think I know or think I knew in the past, this is the thing I still know to be true.
The Purpose Driven Church
It was 1995, the year our son was born, that The Purpose Driven Church was published. It was a how-to guide to lead and love a church into growing by reaching out to neighbors one at a time. This revolutionary approach changed everything.
The brilliant author who embraced the ideas of the “father of modern management” Peter Drucker, literally walked door to door early in his ministry to find out why neighbors didn’t go to church. He used that information to change the ways of the traditional church. Good modern music, bite-sized topical sermons with individual digestible verses, and casual dress. And most importantly, a welcoming come-as-you-are presence.
My husband and I engaged in the author’s seeker-friendly church from early on, finding it easy to invite neighbors to come along with us from a high school gym to the purchase of the land promised for our faithfulness, and the building of buildings one brick at a time without debt and the assurance of never using professional fundraisers. As a new CPA and lover of Drucker, I ate that up.
Just before The Purpose Driven Church came out, I invited a gay coworker (call him Jeremiah) to my, by then, megachurch. He was out of the closet and one of the most honest and authentic bosses I ever had. He was a practical jokester. And each joke was designed specifically around the unique personality of the unsuspecting employee he had cared to get to know beyond the balance sheet or profit and loss statement.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
I knew my megachurch was (silently) part of the Southern Baptist Convention. My feminist “pro-I decide” gal pals came anyway, never knowing, and loving the way their children were treated. Our spectacular summer camp designed to value our kids still makes the hair on my arms tingle with joy. I knew the SBC believed homosexuality to be a sin. However, I didn’t hear our lovable, folksy, homespun pastor give sermons about it and I thought it ancillary to the impact Jeremiah was having on one high school kid at a time, quietly helping to change the negative ways they saw themselves as less than. For whatever reason.
Heartbreakingly, after two years of trying to date women, a lifestyle Jeremiah really tried to embrace, growing out of the desire to remain a part of the inner circle of the church leadership he loved and cared his way into, he fell in love with a man. So, wanting to live authentically, he came out (again) this time to his dear friend and boss. A friend he had prayed with, gone on mission trips with and eaten in the home of, Jeremiah was fired for his admission. He was not a pastor or an elder. Like me, he was just an accountant.
Preaching support for Trump
Last Sunday, I listened while the new pastor of my old megachurch tried to gin up his audience with extremist rhetoric about trans kids getting taken away from their parents. From the latest news cycle, this apparent sound bite seems to be part of the pre-election playbook of white evangelical mega-men pastors. It falls in line with the red herring attempts of the Trump campaign to enrage his base over an issue that relates to a miniscule number of our more than 335 million American population.
All of this to try to redirect the attention of the populace away from Donald Trump’s character. The lying, cheating, cruel and dehumanizing behavior that mocks the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, the people (that supposedly a sovereign God divined be) born in countries Trump deems “shithole” countries. He even has been able to convince 80% of white American evangelicals that sexually assaulting women is no big thing. He’s not our pastor after all.
I think we are at a crossroads. The last eight years of Trump already have turned my biological kids, the ones I taught about Jesus in Wednesday night discipleship class, toward atheism and agnosticism.
“All of this to try to redirect the attention of the populace away from Donald Trump’s character.”
Last Sunday, Oct. 13, Andy Wood enthusiastically called on his congregation to focus on the words of Isaiah, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
So, which is it? What is the evil? What is the good?
These guys point to the absolute authority of the Bible, the innerant word of God. Although they gloss over how their own exegesis on so many things using that source has changed with the very cultural worldview they demonize. Divorce? Their tithing congregants would be halved immediately. Dancing, playing cards, movies, women wearing pants, drinking alcohol and, very recently, what I’ve waited for since I was a little girl, women using their gifts of preaching and teaching the Bible to women and men.
But homosexuality — that is a bridge too far to further your exegesis?
Will you speak up?
We already have a biblical evangelical church playbook out there. A friendship evangelical playbook released in 1995. And I believe it would be timely to hear an update from its extremely influential author. For the good of our country, and all of our woundedness, please join the likes of Beth Moore, Russell Moore, Nancy French and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Please, please speak the entirety of the word in clarifying the omissions Pastor Andy left out of his sermon.
I may not have heard you preach on same-sex marriage before my husband and I moved on pre-2008, but I heard hundreds of gut-wrenching, inspiring sermons on the number of times the Bible uses the words “love” or “give” or “truth” or “the poor.” Those were the sermons that had thousands of people testifying that they felt like you were talking just to them in a worship hall full of many.
Having learned through various types of recovery to start and end on a note of gratitude, back to my grandpa. Despite his human flaws, he and my Grandma Martha prayed every single night after supper, in their little living room with the floral couches and the smell of pot roast still hanging in the air, for each of their seven grandchildren, based on each grandchild’s individual personalities, experiences and needs. They bothered to know us. And because of that they influenced us.
And they helped change, for the better, who we became. Not just good or just evil. But mere people relying on someone greater than themselves to help build relationship with “our neighbors.”
Kirsten Christensen Roberts graduated from Biola University in 1987 and had a long career as a CPA in banking and finance. She lives in Dana Point, Calif., with her husband of 36 years and her favorite pastime is lunching with old-old ladies who have stories to tell.
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