*My apologies for the delay in posting this fourth installment. Juggling a lot right now.

Introduction

In my previous post, I addressed the dirty politics of Todd the Politician—Immanuel’s self-serving elder whose only qualification for leading the church is him being male. Today, I turn my attention to Immanuel’s other elder—a bonafide ‘white-knight’ defending his reviling ‘church-lady’ wife against the ‘evil male chauvinist’ (that would be me, naturally.) who tried to hold her accountable. I’m going deep in the weeds on this one—because that’s where the belligerent Baptist Boomer beatdown took place.

When Immanuel Baptist Church (in Rossville, Georgia), called me as their teaching pastor in December of 2024, attendance was down to less than 20 people, and the elders were talking seriously about closing the doors if things didn’t turn around. Immanuel made a one-year commitment to me, with an understanding that—depending on how things went—they might not be able to pay me after that.

Perhaps, it goes without saying—all parties were desperate. After being fired and blacklisted in ministry, my wife and I were desperate for a place to live and for a chance to rebuild our lives from the ruins—and Immanuel was desperate for a sucker.

My salary was paid, in large part, by a generous church member (couple) who, essentially, served as my benefactor. Amanda and I will always be grateful for the way God used their generosity in our lives to keep us afloat during a very difficult time. Regrettably, my benefactor also served as my fellow elder, which means we had an entangled ‘dual’ relationship—one that increasingly led to entitlement and frustration on his part. As the saying goes, “He who pays the pastor calls the tune.” Sadly, when I refused to dance to their tune, this elder and his wife decided to give me a tune up.

In the end, my benefactor(s) led the charge to have me fired and evicted from the parsonage. They took nearly everything from us—reputation, income, housing, my wife’s health—and they tried to take our marriage. In all of this, my fellow elder postured himself as an “impartial” leader who was ‘just doing his job.’ In this post, I want to make plain that their effort to have me fired was done under false pretense, out of personal malice. They manipulated the members of Immanuel, at every turn, in order to get my head on a platter.

The Run-Up to the Tune-Up

Nine months into my pastorate (September)—with church attendance, finances, and morale all going in the wrong direction (following months of conflict instigated by ‘Todd the Politician.’)—my fellow elder and I agreed that, if things didn’t turn around by year’s end, we’d recommend to the church body that we close the doors.

Up until this point, I was on good terms with my co-elder and his wife. They stood by me while Todd tried to turn the entire church against me. I would remain in their good graces, so far as I knew, up until eleven days before I was fired. In fact, just days before things turned south, this elder had urged me to start applying to other churches (anticipating that Immanuel would close), assuring me that I would have a strong ‘elder’s reference’ from him. And days before that, this elder and his wife took Amanda and I out to lunch, where they shared that, should Immanuel close, they would recommend that the church bless us with ten thousand dollars—a gift which they said they would personally match. This planned gift of twenty-thousand dollars was to help us land on our feet. I share all of that to say that, up until the eleventh hour, this elder was very much in my corner.

With just under four months left to show some signs of life, things looked pretty bleak for Immanuel. I decided to narrow my focus in two directions—I would continue to shepherd the small, elderly flock God had given me, and I would go all in on a strategy to reach young men with young families. In hindsight, I should have known that you can’t pour new wine into old wine skin—not just because it ruins both, but also because Baptists really hate alcohol!

Lamentably, the ‘church-ladies’ caught wind that I had a few men over to my house for beer and cigars—leaving some of them exceedingly scandalized, and others upset that they weren’t invited. The important thing is that they were all upset, and high levels of ‘concern’ were spread far and wide.

Three days later, my fellow-elder knocked on the door—and he was livid. Mind you, he was not upset about ‘beer and cigars’—he had no personal issue with that. He was angry, because, according to him, I “went rogue.” Nonetheless—as I’d soon come to find out—this unscrupulous elder was more than willing to use “beer and cigars’ (and any other ‘church-lady’ concern he could gin up) to put me in my place.

After raking me over the coals for several minutes, he informed me that Immanuel was having a special called meeting later that very night to discuss everything. As we sat there on my porch, I told him, matter-of-factly: “If you go forward with this meeting, I’m not going to have a job afterwards.” In anger, he retorted—“That’s on you!”

“Dance, Monkey, Dance”—So Went The Struggle Session

The member’s meeting went about how I expected it to go—it was yet another Baptist Boomer ‘struggle-session’ where I spent about forty-five minutes answering contrived ‘offenses’ from the ‘church-ladies,’ capped off by my bitter benefactor berating me in front of everyone.

He accused me of “abandoning the flock” on account of my personal outreach to men. From the podium, he pointed emphatically towards the parsonage (where I held my infamous men’s fellowship), saying—“That’s not your flock!” Then he pointed out at the members in the sanctuary, saying—“This is your flock!”

(Never mind that, over the course of my short ten-month ministry, I made regular visits to the members of Immanuel and hosted regular church fellowships in the parsonage. My door was always open. I was always available. My wife and I routinely had members in our home for meals and for Biblical counseling. We took meals to those sick and shut in. Every Sunday, I preached for 40+ minutes and led the entire worship liturgy, including the singing. (I went ten straight months without missing a single Sunday, not even when Amanda spent a week in the hospital.) I also led the mid-week Bible Study and prayer meeting (only missed once). Behind the scenes, I planned the weekly services, produced the bulletins, published a weekly church newsletter, did all of the church branding, website creation, social media promotions. I was the point person for all maintenance and plumbing issues. In short, I was a one-man band that did anything and everything that was asked of me—all for part-time pay. Yet, because I made an extra effort on top of all of that (on my own time, on my own dime) to reach men—I somehow had “abandoned the flock.”)

A few days after the meeting, my co-elder emailed me a list of four stipulations that I would need to agree to in order to maybe keep my job. As he was careful to convey—my compliance did not guarantee I’d keep my job, but my non-compliance guaranteed I would certainly lose it.

The stipulations read as follows: “[1] restrictions on your having beer and cigar meetings on church property [parsonage], [2] no more unilateral decisions by you, [3] a desire to see humility in you, [4] apologize for misleading the church by changing your name on your resume.”

As I address these stipulations, my aim is to demonstrate that this entire charade was all a bogus attempt, by my benefactors, to humiliate me and put me in my place—a personal crusade, born out of petty grievances, posing as principled leadership. This was their version of “Dance, Monkey, Dance!”—and when I refused to dance, the real monkey business began, which, ended with me hanging from the tree.

This Was Personal & Due Process Was A Bullet

Falsely Accused of ‘Lacking Humility’

I want to first address the vague accusation that I “lack humility,” because this gets us to the crux of the matter—the backstory, if you will, which reveals ulterior motives.

When my fellow elder showed up at my door to rake me over the coals, one of the things he accused me of was being “arrogant” and “lacking humility.” What was the basis for his accusation? Well, in his own words (to me), “You never apologized for being super rude to [my wife]!” As it turns out, that’s what all of this is about—I had offended a ‘church-lady,’ and in typical ‘white-knight’ fashion, my fellow-elder was defending his damsel in distress.

He further asserted that I had done things to him, as well, that I had “never apologized for.” In other words, this was all deeply personal to him, and in a moment of anger, he let his mask slip. Underneath the guise of ‘impartial’ judge—there lurked a deeply-held grudge.

While I don’t know all of the reasons my benefactors turned against me, I will share two instances, here, (and a third later) that he specifically addressed me over—and I’ll explain why I did not apologize in those instances, and why it would have been wrong to do so.

Instance One: “Super Rude to [my wife]!”

On one occasion, my co-elder and I were discussing a matter, just the two of us, when his wife suddenly barged in and rudely interrupted her husband; cutting him off mid-sentence, to interject her own thoughts. Rather than redirect my attention to her, I kept my focus on my fellow elder, waiting for him to finish his thoughts. I wasn’t rude about. Just principled. I showed him the due respect which his wife had failed to show him.

As I came to find out, this greatly upset her, and a week later, he told me I owed her an apology. I offered him a sincere explanation, and respectfully tried to shepherd him towards a better understanding of the matter so that he, in turn, might shepherd his wife. He didn’t respond in the moment, but appeared to be taking matters to heart. I genuinely thought he agreed and that the matter was closed. He never said another word about it until three months later when he jumped down my throat and led the charge to have me fired.

The reason I did not apologize to his wife, is because I had not sinned against his wife. Demanding an apology for something that isn’t sinful is a form of manipulation and blame-shift, and it’s wrong to go along with such coercion. In this matter, the elder’s wife was the one in sin and in need of repentance—both for her blatant disrespect towards her husband, and for her subsequent anger towards me.

Anyone who’s spent any amount of time around this married couple knows she routinely interrupts, and even scolds her husband in public. Amanda and I witnessed this too many times to count. Over the course of ten months, I very patiently tried to shepherd them on this, but they spurned my correction.

Little did I know, this incident was simmering in both their hearts, and on the day of the members’ meeting, it was specifically over this personal matter that my fellow elder angrily charged me with “lacking humility.” This is one of the petty grievances that drove him and his wife in their personal vendetta.

Instance Two: Refusing To Exclude A Family From Fellowship

When I arrived at Immanuel, it was typical for a group to go out for lunch following Sunday service. (Yes, I, too, agree this is not a good practice on the Sabbath, and we were in the process of changing that.) We had two members who had recently returned to Immanuel after a long absence, and I wanted to include them—so, on two separate occasions, I invited them to join us. This upset my fellow elder. He was in the habit of ‘picking up the tab’ for the entire group, and he expressed his frustration with me for inviting these two people, because he felt it presumed upon his generosity. As I explained to him, I couldn’t very well exclude this family when everyone else was invited—that would constitute ‘sinful partiality.’ Furthermore, I explained to my co-elder that I was not expecting him to pay for their meals. In fact, on the first occasion, I personally picked up their tab, and on the second occasion, they tried to pay their own meal ticket.

There was no reasoning with my fellow elder in this matter. The following week, he informed me that he and his wife would no longer be joining any groups to eat out on Sundays. He was clearly upset, and I think it’s safe to say this is another instance for which he accused me of not apologizing—and, therefore, not showing humility.

In reality, I was simply shepherding the flock, and (as respectfully as possible) refusing to participate in sinful partiality. In this instance, it is my fellow elder who lacked humility. This is a pattern I observed with him—several times, he hastily jumped to a wrong conclusion on a matter and refused to change his mind (and attitude) once clarification was offered.

In summary, my fellow elder (and his wife) framed my unwillingness to apologize for their sin as evidence that I lacked humility. In reality, it wasn’t my humility they were after; rather, my humiliation—they wanted to watch me grovel in order to appease their anger and stroke their pride. When I refused to grovel—they had me fired.

As I’ll address later, these two deceitfully went house to house, ahead of my firing, to solicit similar criticisms from the ‘church-ladies’ in order to bolster their own contrived complaints. As Paul Harvey put it, “Now you know the rest of the story”—and the rest of this farce will make far more sense now.

Branded As A “Beer-Swilling” Scofflaw

Like the rest of the four “stipulations”—“Restrictions on your having beer and cigar meetings on church property”—is worded so as to insinuate something false. Without context, the accusation makes it sound like I held a keg party in the church parking lot, or a smoke-filled poker night in the fellowship hall. In reality, I hosted three men, for a private fellowship in my own home (the parsonage), and we responsibly enjoyed some beer and cigars in my private backyard, under the quiet cover of night, while discussing matters of faith. Honestly, it was one of the sweetest fellowships I had last year.

Unfortunately, after decades of ruling the roost in their own homes, Immanuel’s meddlesome madams mistakenly thought they might, as well, tell me what I could or couldn’t do in my home. I patiently tried to explain that beer and cigars are not inherently sinful, and that what I do in the privacy of my own home (or backyard), on my own time, so long as it’s not sin, is not a matter of church business. I tried to reason with everyone that Jesus drank wine regularly, choosing wine as the symbol of our redemption, and that the great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, smoked cigars, even as Martin Luther drank beer—all to the glory of God.

I made it clear that I would not submit to their sinful overreach into my personal life—not just because I enjoy smoking and drinking in moderation, and not just because the restrictions would limit my practice of hospitality—but also out of principle; namely, to uphold liberty of conscience.

On this point, Immanuel Baptist Church was guilty of glaring disregard for their own confessional statement (1689). Section 21.2 of the London Baptist Confession reads: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and he has left it free from human doctrines and commandments that are in any way contrary to his word or not contained in it… Requiring implicit faith or absolute and blind obedience destroys liberty of conscience and reason as well.”

Their attempted prohibition of alcohol within the privacy of my home showed one thing very clearly—the ‘church-ladies’ were deliriously drunk on their own passions, believing themselves to be both the heads of my house and the lords of my conscience. They desperately needed someone to take away their bottle.

Unfortunately, in the very moment when Immanuel most needed leadership—my fellow-elder left me holding the bag. He stood there, with his hands in his pockets, playing the “impartial” moderator, while the sanctuary filled with the intoxicant of ‘concern’ over the pastor drinking a few beers.

It was hypocrisy of the highest order—as my co-elder and his wife, by their own admission, drink wine regularly, and he smoked a pipe for years. Furthermore, when my wife was having trouble sleeping, he gave her a wine glass and instructed her to drink wine nightly before bed. He and I even had discussions about eventually using wine for communion. He was for it. In short, my co-elder had no moral issues with smoking the occasional tobacco or drinking in moderation—he partook of both. Yet, he said nothing in my defense, or in the defense of truth. As the butch lesbian poet, Adrienne Rich, put it, “Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”

Rather than shepherd a bunch of sanctimonious teetotalers in a more sober-minded direction on the issue of alcohol and Christian liberty, my fellow elder used the opportunity to gin up the ‘church-ladies’ and wield them against me. He did this because he and his wife were punch-drunk on revenge.

Falsely Accused of Autocratic Leadership

This stipulation of “no more unilateral decisions by you” was in response to my personal outreach efforts to men. The accusations that I acted “unliterally”—or that I “went rogue”—are incredibly false and misleading.

For context, in my first few months at Immanuel, I organized a church-sanctioned outreach to men (that was approved by church vote), but it was later met with criticism and resistance, so I discontinued it. Then I tried to undertake a personal outreach to men, that was separate from the church, but one of our elders (Todd the Politician) tried to have me fired over it (here), causing a huge controversy. That firestorm had blown over just four months earlier, and Immanuel was still reeling from the impact.

It was now the eleventh hour, and in order for Immanuel to have a future, I knew I needed to resume my efforts to reach men with families (or future families), and bring them together around a compelling vision for a revitalized church. As Pastor Michael Foster (and numerous others) have noted, “If you reach the men, women and children will follow.”

Once again, I went through proper channels and pitched the idea for a men’s outreach to my co-elder, but he said it wasn’t the right focus for the church. The truth is, he’d been battling a heart condition for several years, and the months’ long controversy (instigated by Todd) had significantly worsened his condition. In reality, he was simply too exhausted to serve as an elder, much less to lead a revitalization effort—especially one that made the ‘church-ladies’ nervous. It was clear he was resigned to closing the doors.

The important thing to note—is that my co-elder knew about my personal outreach to men, and I had his permission and blessing to pursue it. His exact words were—“Keep it separate from the church.” (A fact he acknowledged in the member’s meeting.)

I had no issue with that stipulation. In fact, previous efforts to drive traffic directly to Immanuel had proven a failed strategy. We received dozens of first-time visitors last year, but very few returned for a second visit. The hard truth is that our guests were left underwhelmed by Immanuel’s ‘nursing-home’ levels of enthusiasm—which had less to do with our median age, and more to do with a handful of pouting ‘church-ladies’ (of both sexes) with “#NotMyPastor” stamped across their sullen faces.

With all of that in mind, I created a Facebook event for a men’s fellowship and ran an ad to promote it for several weeks—all on a personal Facebook page that was separate from Immanuel. The Facebook ad linked to a simple website which I created to cast vision for reviving a declining church (the very thing Immanuel had called me to do). Again, to reiterate—all of this was kept separate from the church, per my co-elder’s dictates. This effort wasn’t announced from the pulpit, published in the bulletin, or in any way affiliated with Immanuel.

In all of this, I was simply trying to keep the doors open—to give Immanuel a future. I was following the strategy that our LORD Jesus employed when he recruited twelve men and devoted concentrated energy into raising up a ‘band of brothers’—future elders, deacons, and churchmen with the courage and conviction to lead the church in a godly direction.

Within a matter of two to three weeks, I had fifteen men express interest in attending the men’s fellowship in my home—and three who actually attended. My ad also generated several opportunities to grab lunch or coffee with men who were interested in the vision I had cast. All in all, it was a very impactful outreach, and definitely something I could build on—but alas, it was short lived. The next thing I knew, my fellow elder was at my door angrily accusing me of “going rogue” and of “abandoning the flock”—and the ‘church-ladies’ were squawking about me making “unilateral” decisions.

As I made clear, during the members’ meeting—a “unilateral decision” would imply that I made an independent decision in a church matter. My personal outreach efforts were not a church matter—they were done on my own time, on my own dime—and that with my co-elder’s blessing.

I explained to everyone that what I did was akin to one of them inviting some neighbors over for dinner, or perhaps organizing a neighborhood Christmas Party—it was simply not something that required a church vote.

It’s telling that, weeks earlier, when a group of five church-ladies got together and organized their own impromptu women’s fellowship—no one accused them of ‘going rogue.’ There was no ‘emergency’ member’s meeting called to put a stop to it.

It was clear the ‘church-ladies’ wanted me, their pastor, either completely under their thumb—or flicked away like a booger. The one thing they wouldn’t abide was me leading without their constant oversight and permission. They demonstrated that they didn’t actually want a pastor—they wanted a waiter; someone to take their orders.

The irony is that, on the (Sun)day I was fired, I had two men planning to bring their families to Immanuel (and a third family planning to attend in the weeks ahead)—specifically because of my personal men’s outreach. Additionally, three other men who had previously visited Immanuel, but said it wasn’t for them, reached out and told me they wanted to give Immanuel another try. By my count, that’s five families, eleven adults, and nearly the same number of children, all planning to plug in with Immanuel—after just one outreach. In hindsight—they dodged a bullet.

Digging Up The Past To Bury My Future

The stipulation that I must “apologize for misleading the church by changing your name on your resume,” is, once again, premised upon a misleading accusation—this time insinuating that I engaged in trickery on my resume—perhaps to dodge the law or hide something sinful from my past. I’ve already addressed the issue of my “changing” my name, so if you missed that, go here.

By way of summary—after going by my middle name for 43 years, I made a decision to adopt my first name moving forward. I did this to overcome extensive internet defamation that had resulted in my being fired from my previous pastorate and passed over by four subsequent churches. In a word—it had rendered me unhireable as a pastor within ‘normie’ evangelicalism, and at a loss for how to earn a living. As I’ve said before, I was not hiding anything sinful I had done—rather, I was hiding something sinful done to me.

Regardless of what anyone may think about my ethics in the matter, it’s a matter of fact that neither my fellow elder, nor the remaining members of Immanuel Baptist Church expressed any concerns to me about this matter in the four months after it was disclosed—not until the very end, when they needed some extra logs on the fire to help me dance!

Once again, this was a proxy issue and a thinly veiled cover for my benefactor’s personal gripe. I know this to be the case because my fellow elder tipped his hand in the matter, twice—both to me and to everyone else at Immanuel. As he said to me, in private, ahead of the members’ meeting, and again, in front of everyone, during the meeting—“I stood by you, wholeheartedly, and you left me hanging!” So what was he talking about?

For context—four months before I was fired, this same elder presided over a formal disciplinary hearing for another elder (Todd). There was a moment during that hearing—as my benefactor was pressing Todd to repent—where my benefactor suddenly pointed at me and exclaimed, “[Pastor] is repentant!”

There was an awkward pause, where he was evidently waiting for me to back him up; to answer something along the lines of—“Yes, that’s right. I’m very sorry for what I’ve done. [ie. concealing parts of my past].” Much to his chagrin, I answered, “Well, I don’t believe I’ve done something wrong, in this matter, to repent of.” He never said a word about that incident, until four months later, when he furiously told me—“You left me hanging!”

The truth is, my co-elder and I had met for about an hour, the day before that hearing, to prepare—and at no point in our meeting, or in any prior meeting, had he ever expressed to me that he thought I had done something wrong, or that I needed to repent. To the contrary, he told me (multiple times)—and also told the entire church—that he had consulted with another pastor, whom he greatly respects, and was told, “Had I been in [Pastor’s] shoes, I would have done exactly the same thing.” [ie. adopt his first name and do whatever necessary to overcome internet defamation and provide for his family].”

In contradiction to everything this elder had communicated to me, privately, and to the church, publicly—he put me on the spot expecting me to feign a fake “repentance” in order to help him score points against a man on trial, and, perhaps, to appease one or two ‘church-ladies.’ This was an underhanded, coercive tactic (a pattern with this elder)—and I respectfully declined to go along.

This incident was clearly at the forefront of his mind when he led the charge to have me fired. During the special called member’s meeting, where I was informally put on trial—he stated, emphatically, from the podium: “You left me hanging! I stood by you, whole-heartedly, and you left me hanging!”

Despite claiming to be an “impartial” moderator, he was clearly on the war path to pay me back for his own personal, petty grievances. If anyone lacks humility (and honesty) in these matters, it’s my benefactor.

The truth is, some four months before I was fired, I had stood before the entire church and told them that if they felt I had betrayed their trust [by concealing parts of my past, ie. defamation, wrongful termination.], I was willing to resign immediately, or, alternatively, to remain as their interim pastor while they looked for a new pastor.

Furthermore, I told them I was willing to submit to a formal disciplinary hearing if there was any remaining concern that I had done something to merit that measure.

The simple fact of the matter is that not one person breathed a single word of concern—until four months later, when my benefactors cooked up a buffet of “reasons” for serving my head on a platter. The ugly truth of that matter is that, because I ‘left him hanging’ my co-elder was hell-bent on leaving me hanging—by the neck.

Blatant Disregard For Due Process

To further substantiate my assertion that this was, indeed, a deeply personal headhunting expedition—consider the blatant disregard for bylaws and due process.

My fellow elder called a same-day members’ meeting and brought matters immediately before the church. According to Immanuel’s bylaws (Article XI: Section 2, pg 30), special meetings, in general, require at least two weeks’ notice. However, “In cases that require urgent and/or immediate action, the pastors may, when necessary, call for a meeting for information purposes, for an issue requiring immediate public censure or excommunication…” Apparently, upsetting the church-ladies constitutes “an issue requiring immediate public censure” and “urgent, immediate action.”

My benefactor’s sidestepping of standard procedure stands in stark contrast to how he handled the disciplinary hearing of Immanuel’s then former elder (Todd the Politician), just four months earlier. That man—despite being found guilty of sinfully opposing the ministry of Immanuel for nearly six months—was still afforded a generous due process, including four in-depth private meetings before matters were brought before the church following a standard two weeks’ notice. In contrast—although I was not brought under church discipline charges, I was not even afforded a single private meeting to discuss matters at length, and was given just hours’ notice, before matters were brought before the church.

In the brief ten minutes that we did meet ahead of the meeting, my co-elder accused me of ‘going rogue” on account of my undertaking a personal outreach to men. I tried to reason with him that—with Immanuel on the verge of closing its doors, and with a bunch of elderly people looking to us for decisive leadership—it was unreasonable to demand that I constantly ask them for permission to take any kind of initiative.

This unscrupulous elder then twisted my words and used them against me. During the meeting, he told all the members that I called them, “a bunch of old gray heads.” Those words never came out of my mouth, nor, at any point in my ministry, did I denigrate the members of Immanuel with any other words. This blatant lie, by my co-elder, pretty much sealed my fate. When he said it—you could hear audible gasps from the members.

Additionally, by their own admission, my co-elder and his wife drove to each member’s house on the day of the meeting—ostensibly, to deliver handouts. There was absolutely no reason those handouts couldn’t have been distributed at the start of the meeting. In reality, this elder and his wife were behaving like the gossips Paul warned about in I Timothy 5:13—“going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.”

As my benefactor mounted the podium, to moderate the meeting, he told everyone that he was “impartial” on the matters at hand, and that he simply wanted to hear what everyone else had to say. Naturally, as the questions and accusations began to fly, it was painfully obvious that very clear talking points had been circulated by Immanuel’s ‘busybody’ elder (and his wife).

If there’s any doubt remaining that this elder had tossed due process out the window—three days after the special called meeting, he and his wife held another members’ meeting—at their house, secretly, without notifying me until days later.

There are numerous other indicators of personal animosity, which I’ll get to momentarily. The bottom line is—under the pretense of ‘impartiality’—my petty patrons maliciously incited a senior social stampede to trample me under foot. As John Wayne once put it, “Out here, due process is a bullet.”

The Tune Up

As I said at the outset—‘he who pays the pastor calls the tune,’—and when I refused to dance to their tune, my benefactors decided to tune me up. The last thing my benefactor’s wife ever said to me was—“You don’t bite the hand that feeds you!” Days later, they took nearly everything from us—reputation, income, housing, my wife’s health—and they tried to take our marriage.

My Reputation

My co-elder and his wife went to great lengths to convince everyone that I was a “male chauvinist.” I know this to be a fact for four reasons.

Firstly, during the members’ meeting, two of the main complaints, or ‘concerns’ about my men’s gathering were: “Why were no women invited?” and “Was this an anti-female meeting?” This ridiculous idea was disseminated by my elder and his wife.

Secondly, days before I was fired, the elder’s wife sent my wife a very long text insinuating that I was abusive and that she needed to escape from under me. (More on that momentarily).

Thirdly, someone from within Immanuel’s circle, who was very close to the situation, confirmed to me that I was painted, in no uncertain terms, as a “male chauvinist.” (their words). According to this person, that was one of the primary points conveyed, repeatedly, about me in the days after I was fired.

Fourthly, this is the ‘go-to’ smear anytime you need to rile up the ‘church-ladies’ and run off a ‘bad man’ from the church. This was the same play made by Todd the Politician months earlier, and it’s the same ploy I’ve faced at previous churches.

Nevermind that, in my short tenure as pastor, I cared diligently for the widows in our church, I protected a woman from a vicious dog (which Todd tried to have me fired over), and I gave an inordinate amount of my time to counseling troubled women in our church (always with someone else present).

For example, just weeks before maligning me to the church (and to my own wife) as a “male chauvinist,” this same elder’s wife sent my wife the following text praising me for my counseling of a woman in our church:

“[Your husband] and [my husband] talked with [female member]. She was receptive. I know I’m not telling you something that you don’t already know, but your husband was so kind to [female member]. He was so compassionate, understanding, sympathetic, just plain awesome in his dealings with her. It was impressive to watch and hear him speak to her with such a loving spirit.”

Unfortunately, for me—and for many men in the church—once we find ourselves on the wrong side of a ‘church-lady,’ they, all to often, punch us below the belt by going after our reputations. Since going public with my ‘church-lady’ woes, I’ve heard from numerous men who have had their reputations destroyed, by baseless slander, after upsetting a ‘church-lady.’ As Jordan Peterson has noted, ““Female bullying can be unbelievably vicious…In women, it tends to take the expression of innuendo, gossip, and reputation destruction.”

My Income & Housing

According to official meeting minutes, my benefactor made a motion to terminate me “for a lack of confidence in his leadership.” Despite making multiple serious (contrived) accusations of sin, including pride and discrimination/mistreatment of women, (including my own wife), I was not brought under any formal charges of wrong doing. This is because my benefactors’ had zero evidence to support those false charges—and a formal church discipline hearing would have exposed their own sinful motives driving this personal vendetta.

They accomplished what they set out to do—they made me a stench in the nostrils of Immanuel’s members, and they got their majority vote for my head on a platter. Not a single member voted for me to keep my job, or for us to keep our home.

They gave us just 30 days to vacate the parsonage. This elder claimed it wasn’t personal, and that the 30 days’ notice was simply in keeping with the contract I signed. However, this, too, is false. No where did my contract state that I must vacate the parsonage within 30 days of termination. The contract actually states: “It is understood that the termination by either minister or church requires a 30-day notice, unless a shorter notice is mutually agreed upon.”

Firstly, the “30-day notice” refers specifically to termination of employment (as pastor), not to eviction from the parsonage. Those are not the same thing. Secondly, 30-days is the minimum requirement of my contract, meaning, if they wanted to, they absolutely could have given us more time to find a place to live.

Thankfully, Georgia state law requires landlords to provide no less than a 60-day notice to terminate fixed-term leases. Immanuel had agreed to support me as pastor for a fixed-term of no less than one year, and part of that support was housing. There was still nearly 90 days remaining in that term.

Let that sink in—our secular government shows more care and concern for its citizens than a church full of Baptist Boomers were willing to show to their own pastor and his sick wife. My fellow-elder knew, full well, that it was all but impossible to find housing in 30 days when they’d just taken away my paycheck. This was payback, plain and simple.

After I made an appeal to Immanuel’s interim pastor, he advocated, on my behalf, for the church to give us more time in the parsonage. They granted us an additional 60 days (to save face)—which proved just enough time for me to scour the surrounding three states for a landlord willing to rent to a tenant with no provable income. By this time, Todd the Politician had been re-instated as elder. He and my benefactor threatened me (both verbally, and in writing) with legal action if we were a day late in vacating the premises.

The sudden turn of events left us destitute—too broke to even move out of the parsonage. I was forced to take out a personal loan, with extremely high interest, just to cover the cost of moving and first month’s rent.

Even as I write this, Amanda and I are scraping by—selling possessions and doing without doctors and medicine—as we work to climb back onto our feet. I took the first entry level job I could find that was full-time—with a salary that doesn’t quite cover our basic needs or essential bills. God has miraculously sustained us, often through the generosity of other Christians, and often through inexplicable means (like an unexpected medical refund)—but it has not been easy. There’s a kind of chronic low-level panic that comes with living paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet.

My Wife’s Health

After being treated like a stray dog and kicked to the curb by our previous two churches (here), my wife was starving for love. Over the course of ten months at Immanuel, Amanda developed a very close relationship with my co-elder’s wife. This lady became like a mother-figure to Amanda—so when she sent her a malicious text that more or less encouraged her to separate from me and seek help, it was absolutely devastating. The trauma of that unspeakable betrayal triggered a severe stress-induced shingles outbreak, which began just hours after she received the menacing text.

The shingles spread across my wife’s face, neck, ear, the back of her head, and started to spread around her eyes (which can cause blindness). As anyone who’s ever had shingles knows—the blisters and scars are but the tip of the iceburg. The real pain is deep beneath the surface, where it feels like your nerves are on fire and crawling over broken-glass. Amanda couldn’t chew food without sharp stabbing sensations shooting through her jaw. She couldn’t lay her head on the pillow without excruciating pain pulsing in her ear and across the back of her head—pain which three prescription-strength pain meds barely touched. For about a month, Amanda hardly slept or ate. She mostly cried.

It’s no exaggeration to say that this illness, coupled with the emotional pain, brought my sweet wife to the brink of giving up. She was crushed. Even now, four months later, Amanda’s still taking pain medications (when we can afford them) to manage residual nerve pain, and she has panic attacks that come out of nowhere as we try to process the immense grief that comes from being tossed in the garbage can by two churches in the span of two years.

Our Marriage

One of the most sinister things a person could ever do is try to break up a marriage—yet, as I’ve come to learn, this is all too common in churches that are ruled over by unruly ‘church-ladies.’

It wasn’t enough to destroy my reputation, take away my income, and put us out of our house—this vicious, vindictive elder’s wife had to go after our marriage, too. In a last desperate attempt to pay me back, she sought to turn my own wife against me—to poison our marriage in hopes of getting Amanda to separate from me.

I won’t read all of the text (for now)—due to length, but the salient parts include: “My Dearest Amanda! …Everyone here loves you and is concerned for you, though we realize you have probably been given a very different perspective…There have probably also been things in your personal life that no one else knows about. I would know Amanda because I’ve been there myself. I’m talking about things that don’t add up, make sense, half-truths, manipulations, among countless other things….Please pray about this and search your heart…I know how isolated you can feel to be so far away from everyone and everything that is familiar to you. I would also hope that you would involve your mother…I’m hoping you will listen to my advice, because I only want what is best for my Dear Sister in Christ.”

For brevity, I’ll just point out two quick points, and then let my wife speak for herself:

One: my co-elder’s wife makes her devilish insinuation about me, despite having zero evidence—it’s all conjecture: “There have *probably* also been things in your personal life…”

Two: she’s clearly projecting her own experience onto our marriage: “I would know Amanda because I’ve been there myself.”

Three: bitter, misandric women like this abound in today’s church, and they pose a real threat that men need to be aware of—especially pastors or men in authority.

Amanda and I have experienced this a couple of times before. A woman who postures herself as being “super spiritual” and “super sweet” will work hard to gain access to your wife—often simply because your wife is a sweetheart and quite desirable as a friend, but sometimes, also because they want access to you as someone in a position of authority.

At first they will shower your wife (and you) with love and affection, often in the form of gifts, hospitality, and words of adoration—however, once they get cross with you, or come to view you as “toxic” for something you did to offend them (real or imaginary) they will leverage their “bond” with your wife to try to turn her against you.

The red-flag to watch for is that these women usually have a track record of refusing to submit to any kind of male headship. They often aren’t formal members of a church (and tend to bounce from one church to another). They show a pattern of disrespecting, and even reviling their own husbands, and they are prone to argue with men in general (either in person, or online).

It’s easier said than done in the church, but you need to protect your wife and your marriage from such women—because they will absolutely try to destroy you. If they succeed, you could lose everything. Even if they fail—your wife is often collateral damage.

I’m proud of my wife for standing up for herself, and for our marriage. I’ll let her have the final word. I won’t share her entire response to my co-elder’s conniving wife, as it, too, was lengthy—but suffice to say, Amanda showed far more maturity and class than the Boomers:

“You realize that you guys fired and kicked out of the house a couple who only loved you all, spent time with you all, prayed with and for you all, shepherded you all? …I loved you with all my heart! But now, all of a sudden, the same [pastor] you praised with compliments the other day as a kind, compassionate man (and yes, THIS is my husband) is the man you put all the efforts to destroy (along with me). …About your text implying that my husband is abusive to me and that I should leave him (maybe stay in Brazil?) [it] is very hurtful and sinful. I thought you knew us better. Don’t you see the love and respect we have for each other? Have you ever seen me being disrespectful to [my husband]? Giving him harsh answers, being impatient? Like most Christian wives do these days? Have you ever seen [my husband] being disrespectful, harsh, and abusive to me? Because all that I see is a man who loves me and treats me with respect and tenderness (in public and in private)…I’m grieving like never before. But Jesus will heal my heart once again and put [my husband] and I in a place where people will truly love us. I’m done with churches where wives control their husbands and manipulate the entire flock to destroy good men and hurt deeply their families (me). I choose to forgive you all even now that none of you can see the terrible thing that was done against us. But I’ll keep praying that God will bring you and the others to repentance.”

Sadly, this blog post is probably the only form of ‘discipline’ this elder and his wife will ever face. May God grant them a realization of their sin, and repentance.

Synagogues of Satin Laced with the Poison of Feminism

There are no perfect churches, and even in healthy churches, we should reasonably expect relational challenges which we must learn to navigate in God-glorifying ways. At the same time, we must acknowledge that a “healthy church” in our day is an absolute anomaly. Decades of failing to address the sins of women has led to an epidemic of hen-pecked churches that are simply no longer safe to attend—they have become synagogues of satin laced with the poison of feminism.

My inbox is full of men who’ve had their reputations, livelihoods, marriages, and families destroyed by ‘church-ladies’ and ‘white-knight’ pastors, elders, and deacons.

As Pastor Dale Partridge recently said on X:

“Why must today’s pastors call out sins like…feminism…Because the previous generation of pastors did not. Their silence has forced our noise.”

If evangelicals continue to turn a blind eye to the poison of feminism in their congregations then they should not be surprised when the next generation of men rightly refuse to set foot in their churches.

In my next (and final) series post, I’ll attempt to chart a path forward for the wave of young men who are coming home to today’s church only to find it turned upside down by devious, domineering women and cowardly church leaders. I’ll wrap things up with a call to action. Stay tuned…

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Introduction

In January of last year (2025), I began a new ministry as the teaching pastor for Immanuel Baptist Church—a Reformed Baptist (previously SBC) Church in Rossville, Georgia. I joined a team of two acting lay elders—both of whom had stepped in, unofficially, after the previous pastor resigned. As is often the case in churches with a leadership vacuum—Immanuel had attracted a couple of unscrupulous men, each with their own competing agendas—of which I found myself caught in the middle.

Over the course of the year, one of these men worked tirelessly to discredit me and oppose my ministry—while the other seemed to think he could buy my loyalty to his cause. In the end, they both defrauded me of my reputation, my livelihood, and my housing—and defrauded Immanuel Baptist Church of their pastor.

There are times when it’s appropriate to name names, and to issue public warnings. In 2 Timothy 4:14, the Apostle tells us that, “Alexander the metalworker did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message.”

Matthew Henry calls Alexander the metalworker a ‘false brother,’ and warns that, “There is as much danger from false brethren, as from open enemies…” John Gill tells us that Alexander caused, “great injury to the apostle’s character, and had reproached and reviled him as a man of bad principles and practices…” According to another commentator, Paul calls out his adversary, by name, for two reasons—“to prevent the contagion of his bad example from spreading in the church, and to bring him to repentance and reformation, that so he might be preserved from final destruction.”

Like Paul—this past year, I encountered a false brother—a self-serving elder named Todd, who, so far as I can tell, is attempting to use the church as a platform for political aspirations. (This, of course, is my personal observation and opinion—but time will tell.) When I say that Todd is a ‘false brother,’ I do not speak in regards to his salvation, but rather to the fact that he has acted deceitfully towards me, and towards Immanuel, in every way. I hope and pray that Todd *is* a believer—but that only adds to the shame of his behavior.

In the next post, I’ll address the second elder and his wife, and show how they led the charge—out of personal malice, and under false pretense—to have me fired. In all of this, I am mindful of Paul’s charge to not “entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.” In the course of this post and next, I’ll take pains to demonstrate that there *are* two to three witnesses, including first-hand evidence, testimony, and matters of record—to substantiate my claims.

In this post, I turn my attention to addressing the secretive, underhanded tactics of Todd, the politician—a quintessential ‘church lady’ who made it his mission to sabotage my ministry. As Helen Andrews noted in her article, ‘The Great Feminization’—“…men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.”

The Lady Doth Protest, Too Much

Despite a unanimous vote to call me as Immanuel’s new teaching pastor—within the first month—Todd and his wife began to passive-aggressively protest my ministry. Much like the ‘church-ladies’ in the first church that fired me (here), this elder could not even bring himself to look at me while I stood behind the pulpit. Week after week, he stared down at his feet, or out the window, as I preached the Word of God.

He and his wife adopted the habit of leaving abruptly after Sunday and Wednesday services—without so much as a ‘good-bye’ to anyone. During Wednesday services, they began sitting in the back of the sanctuary, segregated from the group. In our first two elders’ meetings, this elder immediately took an adversarial posture towards me, making unprovoked hostile comments that, in hindsight, were reactionary to things he was reading about me on the internet.

On a personal note, Todd and his wife went out of their way to avoid Amanda and I, leaving us to feel about as welcome at Immanuel as two stray dogs. Amanda was sick every day and facing her sixth surgery in seven years—yet, despite serving as an elder, Todd and his wife couldn’t be bothered to show a modicum of concern for her. To put matters bluntly—they withheld love from us—which is deeply sinful and also a classic ‘church-lady’ move. This went on for nearly six months!

The other elder and I both clearly witnessed these patterns of protest. At the other elder’s suggestion, I scheduled a lunch with Todd, where I asked him, point blank— “Have I done something to offend you?” It was painful to watch Todd’s facial fidgets, as the question clearly triggered a stress-response—but he assured me, in no uncertain terms, that, no, I had *not* done anything to offend him.

The dishonesty of Todd’s answer was readily apparent, even as he divulged, with his next breath, that he had been “researching” me. The last time a church leader informed me he was ‘researching’ me, I was fired soon after—so naturally, I probed further, with two direct and unambiguous follow-up questions—“Is your behavior towards me related to your research? Do you have any concerns about me?” Once again, Todd flatly denied having any concerns, and, as for his behavior, he assured me he was not protesting me.

Unfortunately, for Todd, he tipped his hand yet again when he explained his reason for sitting in the back of the sanctuary, passively disengaged—as he put it: “to make sure the church isn’t being taken in a wrong direction.” To which, he added, “No one should be given a blank check to do whatever they want.”

Despite Todd’s flimsy protests to the contrary, I left that lunch meeting more certain than ever that my fellow-elder was, in fact, protesting my ministry. Todd had shown himself to be a consummate politician—skilled at talking out of both sides of his mouth. I began to wonder what else he was doing, behind the scenes, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.

Roughly three weeks later, on the eve of an elder’s meeting—with Todd continuing in his same patterns of protest—I sent a text to both elders: “Hi Mike and Todd, Tomorrow in our Elder’s mtg, I need to address two issues pertaining to Todd. One is a leadership matter concerning a pattern of behavior unbecoming of an elder. Second is a Matthew 18 personal matter regarding a persistent sinful attitude and behavior towards me. I wanted to give you a heads up so you wouldn’t be caught off guard.”

Todd promptly responded by text: “Thanks for the heads up. I have already spoken to you personally but agree it is necessary to move forward with my concerns regarding a history of behaviors unbecoming of an elder. I will not have time to prepare a full address but pray that God will give me clarity in how to proceed!”

In true political fashion—despite nearly six months of underhanded and duplicitious behavior—Todd had the audacity to reach for the moral high ground. Yet, we can see—with our own eyes—that Todd—by his own words—has caught himself in a boldface lie. When confronted directly, Todd had flatly denied having any concerns about me—not once, but twice. Yet days later, Todd clearly states that he did, in fact, have serious concerns about me—concerns he would soon argue disqualified me from serving as a pastor. These concerns were clearly driving his passive-aggressive ‘church-lady-like’ protests.

The Other Shoe Drops & It’s The Boot

The next day, as we convened our elders’ meeting, Todd unloaded a mountain of accusations against me. For a guy who didn’t “have time to prepare a full address,” it was apparent he’d read every single one of my blog posts going back four years—and had gathered up every speck of internet “dirt” he could find hoping to frame me as a fraudulent trouble-maker.

In other words, Todd had been preparing for this moment for months—for as long as he’d been protesting. He’d been lying in wait—and lying while he waited—for this very moment. It was déjà vu—the second church in a year where a disingenuous church-leader had dug up “dirt,” so as to bury me—only to dig himself into a hole. Long story short—the other elder didn’t find Todd’s attempted character assassination to be credible, and neither did the majority of our members.

Over the course of several meetings, the other elder and I confronted Todd over his sinful behavior and repeatedly urged him to repent. When he refused, we brought Todd before the church in a formal disciplinary hearing. Todd was afforded 20 minutes to defend himself against very clear and specific charges, but, instead, he used the bulk of his allotted time to put me on trial, once again airing out a laundry-list of slanderous accusations. He was entirely out of order, but he didn’t care—his intentions were to bury my reputation beneath a pile of manure and cast a dark cloud of suspicion over me on his way out the door. He was subsequently voted out of office, and placed under church discipline—by majority vote. The other shoe had dropped—and, unfortunately, for Todd, he got the boot.

The Back-Alley Affair of ‘Respectable’ Christianity

The next day, Todd’s wife spitefully deleted all my recorded sermons and deactivated the church Facebook page, preventing us from streaming our services moving forward. These two spent the next four months maligning me in local Reformed Baptist circles. I know this because one of Todd’s preacher friends made some very antagonistic comments on our new Facebook page, while another preacher cancelled coffee with me (never heard from him again), and yet another of his pastor friends denied my request for pulpit supply after receiving a phone call from Todd.

Additionally, this pastor was led (by Todd) to believe that Todd and I had simply had “a falling out.” He was not aware that Todd had been formally voted out of leadership and had subsequently fled church discipline. Of course, even after I made him aware, he still hid behind a flimsy excuse and refused to help me. Who needs confessionalism when you can have tribalism?

As for Todd’s relationship to Immanuel during this time—he appears to have played the part of Tobiah or Sanballat—lurking in the shadows and whispering in the ears of one or two ‘church-ladies,’ who had unmistakably taken his place in protesting me, even as they patiently waited to catch me in a “sin” and “give me a bad name to discredit me.” (Nehemiah 6:13).

In the end, they did catch me in a “sin”—I transgressed the church-ladies’ temperance movement by enjoying beer and cigars with a few Christian brothers in the privacy of my own home. It was a bit like Al Capone getting caught for tax evasion—not what they were after me for, but it got the job done. As the saying goes, “Unhappy Church-Ladies, Unemployed Pastor.” Days after I was fired, Todd the politician was reinstated as an elder—sans any repentance—and subsequently presided over our eviction from the parsonage.

So goes the sordid, back-alley affair that has come to be known as ‘Respectable Christianity.’ As Joe Rigney so astutely observed, “…[It] happens by passive-aggressive pressure, tone-policing, and piles of angst and “concern” expressed in private, all in service of maintaining that ‘carefully cultivated personality and image’ of Respectability.”

The Hypocrisy Of It All

I’ll never know all the things Todd has accused me of behind my back, but I want to address five of the main accusations leveled against me in the elders’ meeting and in Todd’s disciplinary hearing—and then demonstrate the hypocrisy of it all.

One: Wild West Gun-Slinger

Towards the end of my first month as pastor of Immanuel Baptist, I was involved in a dog shooting incident in my neighborhood. Long story, short, I encountered a massive pitbull lunging at a terrified woman as she walked down the street behind our house. In my estimation, the woman was at imminent risk of attack, so, after yelling at the dog and being charged at myself, I fired a single pistol shot at the dog. I missed, but the dog ran away, and the threat was neutralized.

Given the neighborhood context, I immediately called the Sheriff’s office, and they dispatched a deputy who came out and talked to me, to the woman involved, and to multiple neighbors. All the neighbors testified that this dog had been roaming and terrorizing the neighborhood for some time. After a thorough investigation, his (off the record) comment to me was: “I would have shot the dog, too. I’m surprised that dog hadn’t been shot already.” He and I then rode together, located the dog, followed it to its apparent home, and called Animal Control to handle the matter from there.

Todd got wind of the incident, and called me. I gave him a full report, and he told me he had no issues with how I handled the matter. On two other occasions, including once with the other elder present, we discussed the matter, and all three times Todd stated that he had no issue with how I handled the matter.

However, in his disciplinary hearing Todd made my shooting incident a major point of deflection. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he maliciously painted me as a wild-west gun-slinger who was out shooting up the neighborhood. He called me “reckless” and “hotheaded,” and told everyone I “ruined the reputation of the church in the neighborhood.”

The fact is, the woman involved became a regular attender at our church after that, and she testified to everyone in the church (including Todd), and to many people in the neighborhood, that Immanuel’s preacher protected her from a bad dog. If anything, my decisive action, for the good of a neighbor, improved our reputation. In fact, someone from the neighborhood later called me to come put a sick raccoon out of its misery. (With my poor aim, I guess they wanted me to scare it to death.)

The hypocrisy of it all—is that, in 2022, Todd ran for Georgia State Senator on a platform of protecting the Second Amendment right to bear arms—yet, he tried to get me fired for doing exactly that; using my firearm to protect a woman from a vicious dog. Furthermore, in a day when churches are increasingly targeted for violence, Todd literally argued that pastors shouldn’t carry a gun. The only thing Todd appears to be concerned about protecting is his carefully manicured political persona.

Two: Guilt By Association

Todd also smeared me for my association with right-wing Christianity—specifically for my appreciation of prominent (often demonized) pastor, Doug Wilson. Multiple times, in the aforementioned elder’s meeting, he brought up Doug Wilson’s name, and linked him/me to Christian Nationalism, as he enumerated his laundry-list of reasons for why I wasn’t qualified to be a pastor.

The hypocrisy of it all—is that, Todd’s mentor in ministry; the man he says he looks up to more than anyone, is himself a reader and appreciator of Pastor Doug Wilson. In fact, at a pastors’ lunch, Todd was sitting right next to me as his mentor and I casually discussed our mutual appreciation for Doug Wilson. Todd later used that information to try and get me fired.

Three: Match-Making Trouble-Maker

During that same elders’ meeting, Todd also brought up the Christian Matchmaking service I co-founded—Helpmeet Singles (formerly called “Dominion Dating.”) Todd insinuated that it was something nefarious and sought to portray me as a trouble-maker on account of my matchmaking efforts causing a stir back in 2021 when it was covered by the New York Post and Relevant Magazine.

The hypocrisy of it all—is that Todd claims to adhere to traditional, Biblical headship in marriage—yet, in order to smear me, he sought to demonized a Christian matchmaking ministry built around the same traditional views he claims to hold. Furthermore, Todd was pushing for Immanuel Baptist to join the G3 network—yet, he tried to get me fired, in part, for starting a matchmaking network that is used by multiple churches in the G3 network (whose names I’d never disclose).

Our generation is facing an existential threat as marriage and birth rates plummet to historic lows that are well below replacement levels. Some men are on the frontlines trying to do something about the marriage crisis. Others, for fear of bad press, are resigned to shooting us in the back.

Four: “Christ-Centered” Jesus Juke

Once again, in his disciplinary hearing—Todd sought to deflect attention onto me by accusing me of “fixating” on feminism and biblical sexuality. In a phone conversation, Todd told me he didn’t want to be associated with a “Masculine” Church, but rather with a “Christ-Centered” church.

As I explained to him, over the phone, I was in no way “centering” my ministry at Immanuel on “feminism” or “biblical sexuality.” All the evidence shows that I kept those important cultural issues on the periphery, and not in the center. Over the course of my ten month’s as pastor, I didn’t preach a single Sunday morning sermon focused on feminism or biblical sexuality, nor did I “fixate” on it at any other time. Rather, I preached four expositional series, verse by verse, through Philippians, James, Ruth, and Psalm 51. My entire ministry, at Immanuel Baptist, was driven by the text of Scripture, and by the needs of the flock with whom I was entrusted.

The hypocrisy of it all—is that Todd testified, during his disciplinary hearing, that he found no issue with my pastoral ministry or preaching at Immanuel Baptist. Rather, his concerns were related to my addressing those issues outside of Immanuel Baptist Church. To understand Todd’s duplicity here, consider that he and his wife routinely share content—on Immanuel’s Facebook page—from good men like Pastors Tom Aschol and John MacAarthur; men who hold and espouse the same views as me on feminism and biblical sexuality, and who have addressed these same issues with great frequency (arguably, more so than me).

For example—a quick search for “manhood” on the Founder’s Ministry (Tom Aschol’s) website turns up more than 100 articles or videos on the subject. A quick search for “feminism” shows 21 articles or videos on the subject. Founder’s President, Pastor Tom Aschol, has said, “[Our age], as John Stott put it, an “anti-authority” age that has been permeated in every sphere by demonically inspired feminism. While rightly rejecting this ideology some have rediscovered biblical patriarchy—the teaching that God has purposefully made men and women to be different and has assigned to men the primary responsibility and authority to exercise leadership in the home, church, and world.”

Or consider the late John MacAarthur’s ministry—a quick search for “feminism” on his website—Grace To You—shows some 30 sermons, articles, or teaching series on the subject. In 2019, John MacAruthur was smeared by Relevant Magazine—the same publication that smeared me in 2021. Relevant quotes Macarthur as saying, “If women are in charge, we’re in trouble…When women take over a culture, men become weak; …When men become weak, they can be conquered, when all the men have been slaughtered, you [women] can sit there with all your jewelry and junk. You’ve been conquered, because you overpowered your protector.”

Far too often, in our day, claiming to be “Christ-Centered” is nothing but a cowardly and sanctimonious ‘Jesus Juke.’ There are many churches, pastors, and elders today—like Todd—who hide behind the pretense of being “Christ-Centered” in order to avoid the cost of confronting the cultural idols and ideologies of the day which exalt themselves against the centrality of Christ. To be truly ‘Christ-Centered’ you must preach ‘All of Christ, For All of Life.”

Five: Accused of Concealing My Past

Finally, Todd accused me of concealing things about my past—including a name change and past ministry positions. I recognize that this last accusation is not like the previous four accusations—and I also want to acknowledge that there is some truth to the matter, though it has been greatly distorted. Let me first dispel what is false, and then I will address the kernel of truth in Todd’s claim.

Todd and his Reformed Baptist preacher friends have circulated, far and wide, a false and misleading rumor that I lied about my name and my resume. First of all, I did not change or conceal my name in any legal (or illegal) sense. My full name—exactly as it appears on my driver’s license and on my birth certificate—is clearly printed (six times) on the contract I signed with Immanuel, as well as on the background check I underwent.

Additionally, during his hearing, Todd claimed I was fired by three different churches, and that I omitted those churches from my resume. Since I’ve already addressed my past terminations in the previous post, I’ll simply restate, here, that I was actually fired from two churches (not three) and the first church that fired me later reversed their decision and offered me my job back. Additionally, the leaders of the second church said they found no fault for firing me (other than upsetting the church ladies) and told me I could count on them for future job references.

As to the kernel of truth in Todd’s claim—it is true that, after going by my middle name for nearly 44 years, I made a deliberate decision, before coming to Immanuel, to adopt my first name moving forward—a fact I did not disclose to Immanuel. It’s also true that I left off of my resume the last two ministry positions in which I served—the first being a church where I resigned (was not fired), and the second being a church where I was fired.

The hypocrisy of it all—is that my fellow elder postured himself as a faithful shepherd who was “exposing” me as a ‘wolf’ in order to protect the flock—yet, all the evidence points to Todd sitting on this information for nearly six months, and only coming forward with it when it was politically expedient—namely, in order to deflect attention during his own disciplinary hearing.

In Defense of Concealing My Identity

I don’t expect everyone to agree with my ethics or reasons for concealing my identity—but I would, at least, like to explain my rationale. As I told the members of Immanuel, at the time all of this was brought to light—I was not trying to hide something sinful that *I* had done. Rather, I was trying to hide something sinful done to me. I was defamed in the national press—maliciously and falsely accused of being a sexist, a racist, and an alt-right extremist. Unless you’ve gone through something like that, it’s hard to fully appreciate how it forever alters your ability to earn a livelihood. There’s a reason Nick Sandman was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars after being libeled in the press.

In my case, it decimated my ministry at the church I was pastoring, which led to my resignation, and it led to my being fired at the next church. In the four months after I was fired, I interviewed with four different churches—in each case, they passed on me after reading internet slander. In two of those churches, I was scheduled to ‘preach in view of a call’ which is the final step in hiring for pastors. Both churches rescinded their invitation at the last minute. Likewise, Todd the politician testified publicly that, had Immanuel known of my past controversy, they never would have called me.

As it turns out, there aren’t many evangelical churches today willing to be associated with bad press—and, in a day where everyone is a ‘reporter,’ there are fewer and fewer faithful pastors who have managed to avoid bad press. The first thing that pops up when you google “Pastor Brandon Durham” is “blackface.”

At age 43, after devoting nearly 25 years to vocational ministry, I found myself unemployed, broke, homeless—and unemployable in the one vocation where I had the requisite credentials, training, and experience to earn a living. On top of that, we were facing Amanda’s chronic illness, cancer, and crippling medical debt. Simply put, we were desperate—and desperate times call for desperate measures. I realize most of my readers don’t know me from Adam, but I have always strived to live with honesty and integrity. I found myself in a situation that stretched my ethics to the brink.

As I shared in my last post, the defamation was so bad that, after I resigned, the 150-year-old church changed their name, too. Are they required to disclose that to every future guest who walks through their doors? I refuse to be saddled with a Scarlet Letter for someone else’s sin.

My rationale for what I did is fairly straightforward—I looked to the pages of church history, where I found historical precedent for concealing one’s identity. Luther concealed his identity for a season, using an alias to evade a corrupt Roman Catholic church. The London Baptist Confession was first published anonymously to conceal and protect the drafters from persecution by a corrupt Church of England. Even C.S. Lewis published under pseudonym in order to maintain a degree of separation between his personal and professional life. These men weren’t hiding anything sinful they had done—rather, they were responding to and safeguarding against the sinfulness and corruption of those looking to persecute them.

In our day, the modern evangelical church has been inundated by wokeness and cancel-culture—and, as Helen Andrews noted, in her aforementioned article—“Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field…Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.”

Simply put, toxic ‘church-lady’ culture is the ecclesial manifestation of cancel-culture. So long as the ‘Canonical Karens’ are running roughshod over the church, anyone who offends their sovereign feelings will be forced out, or forced into hiding—and nothing offends them more than the Word of God confronting their sin. That’s the point of this series—I am testifying, with my life and words, that today’s effeminized church is actively persecuting faithful pastors and parishioners (mostly men)—in order to appease fretful ‘church-ladies.’

Introduction

In Acts 13:50, Paul has one of the first recorded run-in with a ‘church-lady’ archetype. He was essentially run out of town after upsetting a group of highly influential and “devout” female converts to Judaism. Of course, it was likely their husbands—‘the leading men of the city’—who did the heavy lifting to incite the mob. As John Gill notes, “The Jews applied to these women, and stirred up them to work upon their husbands, who seem to be those next mentioned…” If you’ve ever met a ‘church-lady,’ then you know they can be masterful at manipulating their ‘white-knight’ husbands and pastors, while, at the same time, quite adept at maintaining an angelic appearance as they do the devil’s work.

One of the devilish tactics deployed against Paul was the slandering of his character. In Acts 24:5 the corrupt religious rulers went out of their way to brand him as a rabble-rouser, declaring—“We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world.” Sadly, but not surprisingly, it appears some of Paul’s fellow preachers used the same shady tactics.

Driven by jealousy and selfish-ambition, these deceitful Christians sought to stir up additional trouble for Paul while he was in prison (Philippians 1:17)—most likely by defaming Paul as a ‘trouble-maker’ deserving of his chains. According to Barnes’ Notes, “It is possible also that they may have urged that Paul himself had met with a signal reproof [ie. appropriate punishment] for the course which he had taken, and, as a consequence, was now thrown into chains.” In short, these duplicitious preachers kicked Paul when he was down—hoping to discredit his ministry and incite harsher treatment from the prison guards.

Like Paul before me, I’ve been known to occasionally kick over the bee-hive and upset the Queen Bee—and, like Paul, I’ve been branded as a trouble-maker. When I shared that I’d been fired from three churches, and resigned from a fourth—all after upsetting the ‘church-ladies’—the Twitterverse errupted with a common refrain: “You’re the problem!” Mid-Eva pastors, with big ‘church-lady’ approved ministries, came out of the woodworks to denounce me. Even some of my friends and ‘twitter-mutuals’ have wondered out loud how I could get fired three times (including two years in a row).

My first impulse is simply to ask, “Have you read church history?” When it comes to controversy, the Apostle Paul, the Reformers, and the Puritans make me look like Mother Teresa.

John Knox was banned from England after publishing “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment of Women.” One of the most lauded Christian books ever written—Pilgrim’s Progress—was written from prison by a man who defied the corrupt church of his day. Meanwhile, the Methodist revivalists, having been expelled from the church, preached in the open fields as dung and dead cats were flung at their heads. John Wesley was kicked out of four churches in one week! In light of church history, the real suspicion should fall on pastors who have never been kicked out of a church—or, at least, ruffled the right feathers.

The Apostle Paul refused to be ashamed of his chains—recognizing he was put there for a defense of the gospel. In II Corinthians 11:23-27, Paul sets forth his resume of suffering for the name of Christ, openly “boasting” in all the trouble his ministry has provoked—including imprisonments, beatings, frequent threats of death, brutal whippings, stoning, persecution from his own people, attacks by false brothers, etc. (II Cor. 11:23-27). In Paul’s reasoning—the capacity to raise a righteous ruckus is a halmark of faithful ministry; not a ‘red-flag’ that you’re doing it wrong.

Like Paul—in order to defend my ministry—I want to highlight the consistent pattern in which my ministry has repeatedly drawn the ire of a worldly church corrupted by a deeply entrenched feminist heresy.

To that end, I offer a succinct rehash of the initial three churches where conflict ensued. In all of it, I want to make plain the common thread—that of discharging a plain-vanilla, peaceable ministry which has, nonetheless, upset the ‘church-ladies’ and ended with my head on a platter.

A Summary of Church-Lady Woes

Church One—Rural East Texas (2019)

In October 2018, I stepped down from a full-time ministry (church-plant) to care for my wife, who was in the midst of a major health crisis. Amanda suffered debilitating rheumatoid arthritis effecting 80% of her joints; to the point that she couldn’t walk, and she couldn’t open her mouth to chew food. At her worst, I was dressing her, bathing her, lifting her in and out of the car, and cutting her food up into tiny pieces. At that time, Amanda was also battling chronic and severe gynecological issues, and was extremely anemic, requiring two blood transfusions and two surgeries.

In January 2019, while caring for my very sick wife, I accepted an interim pastorate at a small, rural, traditional Southern Baptist Church in East Texas. A nearby Christian Camp had partnered with them to try and revitalize the church. The camp director served as an elder, the camp staff led worship, and more than half the congregation was affiliated with the camp.

Sometime during my first month, in the course of a couple of sermons, I briefly applied the texts I was preaching to the issues of wokeness, CRT, BLM, and feminism. From that time on, several female congregants (camp staff) in their 20’s and 30’s, began to passive-aggressively protest me. These women steadfastly refused to even look at me while I preached, except to scowl at me, or to roll their eyes in disapproval; opting to stare at their feet, or snicker to each other, for the rest of the time.

You’d think that Christian women—serving in Christian ministry, no less—would go out of their way to show kindness to another woman in the midst of her immense suffering. Instead—out of disdain for me—they went out of their way to avoid my wife; treating her like a stray dog. This was when I first realized just how nasty ‘church-ladies’ could be.

This went on, Sunday after Sunday, for nine months straight. Multiple church members (and regular attenders) corroborated my testimony. During this time, I repeatedly brought this to the attention of the two elders, and they repeatedly dismissed it. When I tried to schedule a sit down with these women, they ducked my calls. When I finally did confront them, they reported me to the elders.

I was subsequently called into an elders’ meeting and told, “It would be EASIER for everyone if you left.” I was then given what was essentially an ultimatum; admit I was wrong in my allegations against these women and apologize—or resign. I resigned. Honestly, I was too exhausted to fight it, and I was trying to shield a sick wife from controversy. The elders offered me a meager two-weeks additional pay (as severance) if I went quietly. Financially, I wasn’t in a position to turn it down. In hindsight, I should have refused to go along with this ‘backroom’ maneuver to push me out—and insisted that we follow the disciplinary process in the church bylaws.

Fast-forward three months—the church voted these two elders out of office, and they asked me to return as their permanent (part-time) pastor. I did, in fact, come back and preach for them, at that time, though I declined the permanent ministry position. I would say I was vindicated in that situation.

Church Two— Florida Panhandle (2021)

In April of 2021, with Amanda in better health, we moved to the Florida Panhandle where I accepted a full-time pastorate at First Baptist Freeport—the most historic church in town. I’ve already written extensively about everything that happened in Freeport (See here, here, here, and here), so I won’t bore everyone with a long rehash of details, but suffice to say, my ministry was stringently opposed, from the start—by the ‘church ladies.’

The backstory here, is that just two weeks into my brand-new pastorate, in a brand-new town, where nobody knew me from Adam, I was bizarrely defamed by the national press for my efforts to help Christian singles find godly spouses. The NY Post reported a false rumor that I used ‘blackface,’ in my marketing, while Relevant Magazine and Podcast both maliciously smeared my project (and, me, by extension) as misogynistic and alt-right extremist.

A group of prominent women, both in the church, and in the community, used all of that internet defamation (while working in tandem with the town Mayor’s openly homosexual partner) to launch a full-scale smear campaign aimed at ruining my reputation and running me out of town. Their online smear campaign was eventually picked up and shared by the ‘Destin In The News’ Facebook page, with 30,000 followers. (They promptly deleted their libelous post after I informed them of their libel, but the damage was done.)

Additionally, one of these disgruntled ‘church ladies’ worked in tandem with a TikTok influencer from outside the community, to produce a series of hit pieces on me, which they then shared all over Facebook. This TikTok influencer shared my cell and the church phone number to her 80k followers. They trashed the church Google Map reviews and bombarded the church office with angry, vulgar messages. The church secretary resigned amidst the mayhem.

At the same time, the “Examining Doug Wilson” gossip rag (more unhinged ‘church-ladies’) made several false, slanderous posts about me and instructed their followers to report me to the FBI. (I did, in fact, receive a visit from an FBI agent during that time—ostensibly for a matter unrelated to me). There were online calls to protest our church and “cause trouble.”

Needless to say, church attendance was decimated, and our church was blacklisted in the community. Despite pastoring the most historic church in town, I went uninvited, two years in a row, to Freeport’s pastor-led day of prayer. I lost count of how many times I was called into meetings with the deacons to be raked over the coals for something that ‘concerned’ or upset the ‘church ladies.’ Six first-time guests informed me that the first time they walked through the front door of the church, a ‘church-lady’ (on staff, no less) was openly ‘bad-mouthing’ me right in front of them. In one of the Women’s Mission Union (WMU) meeting reports, an entire paragraph was dedicated to thinly veiled ‘concerns’ about me.

During this time, Amanda was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumors and underwent two major surgeries, including a hysterectomy. She lost her womb to cancer, and lost most of her friends in that area due to vicious, unruly ‘church-ladies’ smearing me around town.

I was not fired. I resigned for the sake of my wife’s health and sanity—and because I’d rather live in the desert than constantly contend with the ‘Warring Women’s Union’ (WWU). To give you an idea on the severity of the onslaught and outcry that was leveled against my ministry—after I resigned, this historic 150-year-old church actually changed their name!

Church Three—South Alabama (2024)

After I resigned from First Baptist Freeport, I tried, for a year, to plant a church in the area. We started meeting outside in a park, and within a few months we had a larger congregation gathered than we had at First Baptist Freeport. Then the whisper-net started up and more than half of our people ghosted on us without so much as a phone call. Then we were booted from two venues, for dubious reasons—both times by women. (Read here). After a year of fighting yet another uphill battle, we made the hard decision to close our doors.

During this time, I accepted an interim pastorate at a small, rural Southern Baptist church in south Alabama. This little church hadn’t had a pastor in over a year, and they were very glad to have me filling the pulpit and shepherding their people. Over the course of months, we established a wonderful rapport. These people showered my wife and I with love, hot meals, fresh vegetables and eggs, and numerous hand-written “Thank You” cards. It was a very healing time for my wife. Their church attendance went up noticeably, and there was a very sweet spirit in this church. Not a Sunday went by that someone in the church didn’t pull me aside and ask me to consider being their full-time pastor.

After about six months as their interim, the pastor search committee invited me to interview for the permanent pastorate. Over the course of the next several weeks, I went through the interview process, including an in-person interview and a handful of phone interviews to answer follow up questions. The search committee voted, unanimously, to bring me before the church for a congregational vote. I received a 98% congregational vote to become the new pastor. We accepted the call.

Roughly six weeks later—before we had even moved into the parsonage—I was fired. The church voted, unanimously, to terminate me as their pastor. They’d barely even taken down the “Welcome” sign. (For a full account, including two interviews on this bizarre turn of events, see here.)

If you want to understand the incredible damage that a couple of ‘church-ladies’ can inflict upon a congregation, consider that a miniscule 2% of this congregation was able to turn everything on its head in a matter of weeks.

In this case, the youth pastor (also serving as a deacon)—by his own admission—began ‘researching’ me after I offended his boomer-feminist wife with a sermon I preached on motherhood (while still interim). By the time I found out, this man and his wife had already had three meetings, behind my back, with the deacons.

I was subsequently brought before the deacon board for yet another struggle session, where I was grilled for over an hour, as this ‘youth pastor’ unloaded a barrage of concerns and accusations. According to the deacon board, I passed with flying colors, and an apology was extended. The disgruntled youth pastor and his wife abruptly resigned their membership the following Sunday, announcing to the entire church that they were leaving on account of me.

Two weeks later, I was fired after this youth pastor and his wife incited half the church to leave if I wasn’t terminated. Critics have tried to put the blame on me, insisting that I should have been upfront about past controversies. Aside from disagreeing with that in principle, it’s an established fact that this search committee did know all about my past controversies before they interviewed me—yet they, themselves, chose not to bring it up. In the course of things, it came to light that my own detailed accounts (blog) had been circulating among members of the church and search committee well before they interviewed me, yet, as one deacon testified (concerning his own wife)—[she] concluded was that I was not the instigator of trouble, but rather the target of a smear campaign. In my final meeting with the deacons, one of them stated emphatically, “I just don’t understand. I am certain God called you to be our pastor.”

None the less, I was promptly fired—offered up as a peace-offering to appease the ‘church ladies.’ The deacon board could barely look me in the eye as they fumbled for words to convey their sheepish apologies, stating they’d never experienced anything like this. As they handed me a severance check, they shook my hand and assured me that if I ever needed a future job reference, they’d be glad to give it.

Some Answers

I read someone, recently, who summarized John Wesley’s ‘test for effective ministry’ as being “whether it both wins followers and provokes enmity.” My online critics, despite having never met me, are quick to claim that *all* I do is cause trouble. To which, I’d simply ask—‘Then how do I keep getting hired?’

The short answer is that, over the course of 25 years, I’ve had a faithful, fruitful pastoral ministry on three continents, which is reflected in my resume, and attested to by my character references.

I’ll add two final points, for consideration:

One: I’ve served as an interim pastor in five different churches—all of which, after a period of 3-6 months under my ministry, have asked me to become their permanent pastor.

Two: In each case where I’ve been fired, or resigned—the protests and opposition occurred within the first two months.

So, which is it? Am I really such an arrogant blowhard—as the sanctimonious mob maintains—that I routinely shoot myself in the foot within the first 60 days? If so, then how do you explain my track record for repeatedly being asked to stay on permanently, when serving as interim?

Allow me to venture an answer: Over the past decade, my convictions on gender and sexuality have matured and ripened in greater conformity to God’s Word; which makes them sweet to the taste for Biblically-informed Believers—but rotten to the bone for worldly professors. Once the ‘Ecclesial Karens’ realize I’m a threat to their feminist rebellion, I’m subsequently branded “the devil incarnate” and summarily cast out.

It reminds of the words of Jesus: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

There’s a growing number of pastors, just like me, who recognize the destructive nature of feminist dogma in the church, and who longed to shepherd modern evangelicals in a more faithful direction—but evangelicals are proving, by and large, to be unwilling. Instead, they gather a great number of J.D. Greears to tickle their itching ears.

Modern evangelicalism has devolved into a co-ed Women’s Guild that recruits, trains, promotes, and promenades nice, tame, politically-correct pastors who never say or do anything to risk being at odds with our hyper-feminist culture—or with the ‘church-ladies’ (but I repeat myself).

Consequently, most modern professing Christians have grown accustomed to milk-toast ministries which pose no threat to the world, the flesh, or the devil. We wonder why we’re getting our butts handed to us by a wicked culture?

The short answer—because evangelical men can’t even say, “NO” to the ‘church-ladies.’

Coming Up Next

In the next couple of posts, I’ll wade into the weeds and shine some light on the murky waters of my recent firing. Stay tuned as I attempt to debunk the bogus charges leveled against me and unmask a stunning scheme of pharisaical sophistry.

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Introduction

Well, I’ve done it again—I’ve upset the ‘church ladies.’

Back in October (2025), I shared on X [Twitter] that I’d been fired, again, as a pastor. For reference, I was fired the year before, as well, and as I noted in my X post:

“In the past [seven] years, as a pastor, I’ve been fired from three churches, and resigned from a fourth amidst calls for my termination. In every case, I was fired [or resigned after] upsetting the “church ladies” (often, of both sexes).”

My story of ‘church-lady’ woes clearly touched a nerve as it received hundreds of shares and headlined the X-news cycle for a couple of days, garnering nearly half a million views.

The tremendous response helps to validate my concern in two directions. On the one hand, the sheer volume of ‘wet hens’ and ‘white-knights’ who showed up in my comments, to put me in my place, proved a shining example of exactly what I’m talking about—namely, a toxic ‘church-lady’ culture that ‘disciplines’ anyone who dares to challenge it.

At the same time, the comments were also full of men sharing similar accounts to mine, and I received over forty private messages, not to mention phone calls, from pastors and male parishioners, all saying how much they resonated with my story—while relaying their own painful experiences of having their reputations, livelihoods, marriages, and families destroyed by vicious ‘church-ladies’ and hen-pecked pastors.

It’s worth noting that even some of the ‘respectable’ pastors—who showed up in my comments to criticize, denounce, and malign me—were still compelled to agree, in principle, that ‘church ladies’ are a problem.

In this follow-up (blog series), I want to defend my assertion that evangelicalism is ‘eat up’ with toxic ‘church-lady’ culture—and then add some framing to the discussion as well as address some of the questions and accusations that have surfaced since sharing my story. I’ll conclude with a clear call to action.

As I stated in my X post, “Naturally, there’s a lot more to this saga. I intend to give a full account of everything that transpired, but first, I’ve got to go find a place to live and start earning an income.”

Personal Update

As a quick personal update—by God’s grace, my wife and I managed to find a place to rent just days before Christmas. This was no easy feat, given that our housing and income were both taken from us at the same time. Try finding a landlord willing to rent to you when you have no income. Let’s just call it a ‘Christmas Miracle.’

Amanda is much recovered from her stress-induced shingles outbreak, which occurred the week I was fired. It was a severe case, attacking the back of her head, ear, neck, jaw, and face. She’s still taking two prescription meds for nerve pain, but the scars are healing and the virus appears to be dormant again. Amanda’s still quite sick from cancer, and goes monthly for treatment. She’s also battling a lot of pain from rheumatoid arthritis, and has to wear braces to support her wrists. She’s lost a lot of function and strength in her hands and fingers, making ordinary tasks quite difficult. She’s one of the bravest and most persevering people I’ve ever known, and she continue to look to our Lord for strength. She’s all sweetness to me.

As for work, after 25 years in pastoral ministry, I’m now in the life insurance business as a licensed, independent broker. If you live in Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Florida, or Minnesota, and want some help shopping for life insurance, give me a shout. I can get you some quotes, that fit your budget, from four of the top companies—and you have my word, I won’t twist your arm. (jb.durham80@gmail.com)

Two Reasons I’m Speaking Out

One: To Expose Rampant ‘Church-Lady’ Rot

The primary reason I’ve talked openly about my string of ‘firings’ is because I believe that ‘church ladies’ (of both sexes)—the rotten fruit of rampant feminism—constitute the most immediate problem facing today’s church. Over the past 60 years, or so, a pervasive culture of controlling, manipulative, domineering women has been steering the evangelical church towards the cliff of moral compromise—all in the name of ‘niceness,’ ‘equality,’ and ‘inclusivity’—while pushing out good and godly pastors and parishioners (primarily men) in the process.

There are many other problems, to be sure—doctrinal errors and moral compromises of various shapes and sizes—but, so long as unruly women rule over us—it remains impossible to address these other issues without being railroaded by the ‘church-ladies’ (of both sexes)—for being ‘mean’ and ‘divisive.’

This trend shouldn’t surprise us, given the sinful impulse of women to rule over their own husbands (see Genesis 3:16). Many women—after years of ruling the roost in their own households—naturally try to extend their rule over pastors and other men within the household of faith. Decades of second and third wave feminism have poured gasoline on the problem. Couple this reality with the runaway train of ‘toxic empathy’(see here) and you have a recipe for disaster.

The only way to stop this train, as it barrels towards the cliff, is for strong men of character and conviction to put their foot down (on the brake). Unfortunately, our hyper-feminized age has produced a culture of servile pastors, elders, deacons, fathers and husbands who have proven unwilling, or incapable, of offering any resistance to the malignant ‘church-lady’ culture devouring evangelical churches. In other words, the brakes have essentially been ‘cut.’

In fact, these effeminate men often adopt the same underhanded tactics and behaviors as the ‘church-ladies’—hence the phrase, “church-ladies of both sexes.” These men aren’t Biblically-qualified to lead the household of faith (church), most noticeably, because they fail to lead their own households—as evidenced by their unruly wives and unbelieving children. Such men steadfastly refuse to address actual sins committed by women, and, instead, default to placating these sinful women by punishing men for virtually any contrived “offense.”

As I described in my X post:

Time and again, these [church ladies] have pressed their husbands, deacons, and elders to put me under discipline; to force me into a struggle session where I must apologize for offending them, grovel for a second chance, and agree to all kinds of restrictions on what I can say and do. Once I refuse these sinful, controlling demands, they inevitably demand my head on a platter…and the ‘church ladies’ ALWAYS get what they want.

Two: To Defend My Character Against Slander

I’m also writing to refute a local and online smear campaign. Over the past 10-12 months, I’ve been maligned and slandered, both publicly and behind the scenes, by two woefully unqualified (ungodly) elders and their wives, who have gone on the war path—making it their mission to discredit my ministry, by maligning my reputation.

Just as the Apostle Paul devoted considerable effort defending himself (see II Cor. 10-13) when his opponents (including other preachers) tried to discredit his ministry, so I’m going to devote some space in this blog series to defending my name against false accusations and slander. Where my opponents have tried to obfuscate the truth by twisting facts and muddying the water, my aim is to bring correction and clarity—and receipts to back it up.

Not The First To Notice

I may be one of the first (or few) to speak candidly about my own ‘church-lady’ woes (because it comes at a steep price), but I’m certainly not the first to notice that this is a serious problem in the church.

Bnonn Tennant (co-author of “It’s Good To Be A Man,” buy here) has touched on toxic ‘church-lady’ culture (with different framing) in an article titled, ‘How Influential Women & White Knights Destroy The Church.’

Bnonn writes:

“When women hold power in a church—whether officially or unofficially—two things tend to happen: They strive to include anyone agreeable, regardless of error; They strive to exclude anyone disagreeable, regardless of orthodoxy. This is how women are designed, and it is good—in its proper context. Which is why the proper context for feminine influence is under masculine rulership.”

Bnonn goes on to explain that,

“False teachers are experts at being agreeable. This goes back to Eden, with the smooth-talking serpent. Men who faithfully imitate Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles, are much more proficient at ruffling feathers. In an ecclesial context, therefore, women’s social instincts are roughly inversely proportional to ensuring orthodoxy. Women are likely to approve and endorse flatterers, hirelings, soft men; likely to disapprove and ostracize truth-tellers, shepherds, tough men…This isn’t fanciful speculation. The data is in. Even just in recent history, we have multiple independent tests to refer to: mainline denominations, the PCUSA, etc; and now the OPC, PCA, and SBC are mid-experiment. The results are highly predictable because of these basic sexual psychological distinctions.”

Finally, Bnonn writes,

“White knights enable and exacerbate the tendency of influential women to lead churches into error. Like women, men have natural instincts that, in their proper place, are good—but removed from it, quickly turn destructive… Unfortunately, white knights have twisted these natural impulses into a mindset that automatically seeks and defers to female approval. This is their default frame… All these women have to do is take offense at another man and turn on the waterworks, and the white knights will unreflectively try to destroy him using any means necessary. And because they are “nice guys,” and using feminine tactics, this means they start with character assassination and whisper-nets.”

Others have diagnosed this problem (toxic feminism) in the broader culture—referring to it as the ‘Longhouse.’ Per an article in First Things:

“The most important feature of the Longhouse, and why it makes such a resonant (and controversial) symbol of our current circumstances, is the ubiquitous rule of the Den Mother. More than anything, the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior… There is a greater tendency to respond to an offense by mobilizing social resources to ostracize the alleged offender.”

In short, the widespread rot of toxic ‘church lady’ culture has opened the ecclesial floodgates to mealy-mouthed (wo)man-pleasers, while effectively gatekeeping the church against the very gatekeepers so desperately needed.

As I contend in my X-post—at present, (with few exceptions) there’s virtually NO PLACE in evangelical churches for any man, whether he’s a pastor or parishioner, who won’t submit to the hen-pecking order of the most prominent women. Once someone offends the sovereign feelings of a ‘church-lady’—the gossip circulates, a coalition forms, consensus is galvanized—and the ‘trouble-maker’ is pushed out. As the old saying goes, “If Momma ain’t happy…someone’s about to have their head on a platter.”

Coming Up

In the next post, I’ll share a summary rehash of my recent firings and fomentations, wherein, I’ll seek to make plain the common denominator—namely, my knack for getting canned after upsetting the ‘church-ladies.’

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Introduction

In his book, “Leadership & Emotional Sabotage,“ Dr. Joe Rigney tells us, “…the moment that you begin to cultivate mature, soberminded leadership, you should expect sabotage, both from within and from without.  In fact, almost like Newton’s Third Law, every act of faithful leadership will be met with an equal and opposite act of sabotage.”  Rigney’s right.  The sobering reality is that soberminded-leadership is, inherently, a provocation to those inebriated by their own sinful passions.  The darkness hates the light, because the light, inevitably, exposes the darkness. 

Good leaders are like physicians—they put their finger on pain points and reveal places of unhealth that need to be addressed for the well-being of the body.  Leaders, like doctors, take an oath, “to do no harm”—but that doesn’t mean “to induce no pain.”  The path to healing marriages, families, churches, and nations is often painful, as sin must be confronted with truth and rooted out with repentance.  As Spurgeon reminds us, “…to save men’s souls, you must tell them a great deal of disagreeable truth”—and we learn from Paul that speaking truth to those who don’t want to hear it has a way of making us their enemy (Galatians 4:16). 

There are no guarantees that good leadership won’t end badly.  John the Baptist showed courageous leadership when confronting Herod’s sin, prompting Herod’s wife to lose her head.  For that, John lost his head.  David showed heroic leadership on the battle field, in service to King Saul.  For that, King Saul tried to pin David to the wall with a spear.  The Lord Jesus displayed flawless leadership as the true Shepherd of Israel.  For that, He was crucified.  As the saying goes: “No good [leadership] goes unpunished.”  In fact, in our day, good leadership could get you fired.  That’s what recently happened to me.

Several months back, Canon Press announced they were giving away (to pastors) free copies of Rigney’s book, “Leadership & Emotional Sabotage.”  At the time, I was serving as an interim pastor for a small, rural Southern Baptist Church, and they had just interviewed me to become their permanent pastor.  As the new, incoming leader for this congregation, I knew Rigney’s book would be required reading for me—but I couldn’t have the ‘Moscow Mood’ showing up in the mailbox of a Southern Baptist church in the throes of ‘Church Lady Mood’—so I reached out to Canon Press and asked if they could mail a copy to my personal address.  They graciously accommodated me, and I wasted no time seeking to learn how to lead, “in an age of agitation and angst marked by raging anxiety storms and fierce social stampedes…,” as Rigney describes it. 

Long story, short—I sparked the fastest, fiercest social stampede I’ve ever witnessed, and I was fired before I finished reading the book.  In fact, the church had barely taken down the welcome sign, and I hadn’t even moved into the parsonage yet, when they kicked me to the curb.  I lost my income, my housing, my health insurance, and my community, with my wife battling cancer and crippling rheumatoid arthritis. 

A Case Study on Emotional Sabotage In the Church

In a matter of weeks, I went from a near unanimous church vote (98%) to call me as pastor, to a unanimous vote to dismiss me.  How did this happen?  The answer is found in Rigney’s book— where he builds upon Milton Friedman’s framework (five hallmarks) for understanding our chronically anxious and agitated day.  As Rigney notes, these five characteristics—reactivity, herding, blame displacement, quick-fix mentality, and failure of nerve—“mark not only society as a whole, but also afflict the various institutions of society—family, churches, businesses, and the state.” 

It’s uncanny how this framework captures what I went through as a small disgruntled group turned an entire church against me.  For any pastors hoping to avoid having your ministry and livelihood torpedoed, I offer my experience as a case-study on emotional sabotage in the church.

One: Reactivity 

The church that fired me was without a pastor for an entire year by the time I arrived.  They seemed genuinely happy to have me.  My interim preaching and shepherding were well received—attendance increased and morale improved.  The people were warm—showering my wife and I with hot meals, kind words and thoughtful cards.  We had fresh eggs and vegetables coming out of our ears.  Not a week went by that someone in the congregation didn’t drop a hint that they’d like me to become their permanent pastor.  

Things began to change after I interviewed for the permanent position.  There was a small group of women in the church clamoring to take on more visible leadership—they wanted to teach co-ed Sunday School and have a woman lead Sunday worship as a de facto worship pastor.  As often happens, this special interest group had finagled their way (or their husband’s way) onto the pastor search committee.  The issue of ‘women in leadership’ was, far and away, the chief concern of the committee—a concern they circled back to, again and again, over the next several weeks.  I made my convictions painfully clear, and reasoned from Scripture, as well as historic orthodoxy, to support my unpopular views.  Over the next several weeks, the committee tried, multiple times, to negotiate with me, hoping I might ‘flex’ a little to accommodate their egalitarian agenda.  They were met with disappointment.  I was certain this issue would be a deal breaker, yet, to my surprise—the search committee announced their unanimous vote to recommend me to the congregation.  In reality, I was the only viable candidate to express interest in pastoring this church, and the congregation had really taken to me, so it was, essentially, ‘me or the firing squad.’  Two weeks later, I was voted in as pastor.

That’s when the subversive monkey business began—as this group unleashed an undercurrent of reactivity aimed at sabotaging my ministry.  As Dr. Rigney describes it, “The common thread [of reactivity] is that the passions of the members govern and dictate both the mood of the body and its direction.  The atmosphere of the institution is volatile, as though there are gas fumes ready to ignite at the stroke of a match.”

It was almost imperceptible at first.  As my wife and I were received into membership, and our new church family extended the right-hand of fellowship, the youth pastor and his wife were quietly absent.  Perhaps they simply got caught up visiting with guests?  That’s what they claimed.  Then, I noticed certain people, previously very friendly, seemed to be avoiding me, while others appeared to be low-key scowling and scoffing as I preached.  Was I imagining things?  Then a handful of people stopped attending.  When I’d check on them, they’d say they were sick, and, sadly, they never seemed to get better.  Maybe they had ‘Long Covid?”  By this point, Amanda and I were feeling about as welcome on Sundays as a couple of lepers.  Then, one day, I received a phone call from a former church, informing me that a deacon was snooping around for information about me. 

By the time I realized what was going on, this deacon (who was also the ‘Youth Pastor’) had already called three deacon’s meetings behind my back, and was campaigning to have me fired.  When I asked why, he told me I had offended him and his wife with my recent Mother’s Day sermon, and this had prompted him to begin “researching” me, as he put it. 

As it turns out—when your church is being steered by disgruntled feminists—nothing will get you fired faster than giving a Biblical exhortation to protect and promote motherhood, on Mother’s Day.

I was summoned, by the deacons, to an inquisition, where I was grilled, for about an hour and a half, as the Deacon ‘Youth Pastor’ leveled a mountain of accusations against me.  He accused me of preaching an errant gospel (Calvinism), of having a low-view of women, of ‘guilt-by-association’ with ‘a known racist and misogynist’ (Doug Wilson), and of making sinful ‘mean tweets.’  It was clear he (and the ‘special interest’ group) had spent the past several weeks digging up every speck of ‘dirt’ they could find on the internet, and he was now hoping to bury me in the cemetery out back. 

He left that meeting sorely disappointed.  The deacon body concluded, unanimously, that I was not at fault in the matters raised, but that I had, rather, been the target of an online smear campaign—which any level-headed person could see.  In fact, after my examination, I was walking out to the car, and one of the deacons flagged me down.  He told me, “I’m sorry we had to put you through that. I thought you acquitted yourself very well.  All of your answers were sound and thoroughly Biblical.”  I told him I hated to see the church divided, and that I was sorry for all the grief we were going through.  I’ll never forget his response—“Sometimes a church has to go through things like this to get healthy.”  I breathed a sigh of relief.  This deacon was the most influential man in the entire church—the bull of the woods.  He clearly recognized the situation for what it was and seemed willing to push through the pain for the opportunity to have a healthy church.  For the moment, I still had my job.

Two: Herding 

When the Youth Pastor and his wife couldn’t get me fired, the Youth Pastor resigned, abruptly, in protest.  In the days that followed, they smeared me to everyone who would listen.  Attendance dwindled.  A flurry of behind-the-scenes complaints ensued.  The deacons called me in for another meeting, where they informed me that “half the church was threatening to leave” if I wasn’t terminated immediately. 

I watched, in real time, as the deacons’ principled stand, from days earlier, melted into pragmatism before my very eyes.  It was one thing when just the youth pastor was threatening to leave, but now the entire ‘youth ministry’ was in revolt, including Mr. Bull of the Woods’ family—his daughter and grandsons.  In short, the screws had been tightened, and now a social stampede was afoot, threatening to trample the unity of the church if certain demands weren’t met—namely, my head on a platter.

Dr. Rigney describes ‘herding’ as “a process where togetherness triumphs over individuality and everyone adapts to the least mature members of the community. …Disruptions by the immature will be accommodated; anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold.  As a result, the most immature members of a community come to set the agenda for the whole.”

As we sat in a circle, the deacons took turns expressing their dismay at the situation.  One of them said, “In all my years, I’ve never experienced anything like this.”  Another chimed in, “I don’t understand.  I am certain God called you to be our pastor.”  With emotion quaking in his voice, he repeated himself—“I am certain God called you to be our pastor.”  His own family, and the church family he served, had put him in an untenable position—if he stuck to his guns, they would leave, and he would be branded as the bad guy who covered for the mean preacher. 

It was painful to watch as grown men allowed emotionally-manipulative ‘children’ to hold them over barrel.  With their sullen faces set like flint, the deacons told me to stay home that Sunday, so the church could hold a ‘family meeting.’  I pleaded with them to let me attend my own trial—to defend myself against false accusations, and to help lead those being misled.  My plea, for common sense and decency, fell on deaf ears.  Clearly, these men had decided to join the herd, for fear of being trampled by it.

Three: Blame displacement

I stayed home that Sunday, by order of the deacons, as they called their kangaroo court into session.  They had denied my fundamental right to face my accusers, claiming my very presence might trigger emotional distress amongst the entitled group trying to string me up by my neck. 

Dr. Rigney defines blame displacement as “an emotional state in which members of the community focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny. …This often produces a kind of social cohesion, as members of the group unite against the scapegoat.”  

I’ll never know what all happened in that meeting; what lies and slander were leveled against me, in my absence, but it’s safe to say that my reputation was destroyed that day, and along with it, my livelihood.  The very same people who—just weeks earlier—had voted, nearly unanimously, to call me as their pastor, now turned around and voted, unanimously, to fire me. 

Rather than take responsibility for the carnal state of the church, including some of their own family members, and seek to lead them in a new, soberminded direction—the deacons opted for a scape goat—someone they could send out from the camp, to bear the guilt and condemnation of a blame-shifting church co-opted by a gaggle of cry-bullies.    

Four: Quick-fix mentality

You never fully know what problems you’re inheriting when you accept a call, as an outsider, to shepherd a new church—but you find out, soon enough.  When a church is unhealthy, no matter how much you ‘walk on egg shells,’ you eventually step on a land mine.

By simply preaching the Bible—the full counsel of God’s Word, for the full scope of our lives—I had, inevitably, pressed upon a pain point, and exposed an area of unhealth in the church; an area that had been festering for years.  This was an opportunity to lead the church towards a place of health and stability, but there was a cost to be counted—it would mean enduring the short-term pain of discipline, for the long-term gain of levelheaded maturity.

Unfortunately, as Dr. Rigney points out, “Broken institutions frequently choose long-term chronic pain rather than short-term acute pain that would actually address the issue.”  In a word, they operate with a ‘quick-fix’ mentality, driven by “a desire for symptom relief rather than fundamental change, flowing from a low threshold for pain.”   

The deacons, and the church, voted to kick the can down the road. Rather than endure a painful season of pruning, they chose to appease the agitators, and run off their second pastor in a year.  By caving to the special interest group, they only perpetuated the problem.  As Kipling warned, “Once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.” 

Five: Failure of nerve

Evangelicalism, in general, and the SBC, in particular, is predominated with churches just like this—churches that are “shot through with conflict, rivalry, and confusion….tossed about by the passions of its members.”   They don’t get this way by accident—it stems from “a lack of mature, decisive leadership.” As Rigney puts it, “Abdication at the top leads to insubordination at the bottom.” 

In private, the deacons were all very supportive of my ministry, and they vocalized strong agreement with my preaching and teaching.  At no point, did they lay any blame at my feet. Even my infamous sermon on marriage and motherhood, which I preached a couple of weeks before being voted in as pastor, had been met with their approval.  As leaders, they knew the direction we needed to go, but they abdicated.

My being fired, ultimately, came down to —a failure of nerve. Dr. Rigney describes failure of nerve as “an empathetic paralysis [that] sets in as everybody seeks to appease the most reactive members.” Simply put, the deacons were emotionally manipulated and pressured into submitting to the demands of the special interest group. They stood strong, at first, but as the screws were tightened, and the stakes were raised—they lost their nerve.

The Tail Wags The Dog—Southern Baptist Church Culture

Reactivity, emotional sabotage, and social stampeding are perennial threats that call for soberminded leadership and ‘non-anxious’ nerves, steeled by clarity and conviction.  Milton Fredman has provided an apt portrait of such leadership:

“[A well-differentiated leader is] someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about.  I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and, therefore, can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.  I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity in response to the automatic reactivity of others and, therefore, be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing.”

This is the kind of leadership sorely needed in the Southern Baptist Convention—pastors who are willing to “maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.”  Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of pastors not welcome in many Southern Baptist Churches.

The problem is reinforced by the SBC’s upside-down ecclesiology.  In most Southern Baptist Churches, congregational polity means the members rule over the deacons, and the deacons rule over the pastor.  Essentially, the tail wags the dog—the most reactive members of the church set the agenda by turning the screws on the deacons, who pull the strings of the pastor.  If the pastor doesn’t dance like a puppet, he’s cut loose.  This results in a culture where only ‘yes men’ hirelings can have job security, and actual leaders get branded as “trouble-makers.”

This pervasive ‘anti-leadership’ culture has, no doubt, contributed to the SBC’s steep decline over the past two decades as Southern Baptist churches hemorrhage millions of members and face a shortage of pastors.  The inverted leadership hierarchy of congregationally-led churches makes the SBC more susceptible to reactivity, herding, and emotional sabotage.  Couple that with the fact that far too many Southern Baptist deacons and pastors show themselves to be (Biblically) unqualified to lead, and it’s not hard to see why so many churches are suffering from a chronic ‘failure of nerve” as they’re habitually led around by the nose, and taken off mission, by special interest groups.

When it comes to the issue of egalitarianism and the push for women pastors, the Southern Baptist Convention is facing an historic “failure of nerve” that dates back 175 years—to Lottie Moon and the founding of the Women’s Mission Union—when feckless leaders made a Faustian bargain for mission finance, and thereby entrenched feminism within the convention.  (See here.)  The tail has been wagging the dog ever since. 

If the SBC doesn’t reckon with this fundamental problem—of unprincipled pragmatism, far too easily steered—then it’s just a matter of time before soberminded leaders and members shake the dust off their feet, and go somewhere else.

As Dr. Rigney explains, “The most motivated members of a community grow discouraged and exhausted by never-ending drama.” And, “…Eventually the leaders check out or burn out, and the community drifts along, tossed about by the passions of its members.” 

My video response, plus two interviews on my wrongful termination:

Our fledgling church plant closed our doors last week.  It turns out we were ‘the wrong kind of Christian’ for this area. There were a number of factors working against us over the past 12 months, including strong opposition from prominent members of the community, as well as a lack of meeting space. 

The nail in the coffin was our unexpected dismissal from South Walton High School last month, followed by a ban from the Walton County library the week after.  These back-to-back blows took the last bit of wind out of our sails.

Before the library and the school, we were meeting in a city park, under a pavilion, until the pavilion was ‘roped off’ with orange tape, allegedly for construction work, despite no construction being performed on the pavilion.

Can Walton County reasonably account for these actions, or is this a case of religious discrimination? 

Dismissed From South Walton High School

On their website, South Walton High School boasts a “School-Community Relations” program designed, ostensibly, to foster a good working-relationship between the school and community.  Their program policy states that:

“The principal may permit the use of school facilities by a civic, religious, or other organization for non-school activities on a specific, temporary, or short-term basis.”  

That same policy defines “short-term basis” as being up to six months. 

With Sunday morning venues being hard to come by, we decided to take the school up on their invitation, so I sent the following email inquiry:

Greetings, I'd like to speak with someone about using SWHS facilities for a short-term, recurrent Sunday morning gathering space (10:30a-12:30p) for 3 to 6 months.  We are a small, local church congregation of about 15-30 people. We have a limited budget, and are looking for a venue that will be the right fit for us.”

I received a very prompt phone call from a school administrator overseeing the program.  This person was friendly, professional, and very accommodating.  He invited me up to the school, gave me a tour, and made a suggestion as to what he thought would be the best classroom for us to use. 

I reserved the space for four weeks, as a trial run, with expressed intentions of renewing for a short-term recurrent use of 3 to 6 months, as per my initial email inquiry.  At no point was there any word from school administration that we’d not be extended further use.  In fact, this administrator seemed very amiable to our church using school facilities, and he voluntarily told me that his church had previously met, for a season, in one of the Walton County schools. 

In addition, we received a follow up email from the principle, to make sure we were being accommodated:

“Brandon, this is Dr. Tibbetts, principal of South Walton High School.  I think you have spoken with Mr. [Administrator], but if your questions have not been resolved, I am glad to get involved.   Please call me at 850-622-5020 and let me know if a regular size classroom will accommodate you?” 

Our first Sunday went off without a hitch.  A stack of chairs awaited us, per our agreement.  I was given a master key which opened the entrance, the classroom, and the restrooms.  I was given a document in hand with clear instructions, as well as the administrator’s personal cell phone, in case of emergency.  The entire process was worthy of commendation.  At least, initially, it appeared the school really did want to foster a good working relationship with the community.

The following week, everything changed.  I received an unexpected email, from a newly appointed administrator for the school-community relations program, informing me that the school had approved us for the remaining three Sundays, but also stating: “we will not be able to approve any dates past that for use of classrooms.”  

In response to this inexplicable turn of events, I sent an email seeking explanation:

Hi Mr. [Administrator], It was great to meet you today. Thank you for your help. I'd like to ask you why the decision has been made to not approve us for future dates?  It's my understanding, based on what I read on the school website, that the school facility is open for use by churches, and that for up to six month terms. Have we done something to offend? What's the issue? Could you advise me on who I might talk with to appeal for reconsideration?

In response (email), this newly appointed administrator assured us we’d done nothing wrong, stating:

“It was nice meeting you as well. I am including our Principal Dr. Tibbetts in this email as well. Let me start by saying no you did nothing to offend us. We came to the decision due to the COW's (computers on wheels) and clear touch panels in the rooms that are very fragile and very expensive. We thought it in the best interest of all parties involved to allow you to finish out your reservation through the month which would give you time to seek out another venue.”

So, the official reason given, by the SWHS administration and principle, for not allowing us to continue using school facilities, was, allegedly, over their concern that we might damage their “very fragile and very expensive” computers & touch screens in the classroom.  

Obviously, this “reason” appears flimsy and disingenuous on its face, but I want to quickly innumerate five reasons why I believe this is, undoubtedly, a dubious excuse.  I’ll let you, the reader, decide for yourself.

Firstly, South Walton HS’s community-relations program continues, two months later, to list “classrooms,” on their website, as being available for use by the community.

Secondly, the classroom which South Walton High School rented to us is an old boy’s locker room converted into a spare classroom which, according to one administrator, is not used regularly.  It does not, in fact, contain the latest “very fragile and very expensive” computers.  It has one older touch screen parked next to a podium that is so dilapidated it falls apart if you move it. 

Thirdly, when I toured that spare classroom-locker room, during school hours, there were a dozen plus rambunctious teenage boys bustling in and out, completely 100% unsupervised.  It strains credulity that South Walton’s administration was genuinely concerned that a church, comprised of 15 middled-aged adults, might wreck the place in one hour on Sunday.  We’re Baptist. We don’t have that kind of energy. 

Fourthly, the school required us to take out a million-dollar insurance policy. I’m quite sure everything in that old locker room could be bought brand spanking new for a tiny fraction of that.

Finally, when I called the principle to propose using a different space (such as the auditorium, or cafetorium) which did not contain “very fragile and very expensive” computers, I was declined, and given two more flimsy excuses for why—Dr. Tibbett told me we couldn’t use any spaces in the school because there had recently been a leak, and because the school was about to undergo a major construction project. 

Naturally, one wonders how this school will manage to stay operational five days a week, for some 1,500 students and staff, in the face of a leak and a looming construction project so big that it precludes them from opening up one back entrance, to one spare classroom, on one off day per week, for one small church.  In the four weeks I was there, I saw no evidence of a leak or a construction project.

[Retraction: I had a sixth point—Another church had called me with a related experience, but after publication of this post, they called me to retract.]

Welcome To Sonic

In response to being declined further use, I sent a very respectful email to the principle and program administrator requesting an opportunity to discuss the matter.  When that email went unanswered, two weeks later, I sent a follow up email.  When that email also went unanswered, a week later, I called the principle.  She was immediately curt, and unprofessional on the phone.  Despite our having never met, or spoken to each other, she addressed me simply by my first name, leaving off my title as pastor, and told me, tersely, “your days at the school are coming to an end.”  She then proceeded with the aforementioned flimsy excuses.

As far as I’m concerned, her disrespect is water off a duck’s back, but my wife’s mouth was agape as she overheard on speaker phone—and more to the point, it was revealing.  Twenty-five years ago, I was an honor-roll student in High School.  I was never a troublemaker.  In fact, it was not uncommon for teachers to leave me in charge of their classroom when they stepped out.  As a student, I always strived to be a leader, and I always enjoyed mutual respect with teachers and administrators.  It was strange to be back in a high school, as a pastor, no less, yet treated like a nuisance.  In the following weeks, things went from bad to worse.

On our second Sunday, we arrived at the school to discover the restrooms were locked, and we had no master key, as before, to unlock them. Additionally, there were no chairs available, as per our agreement.  We scoured the sprawling high school for chairs, before finally pulling benches out of the locker room.

On our third Sunday, the new key they gave me did not work, and we were locked out of the building.  I had no emergency number to contact.  Our church service was scheduled to start at 11a.  In desperation, I emailed the administrator, from the parking lot, and he sent someone to open up the building at 11:15 am.  We hustled to start our service by 11:30a.  The guy who came to unlock the door for us was nice enough to unlock the restrooms, which again, were locked, despite the administrator’s assurance they’d be unlocked. 

On our fourth, and final Sunday, we managed to get into the building, ok, only to find ourselves locked out of the classroom space, and once again, with the restrooms locked, and no chairs.  Just like the week before, I sent a last minute email to the administrator, from the parking lot, and he sent someone up to the school around 11:15a. 

Suffice to say, there was a night and day difference between the school’s professional and attentive manner in the first week, over against their discourteous and negligent manner moving forward.  In short, we got “Chic-fil-A” service on the front end, and “Sonic Drive Thru” treatment thereafter.  Clearly something had changed.

My personal read on this situation, which I cannot prove, is that the school administration must have received complaints about our church, which they deny, and once they deemed us a “menace,” they turned us away under false pretense—and on our way out, they simply didn’t care enough to honor their side of the agreement by providing basic things like building access, somewhere to sit, and some privacy to pee. 

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Walton County’s school-community relations program appears to be a façade aimed at appeasing tax-payers—a mere tokenism, to maintain a “pro-religious” guise in the community.

Use Your Library Voice

The following Sunday, our little church regrouped at the Coastal branch of the Walton County Library. According to the Library’s policy: The Library’s meeting room may be used by individual, civic, religious, or other organizations for private use…” for up to 3 successive months. 

Two days after our Sunday service, I received an email from the library, which read:

“It has come to our attention that alcohol is being used in the meeting room at the Coastal Branch Library during your booking,…Unfortunately, we will no longer be able to issue reservation permits to use the room due to violation of our meeting room policy for the use of alcohol.”

Surely, this was all just a misunderstanding, so I sent an email response, hoping to resolve the matter:

“Thank you for your email notifying us of our violation and subsequent denial of future facility use.  Yes, we used the wine for communion, per our religious practice & conviction. We were not drinking "socially" on the premises. We understand you have made a decision to deny future facility use based on your policy…and would simply ask whether or not you might consider granting us an exemption or exception on religious grounds? We'd be most grateful.”

Their response: Alcohol is not allowed in the facility regardless of purpose. We are unable to grant any exemptions to this policy.  

There you have it.  We were, effectively, kicked out of the library for taking communion during our worship service.  Apparently, our constitutionally protected right to practice religion according to conviction is irrelevant in Walton County, Florida.  Walton County libraries will gladly feed your children all the sexual grooming books they can stomach, (see here & here) but allowing a church to administer the sacrament of the gospel, during Sunday worship, is a bridge too far for this “conservative” county.  

All Signs Point To Freeport

If these were all just isolated incidents, it would be plausible to dismiss them; perhaps chalk them up to some bumbling bureaucrats who made some bad calls, but, unfortunately, the pattern points to religious discrimination—and that’s all the more glaring when you consider the backstory, which takes us back to Freeport, Florida.

In April of 2021, I moved from Texas to Florida, to pastor Freeport First Baptist Church.  Three months into my ministry, there was a concerted effort, by prominent leaders and citizens, to smear me and run me out of town.

I won’t recount all the details here, but the reason my preaching ministry was targeted, when other local pastors were not, is because I did not shy away from preaching the full counsel of God’s Word. On the contrary, my preaching confronted the sexual rebellion which some of Freeport’s most prominent people openly practice—most notably, a subversive feminism and a Halmark-styled homosexuality.  I’ve chronicled all of that here, here, & here. 

First Baptist Church remained under siege, from this pernicious group, for the duration of my ministry. Every time we’d start to rebound, another wave of gossip and slander would hit.  Our numbers plummeted, and we could barely pay our bills. 

This group did everything in their power to run me out of town. They even went so far as to have me banned from walking on Freeport’s Middle School track.

Making History

One day, in December of 2022, I was dutifully informed, by a parishioner, of yet another social media thread against me, this time for the scandalous crime of walking my dog around the middle school track.  Like most of the town gossip, this was done behind my back, so I couldn’t see it—but reportedly, the thread was started by a Walton County School District personnel. (I wish I had a screenshot, but the dutiful parishoner was elderly, and did not have social media on the phone.) For context: I was living next door to the Freeport Middle School and track, and it was my daily habit to walk my dogs around the neighborhood, including, sometimes, on the track.

Days after this latest online gossip started up, I was out walking, minus my dogs, across the far back side of the middle school backfield, next to my house; which is an open, empty field behind the track, and nowhere remotely near anyone.  (In fact, I would have been much, much closer to anyone at the school, if I had walked down the public sidewalk on the other side.)  After a brisk pass across the empty back field, I decided to move my walk on over to the public side street, so as to avoid further controversy.  As I was coming back around the corner, on the side street, I looked up, and saw two men, in the distance, flagging me down; one was the middle school campus security, and the other was a member of the sheriff’s department, in uniform.  

They informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was not permitted to set foot on school property, including during non-school hours, except for school sanctioned events. I was effectively banned from ever walking on or near the school track again.

To understand how petty and preposterous this is, keep in mind, Freeport is a small town, and like most small towns, the tax-paying community is accustomed to treating the school track like it’s a “community” track.  In the year and a half that I lived next to the track, I saw community members daily using this track for non-sanctioned school events; including boys playing pick-up basketball, fathers training their kids in soccer, young adults jogging, neighbors walking, so forth. 

Furthermore, I’ve seen, at least, a dozen different people walking their dogs around this same track, not to mention plenty of stray dogs.  During town parades, I’ve seen horses, and horse poop, on the track.  I’ve seen the Sherriff’s office training their K-9 unit on the adjacent school baseball field. Once, I even saw a rabbit set a new personal record on the hundred yard dash. And numerous times, I’ve seen an entire flock of chickens strutting their stuff across this very same sporting complex.  Too my knowledge, I’m the only person, or creature, to ever be kicked off the middle school track in Freeport’s entire history. I guess I really ruffled some feathers.

To further demonstrate their rank hypocrisy in the matter—five days a week, Freeport Middle School used my front yard as parking for student pick-up, and not once did they ask me for permission. Every single week, I had students piling their backpacks on my front porch and playing basketball in my front yard, while they waited for parents. I never complained about sharing my yard, or picking up students’ trash, because I was glad to serve the community I lived in, even when the powers-that-be refused to treat me with the same decency in return.

I battled this kind of underhanded behavior for a year and a half, before I finally resigned my pastorate and started planting a new church. We began holding services under the city park pavilion, until the city roped off the pavilion. We just moved on over to the woods, and kept going. When I tried to promote our new church on local community boards, I was blocked and censored. We just kept going. Four or five months into our church plant, we jumped up to 30 in attendance, and then suddenly, without explanation, we lost half of those people, and they wouldn’t return a phone call. I’ll never know the reason they all left, but it’s not hard to suspect that someone whispered in their ear.

Unfortunately, the underhanded behavior and blacklisting have continued, low key, to this very day. While it may be coincidence, it’s worth noting that the two administrators most directly involved in our recent dismissals, from the library and from the high school, both reside in Freeport, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the town gossips got to them.

In Closing

I took a principled and public stand for Biblical sexuality and I was aggressively blacklisted as ‘the wrong kind of Christian’ for Walton County, Florida. There’s a palpable pressure, in these parts, to get with the “progressive” program. Consequently, the only kind of preachers tolerated, at least in Freeport, are squishy, watered-down preachers who give lip-service to the Bible, while turning a blind eye to blatant sexual sin.

I hope Bible-believing Christians in Walton County will wake up and realize that religious freedom and Christian conviction are slowly, but surely being eroded in this ostensibly ‘conservative’ county.  We can’t afford to sit by for another decade while “progressives” softpedal the sexual revolution, and increasingly push Biblical Christianity to the margins.  As the saying goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

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Doug Wilson recently announced that Christ Church, in Moscow, Idaho, has hired a defamation law firm as their commensurate response to a recent uptick in slander against Doug Wilson and the various ministries associated with him.  As Pastor Wilson pointed out, in an interview on CrossPolitic, they believe they have a responsibility to protect those who choose to freely associate with them, and that this is especially crucial for countless start-up schools (ACCS) and churches (CREC) around the globe who lack the strength of number to weather the devastating impact of defamation. 

This is my story, and I believe I’m representative of hundreds, if not thousands, of people and organizations around the world that have been maligned and mistreated, to one degree or another, for simply associating with Doug Wilson.

As I wrote, in my previous post: “One of the most notorious liars out there; and, hands down, the most rabid Doug Wilson defamer of all, is the psychopathic social media page called, “Examining Doug Wilson & Moscow” (Otherwise known as EDWAM).  Hiding behind a mask of anonymity, they have relentlessly fomented Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS)…”

In April of 2021, EDWAM set their sights on me—despite the fact that I’ve never met Doug Wilson, never visited Moscow, Idaho, nor have I any formal affiliation with the CREC or ACCS. Nonetheless, EDWAM unleashed a series of false and defamatory statements about me and about a Christian dating platform I am launching (to serve Biblically-faithful singles). 

So, why did EDWAM attack me?  In their own words (see here and below), they did so because of my “heavy promotion of Wilson”—and just so there’s no doubt in our minds as to what constitutes “heavy promotion of Wilson,” they included a screenshot of me nodding in agreement to a Doug Wilson quote on Twitter. (see below) That’s right—merely expressing a pro-Doug Wilson sentiment on social media is enough, in their mind, to warrant a dedicated witch hunt. Imagine what they would do to someone for recommending Wilson’s books!

In this post, I want to show how even a casual association with Doug Wilson made me a casualty of war; prompting a malicious smear campaign that destroyed my reputation, cost me my ministry, and severely impaired my ability to provide for my wife as she battles chronic illness and cancer. 

I want to show why it’s important that these unhinged cry bullies be held accountable.  To that end, I’m going to highlight two of EDWAM’s malicious lies against me, then demonstrate their patently false nature, and finally, show how these lies were used as ammunition against me in a local smear campaign.

Smeared As A Racist

In this first example, EDWAM spread the very lazy lie that I featured ‘blackface” in a promotional video for a Christian Dating site, and then they double down on it when I denied it. 

You can see from the post, itself, EDWAM isn’t actually concerned about racism, but rather obsessed with smashing the patriarchy.  (In a post ostensibly about racism, they meantion “patriarchy” five times.) They understand that accusing of racism is one of the fastest ways to get someone canceled.  

EDWAM claimed they did an extensive internet search and found no stock images or videos matching the screenshot which they alleged is ‘black face.’  The truth is, I published a link to the exact free stock video that I used in the promotional, three years ago, at the time of the false accusastion, but they disregarded that information and never once reached out to me to ask for a link.  EDWAM is driven by agenda, and they aren’t about to let truth get in the way.

Before I publish that link again (below), I’d simply point out two things:

1)      If you simple zoom in on the screenshot EDWAM posted, you can see, with your own eyes, that you’re looking at the face of a black man wearing white paint, and not at the face of a white man wearing black paint. It strains credulity that they would believe this is ‘black face.’

2)      In the same commercial as the alleged ‘black face,’ we also featured a black couple meeting on our dating site.  On what planet would a start-up business think ‘black face’ would help them reach black customers? 

As it happened, I made an entire promotional video on a budget of exactly zero dollars, which means I used nothing but free stock photos and videos.  When I decided I needed a creepy clown to spice up my bootleg promotional video, I simply typed “creepy clown” into the search engine, and used the first clown that showed up in my search, as you can clearly see by the picture below. 

Here’s the link. See for yourself. 

For anyone who isn’t blinded by Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS), the ‘creepy clown’ in question is quite obviously played by a black man, and because we’re not racist, we were more than happy to feature a black actor in our short commercial. 

As we said in our official response: “We’re grieved that SO MANY professing Christians took umbrage with us having a black man in our film.  To black people everywhere, we apologize for all the racists out there who aren’t more accepting of black people in film. Clearly racism is still a big problem among the CRT crowd.  Lord, help us!  You’re ALWAYS WELCOME to show your smiling faces on our dating platform! …The creepy clown, in white face paint, represents the modern evangelical feminist subversion of Gen 1:28 (“be fruitful, multiply, exercise dominion…") which, for decades, has pushed "singleness is a gift,” and ruined countless lives in a generation now sunken into barren bitterness & porn-addicted decay.” 

My novice video struck a feminist nerve, and for that they did everything in their might to strike me down. EDWAM maliciously smeared me as a racist because they have an axe to grind with anyone promoting biblical sexuality. 

Three years later, the libelous post is still up, and continues to defame me as a “racist.”  Imagine trying to establish a new ministry, or find a new job when atop the list of Google search results for your name is ‘blackface.’

Painted As A Dangerous Predator

In this second example, EDWAM took my wedding picture, plus a sound bite from an interview, which they wrested from context, and used it to maliciously paint me as a child sex trafficker. (link)

For context, as I’ve previously explained: “In an interview (on Christian dating and marriage), Eric Conn and I briefly contrasted previous generations (like our Grandparents’) that married much earlier, and our modern era that delays marriage and family. I made a straightforward comment that age 18 is arbitrary, and I said, “I’ve known people who were married at 15.”  Actually, I know tons of people who married before the arbitrary age of 18, including some as young as 15. So do you! Hello Grandma. Hello Mary, mother of Jesus.  I made no endorsement of anyone marrying at 15, or at any age before they’re mature and responsible adults. (See for yourself. Episode # 20) The fact is, like every other Christian dating site, you must be 18, at minimum, to even join our site, and our target audience is in their mid 20’s & 30’s.  My wife and I met on such a site.  I was 36. She was 33.  Our vision for this project is a marriage reformation, to the glory of God.”

EDWAM maliciously ascribed the worst possible meaning to my words: “What Durham is expressing is a view widely held in Patriarchal circles, which is that men in Patriarchal circles should seek young wives…and thus can be “trained” by their husbands exactly the way the husbands want them to be…Think horse training or dog training, only for human beings made in the image of God.”

As per the first example, EDWAM never once reached out to ask for clarification.  They aren’t interested in truth.  They’re blinded by hatred against anyone remotely connected to Doug Wilson. They profaned our wedding day, maligned my character, and helped enable a mob to destroy my reputation.

Three years later, this post is still up, defaming me as a sexual predator.

The Detrimental Impact of EDWAM’s Defamatory Lies

As someone once said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” It didn’t take long for EDWAM’s lies to reach my neck of the woods where I was newly installed as pastor of the most historic church in our town.

The church had barely reopened its doors after shutting down for an entire year due to Covid hysteria. When I arrived, the elderly, declining church was in a panic-stricken state—you could barely walk in the building without someone trying to scan your temperature, force a mask on you, and coerce you into getting vaccinated. It was a desperate situation—one I was eager to provide leadership for.

Unfortunately, in the prolonged absence of a pastor, this beleaguered church had been inundated with goats and wolves. As I set about to preaching the unvarnished truth of God’s Word, a group of bad actors set about to trashing my reputation and running me out of town. By the end of my first sermon, they were already digging for “dirt,” and it didn’t take long for them to stumble upon EDWAM.

In the picture below, you can see one of my former church members—and one of the most prominent citizens in our town—coming to drink from EDWAM’s gossip troughs.

This person, along with another prominent person in the town, administrates the main Facebook community group for the entire town. They control the flow of information for thousands of people. In a very real way, they act as gatekeepers of the city.

Together, along with a group of prominent citizens, connected all the way to the Mayor, they launched a concerted effort to smear my reputation and run me out of town. They used EDWAM’s lies to do it. In the picture below, you can see one of these prominent citizens spreading an EDWAM lie all over our small town: “He believes our children should be married by 15 and pregnant shortly after.”

As you can see in the next picture, EDWAM’s false and defamatory posts were eventually amplified by TikTok influencers, who shared them out to hundreds of thousands of people and then directed these people to bombard me and the church I pastored with phone calls and emails.

Our church secretary resigned. Our already anemic attendance was cut in half. Our giving dropped to the point that we could barely keep the lights on. We had to cut staff. Our Google Maps was trashed in the reviews. Visitors stopped coming. Our church was boycotted. Folks demanded my head on a platter.

I’ve chronicled all of this here, here, and here. To give you an idea of how bad it got, at one point, I was featured on the Destin In The News Facebook page, which reaches an audience of 30,000 people in our area. They only removed that post after I threatened them for defamation.

The local smear campaign was so severe that, after I resigned, the 150 year old church actually changed their name. I can empathize. I’ve thought about changing mine!

Imagine being in my shoes—trying to recover from being smeared as a “racist” and “child sex trafficker” just weeks into a new pastorate, in a new town, in a new state where nobody knew me from Adam.  Needless to say, my reputation was destroyed overnight, and my ministry was over before it even started.  I was blacklisted all over town, and I’ve spent the past three years trying to get back on my feet.  My wife has been treated like she has leprosy, simply for standing by my side. I have no doubt all of this contributed to making her very sick. During this time, Amanda was diagnosed with cancer and underwent two major surgeries.  Amanda was grief stricken over losing her womb before we could have children, and over losing friend after friend due to slander.

I’ve tried to plant a new church. I took a part-time job, took out a loan to pay for health care, and sold my car to make ends meet. We’ve been unable to afford housing for a year now. We’d be homeless if it weren’t for the kindness of Christians opening up their home to us.

Defamation destroys.

Time to Put A Muzzle On It

EDWAM has shown their true colors, and they’ve exposed a lot of gullible, gossip hungry people in the process. They are malicious liars with an axe to grind, and they attract that same kind of people with their smut content.  It’s time to pull the curtain back and see who’s behind this devilish clown show.  Or, at the very least, it’s time to put a muzzle on it.

Doug Wilson has become something of a litmus test in the evangelical world—a “dividing line” between the ‘respectable’ evangelical in-crowd, and the rest of us scorn-worthy bottom dwellers.  A while back, Amanda and I were eating dinner with a nice couple attending the church I was pastoring in Florida.  The meal was delicious, and the company was pleasant, but I knew the small talk had come to an end when the wife blurted out, “So what do you think about Doug Wilson?”  Without skipping a beat, I grinned and replied, “I am Doug Wilson Jr.”  They stopped attending our church soon after that.  Mind you, this couple admitted to reading Doug Wilson, themselves, and to benefiting greatly from his instruction on parenting.  Unfortunately, for them, the wife had a close girlfriend who was a member of the ‘Concern Sisters of America,’ (CSOA) and she had been dutifully warned to steer clear of the Bad Man from Moscow.   

Doug Wilson has always been a strong drink compared to the watered-down alternative of today’s evangelical preaching, but there was a time, not too many years ago, when you could still admit to reading or listening to Doug Wilson, so long as you qualified it by saying, “I don’t agree with everything he says.” Back then, Doug Wilson was still treated with a modicum of respect by the Evangelical Establishment.  In fact, there was a time when Wilson was published by the Big Eva publishers, invited to the Big Eva conferences, featured on the Big Eva panel discussions, and praised by a broad spectrum of Big Eva big shots, including now woke folk like Thabiti Anyabwile and Lecrae.  Those days are long past.  Due to a pandemic of Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS), it’s no longer enough to say that you disagree with Doug Wilson, or that you don’t care for his satiric wit.  No, in order to not get canceled, yourself, you must denounce Wilson totally and unequivocally for all the egregious things he has been accused of, and then completely distance yourself from him.  It doesn’t matter that these accusations are patently false lies drummed up by histrionic women who hate Doug Wilson.  Potiphar’s wife has spoken, and just like Joseph, Pastor Doug has been caught with his pants up, so, naturally, off to prison he must go!

If you don’t wish to join him there, as it were; blacklisted in your own circles, then next time someone blurts out, “Hey, aren’t you a Doug Wilson fan(?),” you need to passionately deny any and all association—call down curses, and kick up a dust storm if you must, but do it quickly, before the cock crows, because once a little Doug dirt gets on you, it’s hard to wash off! 

So what prompted me to bath myself in mud, so to speak, by professing to be Doug Wilson Jr.?  I’ll give you three reasons why I freely and closely identify with Doug Wilson, and with any other faithful man of God being unduly maligned—and why you should, too. 

#1 A Debt of Gratitude

In my early 20’s, I was well on my way to becoming another squishy, milquetoast evangelical pastor trained to discharge a politically-correct preaching ministry and maintain a status quo that was “safe for the whole family,”—to borrow a slogan from Christian radio.  I was steeped in a Big-Eva approved ‘soft-complementarian’ styled egalitarianism which gave lip-service to male headship in the church and home, while simultaneously subverting the entire paradigm of Biblical Sexuality.  I fancied myself as “cutting edge” for adopting a ‘lightly reformed’ soteriology, while remaining woefully ignorant on the comprehensive way in which reformed Christian thought historically applied the full counsel of God’s Word to the full scope of our life.  

I was winsome to the core, which made me a very likeable guy.  Voted “class favorite” in grade school, “Prom King” in High School, and “Funniest Guy on Campus” at my Baptist University, by the time I entered vocational ministry, I had mastered politeness and diplomacy, and had I chosen, I could have likely ridden that wave of popularity straight through life, which I suspect is what too many pastors and leaders actually do.

Then, I discovered Doug Wilson’s blog, and he really messed my hair up.  Wilson sparked a slow and gradual shift in my worldview.  Over the past 15-20 years (I’m 43 now), you could say that reading Doug Wilson has “red-pilled” me, in a slow, simmering, ‘extended-release’ kind of way.  Wilson became a bridge connecting me to another world filled with robust, historical orthodoxy and good ole common sense. 

Over the years, as Wilson’s sage writing has percolated in my mind, I’ve learned a more faithful way to see the world, and to read the times.  This has imbued me with a profound since of hope and duty.  I’ve also jumped on the Classical Christian Education (CCE) train, taken up writing again, and learned to use words like, “embued.” For that, I owe Doug Wilson a debt of gratitude.

Plato wrote that, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”  If you want to know who is speaking the most truth these days, start by looking around to see who is hated the most.  In regards to cultural commentary, from a Christian worldview, Doug Wilson is the tip of the spear.  Nobody is hated more.  Nobody is slandered more.  Nobody is cancelled more.  And that’s because nobody is writing with more penetrating insight and piercing conviction. 

Doug Wilson exemplifies the courage to tell it like it is.  Naturally, there isn’t a lot of that going around these days, which means, courageous truth-telling, in its scarcity, is at a premium.  As George Orwell is said to have said, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  When the truth is hated and scorned and outlawed, as it is in our day, then telling such truth takes immense courage; a willingness to be hated, reviled, and falsely accused.  We should all be profoundly grateful to Doug Wilson for loving us enough to tell us the truth, even as he’s hated for it.  At 43, I can unapologetically say that I hope to become more like Doug Wilson when I grow up; to be ‘scorn-proof,’ as he puts it; free to speak the truth, in love, even as the ‘haters’ falsely accuse such as being hateful.  As Charles Spurgeon put it, “Bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”

In his day, Spurgeon was hated and despised (much like Doug Wilson), by the fashionable Christian establishment of 19^th Century Victorian England.  Censured by his own Baptist denomination, maligned in the press, and ridiculed by the leading pastors of his day, Spurgeon stood stalwart against a pernicious theological ‘downgrade’ corrupting the church.   Spurgeon wrote, “I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me.”  He was right.  History has vindicated him.  Today, Charles Spurgeon is arguably the most oft quoted source in contemporary preaching.  He is justly called, “The Prince of Preachers.” 

It would be a travesty, for this generation, if we judged ourselves unworthy of mining the gold of great and godly wisdom on account of some cackling concern sisters working overtime to tarnish the reputations of courageous, counter-cultural voices like Doug Wilson.

In Luke 6:40, Jesus tells us that, “every student, when fully trained, will become like their teacher.”  Spend time with me, and you’ll recognize a number of influences coursing through my veins; some are long dead, some still living.  It’s inevitable that we become like our teachers.  I’ve never met Pastor Doug Wilson, but my wife jokes all the time that I am “Doug Wilson Jr.”  If the people closest to you can see it, then there’s no use denying it.  In some small way, I am, and hope to become more like Doug Wilson. I’m not alone.  There are tens of thousands of young men, young pastors, and young leaders reading Blog And Mablog (here), subscribing to Canon Press (here), and becoming Doug Wilson Jr. every day.  The world is better for it.

#2 A Show of Gospel Solidarity

There’s another reason why I choose to associate with Doug Wilson, and that’s in order to show solidarity with a man contending faithfully for the gospel.

As I’ve written before (here): “Whenever a particular pastor is being effective in preaching the gospel and confronting the idols of the day, a favorite strategy of the world is to single out the ‘troublemaker,’ smear him with mud, and cause his name to become a stench in the community.  This ‘divide and conquer’ strategy presses respectable people to distance themselves from the ‘troublemaker’ so as to preserve their reputation within the community.  The Pharisees ran this play on Paul (and Jesus, as well).  They had Paul arrested, imprisoned, and branded as a rebel-rouser.  It was effective, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “…not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only…”  The ‘Respectable’ Christians left Paul to rot in prison.” 

Acting ashamed of faithful gospel preachers, to save your own hide, is adjacent to being ashamed of the gospel itself.  In 2 Timothy 1:8 Paul tells a timid Timothy “…do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.”  Later in that same chapter, in verse 16, we read of Paul’s gratitude to a man named Onesiphorus for standing with him: “May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.”

One thing the Doug Wilson “dividing line” has revealed is that a large number of professing Christians are easily dissuaded from standing in solidarity with faithful gospel preachers, and that, for fear of losing their social standing; which means a large number of Christians are just a cock crow away from denying the gospel itself. 

To their shame, masses of modern evangelicals have been duped into thumbing their noses at one of the great gospel defenders of our day, and that, by a gaggle of gossiping biddies, who do the devil’s bidding. The rampant accusations against Doug Wilson of slavery apologist, abuse cover up, potty mouth, denial of justification by faith alone, and whatever smears they cook up next are all, by and large, proxy wars. They want Doug Wilson to be a stench in your nostrils, no matter which direction you’re coming from.  Yet, the real, underlying reason for all the vitriolic slander against Doug Wilson is because these women are ideologically feminist to the core, and they hate Doug Wilson, with the heat of a thousand suns, for preaching a Biblical sexuality that exposes their naked feminist rebellion.

Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS) is like the photo negative of the Hans Christian Anderson folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”—it’s a clown parade of lies and slander aimed at stripping a good and godly man of his reputation, when even a child can see that Pastor Doug Wilson is fully-clothed and in his right mind. 

If you’ve been misled by the mob, and want to genuinely discern the truth on Doug Wilson, you can start by remembering the golden rule.  Would you want to be condemned in the kangaroo court of public opinion?  Viciously maligned by folks with an anti-Christ agenda? Constantly have your words taken out of context and used against you?  I didn’t think so.  Once you’re thinking straight on that, you can go here and here for the truth. 

If you’re one of the Concern Sisters smearing Wilson’s good name, then you should know that God hates, “A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.” (Proverbs 16:19)  The place for you to start is with repentance. 

#3 An Understanding of the Times

Doug Wilson was recently disinvited from speaking at a conference in my wife’s home country of Brazil.  Evidently, the Concern Sisters of America teamed of with the Concern Sisters of Brazil who then teamed up with the radical left to help put the word out that the Bad Man from Moscow was coming for a visit. 

Wilson ended up as front-page news in the Brazilian Intercept; a radical leftist smut rag, read by millions, which brazenly smeared Wilson as a pro-slavery white supremacist, an alt-right extremist, and a dangerous “Christian Nationalist,” which is suddenly the new bogeyman, and, according to the communists, “the greatest threat to democracy in the United States”

As intended, the hit piece caused a huge outcry, which led to calls for violence, and prompted the conference organizers to cancel Wilson over safety concerns. Not to be shown up, a group of ostensibly “conservative” Christian thought leaders in Brazil piled on accusations of sexism and sex abuse cover up, which they imported from the U.S.   

In Wilson’s response to the good people of Brazil, he wrote, “…you need to recognize what the actual strategy is. You need to understand, if you are a follower of Christ, that you and your family are next. Winston Churchill once defined an appeaser as a person who throws others to the alligators, hoping to be the last one eaten.”

Perhaps the main reason I have referred to myself as Doug Wilson Jr. is because my wife and I have both gotten the “Doug Wilson” treatment ourselves; we’ve both been thrown to the alligators in some remarkably similar ways. Despite my being a ‘no name’ preacher hiding out in rural, small town America, they still came for us. I think that’s the lesson, here—the ‘no names’ are next.

Wilson has been maligned by major publications like Vice, Slate, The Guardian. Oddly enough, I, too, have been maligned and ridiculed by Relevant Magazine and libeled by the NY Post.  Wilson has a “fan club” (“fan” being short for fanatic) which, apparently, reports him to the FBI.  Oddly enough, his “fans” have been encouraged to report me, too.

Despite our best and earnest efforts, Pastor Wilson and I both have wives who outshine us in the controversy department, and they make it look easy! (When I say we have “wives,” I mean He has one, and I have one ;) It seems like nothing triggers radical feminists like happy wives supporting the patriarchy.

This past year, in what has since been dubbed “Spanking Gate,” Nancy Wilson melted the internet (here) by instructing parents on spanking their children.  Three years ago, my wife also showed me up, and that, with one arm tied behind her back.  She made one too many Instagram posts, from her sick bed, while battling cancer, on the topic of Biblical femininity. 

And like Pastor Doug, she found herself a target of the Brazilian Intercept.  It would seem that Doug Wilson & Amanda Durham are two of the most dangerous threats to communism in Brazil.  The Intercept bizarrely featured Amanda in a hit piece aimed at trashing Biblical femininity.  They published Amanda’s testimony about being sexually abused as a girl and used it to push a false narrative that Biblical femininity promotes domestic violence against women, effectively arguing that Amanda promotes the very thing which led to her abuse.  Talk about blaming the victim!  And talk about lying; Amanda was not even in the church as a girl, nor was the creep.  That’s what they do; they lie, and seemingly without repercussion.  As Solzhenitsyn put it, “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

One of the most notorious liars out there; and, hands down, the most rabid Doug Wilson defamer of all, is the psychopathic social media page called, “Examining Doug Wilson.”  Hiding behind a mask of anonymity, they have relentlessly fomented Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS) and were one of the groups importing it to Brazil, by translating their smear campaigns into Portuguese. The defamation has gotten so bad that this past month Doug Wilson & Christ Church were compelled to hire a defamation law firm to defend against the onslaught. 

Three years ago, this same group set their sights on me in a major way.  My crime?—Launching a Christian dating site, based on biblical convictions, to help Christian singles find godly spouses.  For such a criminal trespass, these accusers-of-the-brethren published a series of defamatory lies about me.  They falsely accused me of ‘black face’ and maliciously branded me as a child sex trafficker.  Try overcoming that stigma in any context, let alone, just 3 months after becoming the new pastor at the most historic church in town where nobody knew me from Adam.  My ministry was over before it even started, as a group of prominent leaders, and closet sexual revolutionaries, used those lies in a concerted effort to destroy my reputation and try to run me out of town.  I’ve addressed all of that here, here, and here.

Nearly three years later, these patently false and defamatory accusations are still plastered all over the internet.  At this point, it might as well be on my resume, as it’s one of the first things to show up when you search for “Pastor Brandon Durham.” These vicious wolves have effectively made it all but impossible for me to ever seek a new pastorate.

And so, Amanda and I have learned, first hand, that if you follow Christ, and stand against the evils of our time, then you, too, will get the “Doug Wilson” treatment, and it can be pretty severe. 

Carl Trueman understood this when he wrote, “You really do kid only yourselves if you think you can be an orthodox Christian and be at the same time cool enough and hip enough to cut it in the wider world. Frankly, in a couple of years it will not matter how much urban ink you sport, how much fair trade coffee you drink,..or how much money you divert from gospel preaching to social justice: maintaining biblical sexual ethics will be the equivalent in our culture of being a white supremacist.”

We saw this play out last year, when Jake Meador (pictured above), who writes for Mere Orthodoxy and the Gospel Coalition, published a piece (here) in the Atlantic attempting to make Christianity more palatable to the “de-churched.”  In his uber winsome appeal, Meador hat-tipped his affinity for Marxism, lamented church abuse, and decried the shallowness of American churches, but none of that stopped popular ‘progressive’ outlet, Salon, from styling Meador (here) as both a fascist and a misogynist. As far as they're concerned, he, too, is Doug Wilson Jr.

So go ahead and grovel; play the appeasement game—feed the “Bad Man from Moscow” to the alligators.  Feed your politically-incorrect preachers to the sharks.  Just know that you’re next.  And when they drag your good name to the bottom, rip it to shreds, and cancel you, no amount of winsome virtue signaling will save you, and there will be no one left to come to your defense.

In closing

Spurgeon once preached, “We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago...but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one.”

Spurgeon ended that sermon with a mighty call for men of courage and conviction to rise up—thundering out: “Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day?”

Doug Wilson is such a man; standing firm in the faith all these decades, and so are his many sons in the faith. We are Doug Wilson Jr.

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Episode # 3: A Positive Vision For Biblical Manhood & Womanhood

With Biblical Sexuality under attack, Christians must embrace & embody a positive Biblical vision for manhood & womanhood.

In Genesis 1:27 God creates mankind, in His image, as male and female. After doing so, God takes a moment to admire his handiwork, stating, “It is very good.” It’s time for today’s church to declare and display the twin glories of the Imago Dei (Image of God in man).

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It’s that time of year again.  The Lottie Moon Christmas offering is in full swing. In churches across America, children and adults, alike, are hearing stories of Moon’s heroic mission exploits and sacrificial service, as they reach deep into their hearts, and pockets, to support the Southern Baptists’ foreign mission effort.   For more than a hundred years now, the larger-than-life legend of 4 foot 3 inch Lottie Moon has captivated the imagination of millions, raising more than 5 billion dollars for the sake of foreign missions.  Last year (2022) saw a record 203 million dollars raised.  

Moon’s sincere love for both the people of China and the gospel of Christ remains unquestionable, but there’s compelling evidence that the story of Lottie Moon has been white-washed, or ‘recharacterized’ for the sake of fundraising.  It’s no secret that the Foreign Mission Board, during Moon’s day, was financially strapped, and there’s no shortage of historical data confirming that Lottie Moon was very much in the mold of first wave feminism. 

When you go down the rabbit hole of history, the carefully curated myth of “Sweet Little Lottie,” gives way to a more complicated picture of a defiant woman who was often a giant headache to the foreign mission board—one which they tolerated, nonetheless, because she was (and is) their golden goose.  In other words, Lottie Moon’s real story may actually be the story of how a desperate pragmatism enshrined an opportunistic feminism in the SBC—a legacy that plagues them to this day.

Lottie Moon, The Feminist

You don’t need to dig deep to discover that egalitarians have staked their flag on Moon, claiming her as their own, seeking to rebrand her as a feminist icon.  They take exception with the Southern Baptist mythologizing of ‘Sweet Little Lottie,’ insisting that the saintly depiction of southern gentility is a paint job, if not a snow job, to make Lottie match the complementarian-styled aesthetic of the SBC.   

A quick online search shows multitudes of articles singing Lottie’s feminist praise, and not without warrant.  In Lottie’s own words: “What women have a right to demand is perfect equality.”  This is patently feminist rhetoric used, time and again, to obscure, or obliterate gender distinctions grounded in God’s Word. 

An article in the China Christian Daily attempts to explain Moon’s meteoric rise in fame, stating,

“The main reason is probably because she was the "pioneer of feminism" in the eyes of Americans and a model of international cultural exchange.”

In her biography on Moon, Historian Regina Sullivan chronicles Moon’s missionary career (albeit, from a feminist angle), highlighting Moon’s pattern of defiance to the polity and male leadership of the Foreign Mission Board.  Sullivan writes,

“An actually remembered Moon would be a female activist who preached, argued for female equality and helped bring the WMU into existence.”

The facts seem to bear that out.  As a new missionary, Moon quickly thumbed her nose at the very polity which had paved the way for her to enter the mission field; disregarding the rules set forth in the “Women’s Work for Women” initiative which governed women missionaries appointed to teach women and children on the mission field.  Such work was evidently beneath Lottie Moon, who wrote:

“Can we wonder at the mortal weariness and disgust, the sense of wasted powers and the conviction that her life is a failure, that comes over a woman when, instead of the ever-broadening activities she had planned, she finds herself tied down to the petty work of teaching a few girls?”

When Moon began preaching directly to men, over and against mission polity, she initially cited the lack of male missionaries as her reason for entering the masculine domain, but as time would tell, Moon actually preferred to work without men.  This can be seen later on in her career, as she broke away entirely from the mission board’s authority and began operating independently from any man. 

As a result, the board refused further funding, so Moon made an appeal to the burgeoning women’s movement within the SBC.  The women of the SBC rose up, organized to fundraise, and applied immense pressure on the mission board to continue supporting the defiant missionary.  Moon rode the first wave of feminism right over the heads of the mission board and came out on top. 

As a result, Moon was permitted to essentially write her own polity, which she did, naming it, ironically, after the very polity she had flouted—“Women’s Work for Women.”  Why she adopted the same name is not entirely certain; perhaps as a victory lap, or maybe to maintain the illusion of submission?  According to Sullivan, Moon wrote to the mission board that, ‘she not only wished to open new fields [mission stations], but she also wanted to see each of these new stations staffed with two unmarried women.  She called her plan ‘women’s work for women,” cleverly adapting the policy that had sent her to China and that she had abandoned….Tellingly, she does not mention men or families in her plan...Moon based this formulation on her own experience in Pingtu, where she had had success without male presence or oversight.”

Lottie Moon was an incrementalist.  Inch by inch, she took the whole mile.  Over the course of 40 years, Lottie expanded the boundaries of “women’s work” until she and other women were doing everything men were permitted to do.  Lottie took the gospel deep into the heart of China, and she took feminism deep into the heart of the Southern Baptist Convention, where it’s been festering ever since.  By the end of Lottie’s mission career, she was effectively doing the work of an evangelist, preacher, church planter, and pastor; and there was nothing the foreign mission board could do to stop her—not if they wanted to keep on the good side of their new breadwinner; the WMU. 

Though the mission board occasionally howled at Moon, she ultimately had them over a barrel. What Lottie didn’t like, Lottie didn’t do.  When she didn’t get her way, she’d threaten to resign, or go around the board.  She was the tail that wagged the dog.

Desperate Pragmatism

In the aftermath of a bloody civil war, men and money were scarce in the South, and the foreign mission board was strapped for both.  Meanwhile, first-wave feminism was picking up steam.  Within the Southern Baptist world, Lottie Moon and the Women’s Mission Union caught that wave and rode it for all it was worth.  The Mission Board was left with a difficult decision; either stick to their guns, on gender, or get with the times.  They chose to ride Lottie to the moon.

As Sullivan recounts,

“For the board, Moon’s popularity translated directly into money.  They were deeply in debt and could not afford to see their funding diminished even slightly.  They feared any controversy that might compromise fund-raising.  Moon’s resignation would certainly have caused an outcry from Baptist women that the Foreign Mission Board literally could not afford.”

When Lottie Moon passed, at age 72, the mission board needed their golden goose to continue laying eggs, and thus, the “starvation” story was born.  This myth originated from a memorial written, days after her death, which appeared in the Virgina Baptist newspaper portraying Moon’s death as, “heroic exertion and unexampled self-sacrifice….refusing food that the hungry might be fed.”  The memorial concluded with a brazen plea for mission funding:

“Is there not some shame mingled with our sorrow?  Shall we not, as a fitting tribute to her memory, lift at once the debt from the Foreign Mission board, the debt that weighed so heavily on the mind of this faithful worker? Is this not the memorial she herself would choose?”

The historical account surrounding moon’s death contradicts the climactic “starvation” myth, and points, rather, to delusions and dementia brought on by an infection, which was caused by a large abscess on the back of Moon’s neck.  According to Sullivan’s research, Lottie’s attending physician, “Dr. James Gaston, who treated her, concluded that the infection had caused her condition.”

Nonetheless, the myth persisted, and became widely circulated in Una Lawrence’s 1927 biography, “Lottie Moon.” And according to Sullivan, “By the 1970’s, Moon’s sacrificial death had become a key component of the ‘Lottie Moon Story.’  This narrative of martyrdom has proven an amazingly successful fund-raising tool,…” 

In 1988, on the centennial of the WMU’s founding, the headline for the Lottie Moon Christmas Campaign read—“Lottie Moon Is Starving Again.” 

The campaign goes on to say:

“Just 76 years ago, foreign missionary Lottie Moon literally starved to death.  She refused to see the Chinese people she loved go spiritually or physically hungry.  So she gave all she had to give—from her food to her last ounce of strength…The 1988 goal is $84 million.  If each Southern Baptist gives $10, we will not only reach, but surpass the goal.  But if we don’t, what happened to Lottie Moon could happen to foreign missions.  How much will you give to keep foreign missions alive?”

Even as late as 2007, Ed Stetzer implored Southern Baptists to adopt Lottie Moon as our model of giving, stating that she “starved to death,” and suggested that Lifeway produce WWLD bracelets—“What Would Lottie Do?”  

As Sullivan put it,

“Moon’s remarkable life ended in 1912, but her memory has lived on, taking shape in a new narrative—one with such power and flexibility that it has changed Moon from a historical figure into a legendary symbol for Southern Baptists.” 

Many moons later, the SBC continues to safeguard Lottie’s legend against the tarnish of truth.  In 2020, when the woke apocalpyse visited the SBC, President J.D. Greear called on the convention to retire the Broadus gavel, so named for slaveholding Baptist preacher John Broadus.  Greear, along with other convention leaders, were more than willing to dig up the bones of old, dead white guys and feed them to the dogs, so as to signal their virtue and appease the woke mob. 

The fact that this was a pragmatic performance, and not a principled stand can be seen, readily enough, in the fact that nobody said a word about Lottie Moon’s family being the largest slaveholder in the area, or the fact that Moon was converted under the preaching of John Broadus.  There were no calls to retire the Lottie Moon Christmas offering.  Why not?  The answer is because Lottie Moon is still laying golden eggs, and the pragmatic leaders of the SBC didn’t want their goose cooked.  Come Christmas, they need Moon to shine!

Feminist Defiance—Lottie’s Legacy Lives On

Moon’s defiant attitude towards male authority still plagues the SBC, living on in the Women’s Mission Union, and in hundreds, if not thousands, of churches still actively campaigning for women’s ordination in the SBC.  In fact, Lottie’s girlhood church, established the year she was born (1840), was recently led by a woman pastor. 

For thousands of egalitarian women inside the SBC, Lottie is a hero for defying the patriarchy; an example to follow—and they seem plenty determined to carry on her legacy.

Having spent most of my life in the SBC, I’ve witnessed, firsthand, this pervasive attitude of defiance—including wives publicly disrespecting their husbands, and women actively undermining their pastors.  As a pastor myself, I know what it is to be on the other end of warring women as they organize against your leadership. I was once maligned so extensively during a WMU meeting, that a full paragraph of lies and complaints, guised as ‘concerns’ (about me), made the official meeting minutes.

There’s a long history here, and it traces back to the earliest influence of feminism, which the SBC unwittingly enshrined when they permitted Lottie and the WMU to walk all over them for 40 years.  These weak, pragmatic men set a precedent that has persisted, for more than a century, right up to our present day.  By now, it’s practically baked into the cake.  As Sullivan states in her book, “Since 1889, the Women’s Missionary Union has existed as an independent female organization with its own officers and budget, free from the control of the male leadership.”

In the 1990’s, Dr. Adrian Rogers addressed the detrimental influence of an autonomous WMU, when they, once again, thumbed their nose at the leadership of the SBC by supporting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; an egalitarian network that broke away from the SBC. 

Dr. Rogers proposed that the WMU be entirely restructured, with a board elected by the denomination’s governing body.  Dr. Rogers also called for an end to the “feminization of missions.”  This was a wise, and principled response to a problem that has persisted for far too long.  We need more men like Rogers leading the SBC, instead of unprincipled pragmatists led around by the nose.

As someone once said, “You become what you tolerate, and what you celebrate.”   Unfortunately, this includes Lottie’s legacy of feminist defiance.

Closing Thought

For 150 years now, The Southern Baptist Convention has tried to have their Moon cake and eat it, too.  They’ve tried to harness Moon’s fame to fuel foreign missions, all the while, trying to keep Moon’s feminism from devouring the SBC.  To hear them tell it—Sweet Little Lottie hung the moon!

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Introduction

No Quarter November 2023 (What???) is still smoldering in my mind as a number of notable articles hit the nail on the head in naming “respectability” as the besetting sin of evangelicalism. I think they’re onto something big!

(Read here: Wilson, Rigney, Sumpter, Longshore, Protestia)

A week or so before this conversation heated up, Colin Smothers primed the pump, tweeting:

I’ve come to believe that winsomeness might not be quite at the center of the bullseye for what besets so much of evangelicalism. I do believe it may be related to what’s at the center,…So what do I think is to be at the center? Respectability™. Or, what the Bible refers to as fear of man.”

Smothers makes a key distinction between the Biblical admonition to be respect worthy and the vain pursuit of worldly respectability:

“Respectability is wholly dependent on society’s determination of one’s respectfulness, not with the virtue of respectful integrity. This means your measure of success regarding respectability depends entirely on socio-cultural standards — which are always changing and frequently contrary to righteousness — and not God’s standards. Too many at ETS, and evangelicalism at large, are beset by Respectability™.”

This November, it was Kevin DeYoung who proved the point when he penned a lengthy article essentially tone-policing Doug Wilson and the ‘Moscow Mood.’  DeYoung began his article, well enough, by acknowledging all the undeniable good springing up in Moscow.  Expectedly, DeYoung’s glowing praise quickly gave way to a downpour of criticism as he rained on the Moscow parade for a perceived overuse of satire and the serrated edge, which he tried to frame as a combative mood “incompatible with Christian virtue.” 

But, as Pastor Toby Sumpter so aptly rebutted,

“I can barely think of a more blinkered concern in our day. Sure, we must not be jerks; and the fruit of the Spirit must be vibrant in all that we do and say. But I’m sorry: too pugnacious when the forces of globalistic sexual fascism are surrounding us and gunning for our children? No, if anything, we are not pugnacious enough. We are not fierce enough. And too irreverent? If only we could topple more idols. If only we had more sarcasm for the Goliaths that taunt the armies of the living God.” 

Joe Rigney responded to DeYoung’s criticism of the rowdy “Moscow Mood,” by spotlighting Big Eva’s unhealthy craving for worldly acceptance, which he dubbed “Respectable Mood.”  Rigney gave a summary of the underhanded ways in which ‘Respectable’ Christianity conducts itself behind the scenes, including threats to blacklist those who dare to associate with Moscow.   Pastor Doug Wilson nodded in agreement, noting that “The temptation to ache for worldly respectability is, however, rampant throughout the evangelical world.” 

It’s quite telling, that DeYoung went out of his way to critique another Christian camp, when he has yet to critique his own camp. The Gospel Coalition has drifted undeniably leftward, producing tons of obscenely bad fruit in recent years—enough to make TGC risible on a regular basis.  You really can’t ignore all of that, and expect to be believed when you proceed to forecast bad fruit in Moscow, especially after you’ve already conceded the fruit in Moscow, for 30 years now, has been remarkably good. As Rigney, Sumpter, and others amply demonstrated, DeYoung’s criticisms ultimately fall flat, and rather serve to highlight a much more pervasive problem in the church today—namely, a grasping for respectability. 

That’s where I want to pick up today—for anyone with eyes to see, the rampant idol of respectability has rendered modern evangelicalism impotent against the moral insanity running roughshod over America.  This selling out for social acceptance is the besetting sin beneath all the woke, feminist, LGBQT+ virtue-signaling that’s pouring in and from the church today, and it’s the muzzle that has silenced a generation of pastors, turning them into “mute dogs, that cannot bark.”  (Isaiah 56:10)

Kevin DeYoung is, in many respects, a respect worthy pastor, which means he ought to be thanking Doug Wilson for his willingness to constantly draw the worst fire from the frontlines of a white-hot culture war, appreciating that for the blessing that it is—ample cover for faithful pastors to speak more boldly against all the assailants coming against the church, while still appearing moderate, by comparison.  What more could you ask for?  Yet, instead of being appreciated, men like Doug Wilson (and Charles Spurgeon, for that matter) are blamed, criticized, and ultimately banished by groups like G3 and The Gospel Coalition—such men are the gnats that must be strained from the ointment of “Respectable Christianity” as it continues choking on the camel of worldly approval.

Note: We’re still holding out hope for our brothers at G3.

‘Respectable Christianity’ & The White Flag of Surrender

We live in a nation fractured by no-fault divorce, hen-pecked to death by feminism, decimated by abortion, molested by grotesque sexual perversion, apostatized through secular ‘education,’ brainwashed by wokeness, addicted to the dopamine drip of the internet, and tyrannized by a blood-sucking, parasitic regime that we’re too weak, in every way, to resist. 

In short, over the decades, ‘Respectable Christianity’ has gotten the pants beat off of it and has long since waved the white flag of surrender to today’s godless culture, with half the team adopting the adage, “If you can’t beat’em, join’em,” and the other half hunkering down with, “If you can’t beat’em, beat it!”

The first bunch is now flying rainbow & BLM flags, flashing pronouns, sporting skin-tight yoga pants & smashing the patriarchy.  To one degree or another, they’re bending over backwards to assimilate with the new religious order of “Anything But Christian” Nationalism. 

The second bunch is huddled in a corner on the rooftop, with their eyes closed ‘real tight’ while they pray for the Rapture.  Occasionally, they’ll open one eye long enough to criticize the fighting remnant, but otherwise, to borrow from Doug Wilson, they’re just hoping to be helicoptered out of Saigon before the whole thing goes up in flames. 

And so, we find ourselves in the bottom of the nineth, as it were, in dire need of a rally, but instead we’re met with a chorus of defeatism ringing forth from the belltowers of American Christianity.  Truth be told, most modern evangelicals are defeated in both directions; they incessantly bemoan the moral collapse around them while continuing to baptize their children in the putrid springs that feed that collapse; namely, immersion into a godless secular education built on the foundation of atheistic evolutionary theory, with some TikTok and Taylor Swift sprinkled on for good measure. 

Older Christians wonder why their children and grandchildren are apostate and lesbian, and the answer comes: for the same reason that Boomers are pragmatic and pluralistic, ‘progressive’ and egalitarian—because our so called “Christian Nation,” for far too long, has been far more influenced by the liberal consensus than by the Word of God.

‘Respectable Christianity’—A Field Day For The Devil

Satan and the secular left routinely exploit the church’s desire for respectability in order to derail effective gospel ministry.

In his book, Rules For Radicals, Saul Alinsky praised Lucifer as “the first radical known to man,” and then proceeded to teach the radical left how to fight like the devil.  Alinsky’s rule # 11 reads, “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual.”

Whenever a particular pastor is being effective in preaching the gospel and confronting the idols of the day, a favorite strategy of the world is to single out the ‘troublemaker,’ smear him with mud, and cause his name to become a stench in the community.  This strategy presses respectable people to distance themselves from the ‘troublemaker’ so as to preserve their reputation within the community.  The Pharisees ran this play on Paul (and Jesus, as well).  They had Paul arrested, imprisoned, and branded as a rebel-rouser.   It was effective, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “…not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only…”  The ‘Respectable’ Christians left Paul to rot in prison. 

 This is the play being run against Pastor Doug Wilson, and it’s the play being run against faithful pastors everywhere, who effectively challenge the golden calves of the culture.  I, myself, have faced this treatment.

Two years ago, I accepted a call to pastor a small town church in the Florida Panhandle. Three months into my new ministry, a group of the most prominent (and ‘progressive’) people in our town launched a concerted effort to smear me and run me out of town. 

My crime?—daring to articulate a biblical, sexual ethic from the pulpit, and online.  For that, they did everything in their power to bury my reputation beneath a pile of lies and slander.  (Read about it here, here, and here). This devilish attack emptied our church and killed my ministry almost as soon as it started.  I was blacklisted all over town, as was the church I pastored.

You have to ask yourself—How in the world can a small gaggle of grumpy feminists have so much influence over an entire town? The only reason such smear tactics are effective at all is because evangelicals are sorely afflicted by a ‘Respectable Christianity,’ that’s embarrassingly easy to manipulate by social pressure—it’s called the fear of man.

The immense cultural pressure to disassociate with faithful gospel ministers is really a pressure to be ashamed of the gospel itself.  As Paul wrote to Timothy, “So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. (2 Timothy 1:8)

Not one local pastor in the whole town stood with me as I was slandered non-stop for two plus years, yet these same pastors can be seen, annually, at the town’s National Day of Prayer, standing proudly on stage next to their openly homosexual mayor as he makes the opening remarks at an event they claim is marked out for repentance.  In so doing, these men make a mockery of prayer, and subject the gospel to open disgrace by portraying it as a license for sexual immorality.

There’s a reason none of these pastors have gotten the same vile treatment as I have.  The reason is because ‘Respectable Christianity’ poses no threat to the powers of darkness presently devouring our nation. 

John the Baptist was willing to lose his head for calling out Herod’s sexual sin. These pastors aren’t even willing to lose their reputations…or building permits. Rather than stand for truth in the moment of truth, they’ve chosen, again and again, to play Robert the Bruce and go home with their tales between their legs in order to keep in the mayor’s good graces.

This same scenario is playing out in cities across America, as ‘Respectable Christianity’ grovels for approval scraps from the world. 

Time For A Pitching Change

American Evangelicalism needs a pitching change.  Hall of Fame pitcher, Sandy Koufax said, “Show me a guy who can't pitch inside and I'll show you a loser.” Such a stinging sentiment strikes at the heart of the problem with ‘Respectable Christianity’—far too many of today’s preachers are pathetically unwilling to pitch inside; unwilling to bring the high and holy heat of the flaming hot gospel anywhere near to striking a nerve of conviction, or to brushing back the idols of our day.  Far too many pastors and preachers have abdicated their job; failing to sound the alarm and safeguard the flock against the cultural onslaught.

America’s pulpit ought to be a beacon of truth, and a bulwark against evil.  Instead, it’s become a stage for prancing ponies and strutting peacocks to parade about in pristine uniforms that have never seen a spec of dirt from the field of battle.  These eggheaded preachers tout their credentials while virtue signaling their compliance with “the current thing.”  These major league losers, churned out, en masse, by today’s big-league seminaries, are nothing more than ‘powder puff’ posers; establishment “yes” men trained to lob ‘winsome’ slow-pitch softballs of affirmation to a world in full-blown rebellion against God. 

In a time when we desperately need a return of the Black Robed Regiment leading the church into battle, we instead have the Nancy Boys Brigade lulling the church into surrender.

A.W. Tozer, in the mid-20^th century, told us the kind of preacher(s) we need:

“If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher…Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type,.. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt- spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.”

Tozer wrote that 80 years ago, back before no-fault divorce, abortion, gay mirage, and genital mutilation were legalized and celebrated by the mainstream.  How much more dire must things get before the average person in the pew grows desperate enough to leave behind the pretentious foppery of modern-day preachers in pursuit of the ‘old prophet’ types who boldly proclaim a true and compelling vision of God and His Kingdom, even as they beckon the Lord’s bride to come out from among them and be separate unto the Lord.

When John the Baptist burst onto the scene with his thundering message of repentance and scathing rebuke of religious leaders, ecstatic throngs poured out of the city, flooding past the pharisaical gatekeepers, in a beeline for the wilderness wonder. 

The preachers we need in this hour won’t be found in the posh palace halls of the respectable establishment; not at the cool-kids table of Acts 29, or in the ‘good ol’ boy’s club of the SBC.  The leaders we need have been pushed to the margins, exiled from the pastorates and the public square. Why? Because such men aren’t ‘safe.’  They don’t self-censor to fit the confines of effeminate, politically-correct discourse presently choking the life out of Christianity, today.  These dangerous men make the deacon’s wives, the WMU, and the rest of the ‘church-ladies’ (of both sexes) quite unsettled, and so, naturally, they must be expelled. 

It remains to be seen whether this generation will ever look to the principled outliers who refuse to bow the knee, or if they’ll continue to outright lie to themselves about how deep goes the rot of ‘respectability.’

One thing is for sure, guys like me aren’t sitting on the bench anymore, politely waiting around for ‘Respectable Christianity’ to bite the dust.  We’re here to preach its funeral, and we’re starting on time. 

We’re taking a play out of George Whitefield’s playbook.  When Whitefield & the Wesley brothers were shut out by the Church of England, they took to preaching in the open field.  The class of preachers I belong to have been shut out by Boomer Establishment Christianity (read SBC) and blacklisted by their decadent offspring (read hipster Christianity) so we’re starting new churches, networks, podcasts, printing presses, and preaching ministries.  While the SBC continues to pat itself on the back for their foreign mission effort, our mission focus will be reaching all their apostate children and grandchildren.

We aim to honor the legacy of Charles Spurgeon—the country bumpkin who took Victorian London by storm.  Blacklisted by the fashionable Christians of his day, Spurgeon pleaded with future pastors to, “Give us all the vulgarities of the wildest back-woods’ itinerant rather than the perfumed prettinesses of effeminate gentility.”

When God used Ezekiel’s preaching to bring the ‘dry bones’ of apostate Israel roaring back to life, this included divinely inspired vulgarity denouncing Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness as “whoredom;” a ‘lusting after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions was like that of horses.”  (Ezekiel 23:20)

If you think Doug Wilson is too vulgar, wait till you see what else God is sending your way.  That humming sound you hear is the sons of Ezekiel warming up our fastball.  It’s time to bring the heat.

Make’em Sweat

There’s a cost that comes from leaving behind ‘Respectable Christianity’ and choosing to live, instead, with Biblical courage and conviction.  You’ll lose friends, family, status, opportunities, upward mobility, maybe more.  You’ll be maligned, castigated, ostracized, and falsely accused of being arrogant and unloving.  As Spurgeon once said, “…bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”  When you choose Christ, you gain enemies from both sides—from pagan Rome, and from apostate Israel; from the world, and from a worldly church.  But Jesus promised, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

Abraham Kuyper wrote,

“When the principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then the battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith.” 

We need more courageous men to count the cost.  Pagan barbarism is steam rolling this generation, and only a handful of brave pastors are standing in the gap.  For the sake of appearance, the evangelical establishment would rather shoot these men in the back than join them on the front.  If such turncoat cowardice isn’t worthy of the staunchest reproof and most scornful derision, I don’t know what is. 

‘Respectable Christianity’ is damning many people to hell, and rendering masses more impotent in today’s spiritual battle, as it breeds a fear of man over a fear of the Lord; a tendency to trend with the world, rather than remain true to God’s Word.  Jesus warned, “whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed…”  

It’s far better for ‘Respectable Christianity’ to be rebuked now, than condemned later.  As Joe Rigney explained, satire and the serrated edge, like other forms of rebuke, are “deployed to correct and reprove someone when they’re heading down a sinful or foolish path,” and these Biblical functions “operate on a dimmer switch.”  Godly preachers have range—they instruct, exhort, gentle correct, and also rebuke, when called for. Jesus reserved his most blistering rebukes for the fancy religious establishment that was far more concerned with appearance than faithfulness. 

Today’s fancy religious establishment has been laid flat on its back by the sexual revolution; struck down by the fear of man and the fevered chill that comes from whoring after the world.  They hate us for spotlighting all the festering decay inside their white-washed tombs of winsome compromise, but there’s only one cure for this pandemic of ‘respectability’—it’s time to turn up the heat and make’em sweat!

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Before I resigned, as pastor, from First Baptist Freeport (now Pathway Church), I sat down with a friend in ministry, to discuss the difficult decision.  He counseled me, above all else, to “leave well.”  This is my testimony of trying to leave well, and of church leadership refusing to leave well enough alone.

Days after seeking my friend’s counsel, and with “leave well” ringing in my ears, I sat down with the two head deacons and shared my decision to resign.  All things considered, we had a very amiable meeting, with all of us agreeing to seek the best interest of the church.

In that meeting, I offered to remain in my capacity as pastor for four more Sundays to make for a less abrupt transition. They agreed. In return, they agreed to pay me my regular salary for those four weeks, and they gave me four weeks to move out of the parsonage.  I agreed. We also agreed it was best that I announce my resignation, in person, on an upcoming Sunday.  They asked that we not promote my future plans until after I was no longer their pastor, to which I agreed. 

We were all of one accord.  We shook hands.  We prayed.  One of them even hugged me. Differences aside, it appeared that the two deacon chairmen and I had managed to come together in the best interest of the church.  So far, my effort to ‘leave well’ seemed to be going well.

In fact, days later, the situation looked even brighter when one of the deacon chairmen called me to a meeting where he asked me to consider rescinding my resignation.  After I explained why I wouldn’t do that, we ended up discussing the prospect of replanting First Baptist under my pastoral leadership.  By the end of our meeting, the deacon chairman gave me the distinct impression that he understand my reasons for resigning, and that he agreed with my assessment of the situation.  I say that because our meeting ended with him agreeing to call the entire deacon board together, for an additional meeting, to discuss the prospect of merging with our new church plant.  In fact, he told me, at the very least, he felt confident that First Baptist would be glad to let Amanda and I stay in the parsonage longer to support us in this new endeavor.  According to his own words, “they wouldn’t need the parsonage for 6-12 months.”

It was starting to look like I was leaving so well that I wouldn’t be leaving at all!  I couldn’t imagine a better outcome. 

Leave well enough alone

I went into that next meeting expecting to discuss a merger, or at the very least, to foster a working relationship for the future, and hopefully gain a few extra months in the parsonage.  

As I read the faces in the room, I quickly understood that we weren’t merging.  In fact, the deacon board informed me that First Baptist couldn’t merge with the new church plant, because their bylaws expressly stated “they must remain baptist.”

I thought about mentioning the fact that I, too, am Baptist, and the new church plant also is Baptist. (In fact, we subscribed to the same confessional statement held by the original charter members of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.) I decided to keep that to myself. It was clear the men in the room had no intention to merge, and perhaps it was for the best.

I refocused on my origional mission to ‘leave well.’ Who knows? Maybe the deacons would still bless Amanda and I with a little more time in the parsonage, to help us get on our feet.

Nope. I was promptly informed that the upcoming Sunday would be my last Sunday, and instead of four weeks to move out, they changed it to two weeks.  My head was spinning.  What was happening? I sat there speechless, trying to get my bearings.

In the days following, these men broke their word, again and again. Instead of giving the church a four week transition period, like we agreed, they terminated me immediately. Instead of letting me share the difficult news in person, like we agreed, they announced my abrupt resignation over a mass text (without telling me), giving everyone the impression that I was the one who decided to leave abruptly.

Instead of keeping my future plans quiet until after I was gone, like we agreed, the deacons humiliated me in front of everyone. On my last Sunday, the deacon chairman stood up front, under pious pretense, and announced to everyone that “Pastor Brandon feels led of the Lord to leave and plant a new church.”  I saw mouths agape in shock and eyes welling with tears.  Understandably, that news, framed like that, went over about as well as a father telling his family, “God told me to leave you and start a new family.” It was a deceitful move, calculated to make me a stench in the nostrils. I stood before the congregation and said nothing. It was the Lord’s day. It was not the time or place to defend myself.

Less than 24 hours after my final sermon, FBC leadership yanked my name down from the church sign, and the following Sunday they merged with a non-denominational church and pastor that had recently split from a Methodist church. They have since changed their name to Pathway Church. So much for remaining Baptist…or for keeping their word.

In the midst of a housing crisis, with my wife battling cancer, and with us facing crushing medical bills, with no income, these men changed their word and told us we had two weeks to move out. They then defrauded me of my last four weeks’ pay, and left me with an unexpected income gap, making it impossible to afford or even apply for housing.  A Christian family, who learned of our situation, offered us a temporary place to live.  I sold my car to make ends meet, and then held my wife as she sobbed.  I had tried my best to leave well, but the deacons simply wouldn’t leave well enough alone.

The righteous man keeps his word

These men want to be perceived as men of principle, but they changed their word, again and again, as it best served them.

I kept my word—to the deacon chairmen, and to First Baptist Freeport.  I did remain in my capacity as pastor for those final four weeks.  During that time, I made hospital visits, nursing home visits, preached a funeral, and ministered to a grieving family.  I was available to preach, to teach, and to counsel as needed. 

And I waited until after I completed those four weeks, before promoting my future plans to plant a new church.  I told just three members beforehand; two because of a close friendship, and one because, as a staff member, it directly impacted her job. 

I tried, in earnest, to ‘leave well,’ and for that, these men left me in the lurch. 

In 2 Timothy 4:14 the Apostle Paul says, “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.”  But I don’t want the Lord to repay these men for what they’ve done.  I want them to repent and finish well.

It’s not too late…

In Psalm 15:4, the righteous man is the man who “swears to his own hurt, and does not change.”

Conclusion

Perhaps Prince Philip said it best—“The art of being a good guest is to know when to leave.”  After a year and a half of non-stop turmoil (read here), it was clear I had overstayed my welcome as the new pastor of First Baptist Freeport. If there was any doubt remaining, my last paycheck cleared that right up. When I opened the envelope, expecting full payment of my salary, I instead found a small honorarium marked “Guest Preacher”— just enough change to put gas in the tank and leave.

At the end of the day, the leadership of First Baptist Freeport did everything in their power to poison the “well” in my ‘leave well,” and they left my wife and I feeling like we’d been tossed in the well.

I can appreciate that my resignation and subsequent church planting activity has raised an eyebrow or two. Why would I walk away from First Baptist Freeport and give up my salary, housing, and insurance stipend (with my wife battling cancer, no less), not to mention, forfeit a centrally located church property with a paid-for building only to start over, from scratch, within walking distance from all of that? 

I believe my response, here, is necessary, given that no small cloud of suspicion has been stirred up regarding my character, my ministry, and my motives. I hope to clear the air on why I left First Baptist but didn’t leave Freeport.

The Back Story—Defamation Dogpile

As crazy as it sounds, just two weeks after I began my ministry as the pastor of First Baptist Freeport, I was bizarrely defamed in the national press.  A side project I’ve been working on (helping godly singles get married) suddenly went viral, causing a major feminist meltdown on Twitter. 

What unfolded was an extravagant display of mockery, libel & slander.  Relevant Magazine & Podcast maliciously smeared me as a sexist and alt-right extremist, while the NY Post published a false and libelous accusation that I used ‘black face’ in a promotional video. From there, it was a defamation dogpile. 

It wasn’t long before a group of the most prominent people in Freeport rummaged through the garbage heap, digging up as much dirt as possible, in an effort to destroy my reputation and run me out of town.  The reason these people sought to destroy me is because I dared to articulate a biblical sexual ethic from the pulpit, and online, which directly opposed the feminist and homosexual agenda that they low key practice and promote in Freeport. 

In order to discredit me, they launched a smear campaign, full of lies and slander, which continues to this day.  I’ve been falsely accused of so many things, it’s hard to keep up.  Some of these wicked people even spread a rumor that I trafficked children, and that I trafficked my wife from Brazil.  Their smear campaign decimated my ministry at First Baptist; driving away members and guests, alike.  I’ve addressed all of that here and here.

I hasten to add that this pile on happened in broad daylight, all over town, and all over social media, yet local pastors and leaders looked the other way, saying nothing.  I was essentially saddled with a scarlet letter and blacklisted in the community. 

The barber shop stopped taking my calls. I was kicked off the middle school track and told expressly that I could no longer walk there, not even during non-school hours. My wife lost friend after friend, and usually without a word of explanation.  She was treated like an outcast. I was excluded from pastor-led civic prayer events (three years and counting).

There were online threats to “cause trouble.”  My cell number and church email were published by smut social media influencers, with calls to harass me. A friend loaned me a pistol for safety.  The church Google Maps page was trashed with bad reviews. The church office was bombarded with angry calls and emails. The secretary resigned. It was a circus.

*As an update: To give you an idea of how bad this smear campaign was—after I resigned, this 150 year old church changed their name because that much mud just won’t wash off. 

During all of this, Amanda grew terribly sick and was diagnosed with cancer. She underwent two major surgeries to remove her uterus, fibroids, endometriosis, appendix, gallbladder, right colon, a (re)section of her small intestines, and two malignant tumors. 

To say this was a hard season would be an understatement. Yet, none of this is why we left First Baptist, and all of this is why we stayed in Freeport.

Why I left First Baptist

Amanda and I had every intention of planting ourselves at First Baptist for the long haul. I tried, in earnest, to discharge my duties as pastor, but I faced unrelenting opposition, from within, from the beginning, for the duration of my 1 ½ year tenure.  The more I tried to bring order to a disordered church the more I, personally, was deemed, “out of order.”

To give you an idea of the kind of internal opposition I faced—a paid staff member (and long-time church member) was permitted to protest and sabotage my ministry nonstop, without repercussion, for the duration of my 1 1/2 years at First Baptist. Nearly a dozen eye-witnesses testified to this ongoing pattern of protest. Six first time guests informed me that this staff member was bad-mouthing me right in front of them the moment they walked through the doors of the church. We’ll never know how many guests she ran off. Time and again, word came back to me that this paid staff was trashing me behind my back. She ran me down so extensively in a Women’s meeting (WMU), that an entire paragraph of slander, guised as “concern” (about me), was recorded in the official meeting minutes. As a perpetual protest against me, this paid staff member maintained a dour, gloomy demenaor during weekly church gatherings, casting a dark, oppressive cloud over First Baptist Freeport. She was clearly willing to sink the whole ship in order to take me down. Rather than fire her, or hold her accountable, the head deacons, instead, promoted her—to Diretor of Vacation Bible School.

One deacon’s wife would not even look at my wife, except to scowl. Another deacon’s wife nicknamed my wife “Miss Priss” (short for prissy.)  That’s a name you might give to a little girl, but not to the pastor’s wife, and, especially not when she’s battling cancer. On top of all this, a group of church ladies ran all over town gossiping about me. If only they had the same zeal in their evangelism.

Regrettably, the deacons were too busy trying to discipline me (and my wife) to bother with all of that. Amanda and I faced constant scrutiny. We may have lived in the parsonage, but we stayed in the doghouse:

• Once, when I used the word “manly,” unironically, as a positive characteristic for godly pastors, the church sound tech got mad and left the church. For that, I was called into the deacon’s office and censored.

• When I ran a Facebook ad to gauge interest for a Christian Academy, the town gossips had a hissy fit. Again, I was called into the deacon’s office and lectured.

• When I told Sunday guests we didn’t expect them to give financially, I was upbraided in a deacon’s meeting.

• When I took my wife to the beach on a day off, someone reported us. Again, I was called into the office and reprimanded: “If Amanda feels good enough to go to the beach, then she has no excuse not to attend prayer meeting.”

(Bear in mind, this was 3 months after Amanda underwent two major surgeries, back to back. She was fighting cancer and crippling rheumatoid arthritis, and that without the medicine she needed, due to finances.  She suffered from extreme fatigue and, by early evening time, she simply did not have the energy to show up to a meeting, which most of the deacons, themselves, did not attend.)

The straw that broke the camel’s back, was when one deacon’s wife reported Amanda for a social media post, prompting the deacons to manufacture a bogus charge. They bizarrely accused Amanda of being “sexually suggestive, and provocative” (their words).  The content, in question, was a short, innocent video clip of Amanda pointing at Bible verses!  (See for yourself.) There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about Amanda’s dress or behavior, or anything.  Nonetheless, in order to placate disgruntled women, the deacons humiliated and shamed my wife; ordering her to remove the post. 

For context; some Freeport women were upset that, from time to time, I addressed the need for women to dress with modesty and decency, and to respect their husbands. Their below-the-belt swipe at my wife was done deliberately, to put me in my place.  It typifies the kind of underhanded conduct I regularly dealt with from disgruntled members.

Over and over again, I was called into the deacons’ office to be corrected, chided, and censored over petty and contrived concerns in order to mollify meddlesome church marms, while at the same time, watching the deacons steadfastly refuse to address real and recurrent sin rotting the church from within.  This was the pattern for 1 ½ years.  As I heard someone say recently, “A church will either discipline sin, or it will discipline righteousness.”

I left First Baptist, because I saw, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that an entrenched group of members (and leaders) simply did not want me there as their pastor. If I had remained at First Baptist, major conflict would have ensued, which likely would have led to a church split, not to mention a handful of heart attacks.  I could have thrown my weight around to win the turf battle, but I would have lost the mission. I’d rather see my detractors’ grandchildren come to faith in Christ than to be ‘king of the hill.’ When I weighed the outcomes, leaving quietly, and bearing the burden of starting over from scratch, seemed like the loving thing to do. If I’m ever going to win against Freeport’s dirty politics, it will have to happen through a ‘left-handed’ disadvantage—leaving no doubt that victory has come through God’s mighty right hand.

As 2022 came to a close, Amanda was once again in the midst of a full-blown health crisis. Just before Christmas (2022), we thought Amanda was having a heart attack.  We went by ambulance to the ER, and all the evidence pointed to a major carcinoid crisis, which, to our dismay, indicated the recurrence of cancer.  Stress is a major trigger for carcinoid syndrome. For the sake of Amanda’s health, it was time to step away and seek healing.

After my resignation, I submitted a case of misconduct to the deacon board, both in a meeting, and again, in writing.  I have patiently followed due process.  I have sought to give the leadership every opportunity to make things right.  Despite overwhelming evidence of serious and ongoing misconduct, no course of action was proposed to make amends or even acknowledge wrongdoing.  May the Lord judge between us.

Amanda and I choose to forgive these members (and leaders), and we hope and pray for their repentance. For anyone with genuine concerns about my character or my convictions, I am available to talk.

Why I Didn’t Leave Freeport

Someone once quipped, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” When Amanda and I packed up our lives (in Texas) and moved across four state lines, we had no idea the harsh winter we’d face in sunny Freeport, Florida.  We’ve weathered a cancer diagnosis, cancer recurrence, more than a dozen ER visits, 2 major surgeries, defamation by national press, local smear campaigns, and non-stop opposition from the people we had hoped would be our church family. If it weren’t for the kindness of a Christian family who learned of our situation, we’d be homeless this past year. In all of this, God has been faithful.

From a medical standpoint, it would be untenable to leave right now.  It has taken us two years to establish Amanda’s doctor care.  We finally have a great primary doctor and have learned to navigate the regional medical system.  Uprooting would greatly disrupt Amanda’s treatment for cancer and severe rheumatoid arthritis.     

From a professional standpoint, as a pastor, I’m virtually unemployable now.  Two years of defamation, libel, and slander on the internet have attached themselves to my name like a kind of criminal record that would follow me wherever I might go.  (Seriously, Google “Pastor Br*ndon Durh*m”…see what you can learn in five minutes.)  

Some of my detractors have essentially taken a blood-oath to destroy me (See Acts 23:12). There’s nowhere I could go where they wouldn’t track me down and seek to have me blacklisted. (See Acts 17:13) 

As I heard someone say, “If you can’t get a seat at the table, then build your own table.”  That’s what we’ve decided to do; build a scorn-proof church that can weather the harsh winter coming for faithful Christians everywhere. Make no mistake, what the lying britches brigade did to me, they will do to anyone (in Freeport or any other town) who takes a stand for Christ in this generation. 

Amanda and I choose to stay and proclaim the gospel in this area for as long as God keeps us here, because we trust that God has many people here who belong to Him (Acts 18:10), and we want to see God grow a healthy, Biblical church that will be a scorn-proof blessing to this area for generations to come.  We’d love for our yet unborn great, great, great grandchildren to build their lives around here, all to the glory of God.

I would say we ‘burned the ships’…but we didn’t have to.  Our enemies burned them for us.  And we’re here to love them.

Welcome to Bring The Heat (blog & podcast) with J.B. Durham. Join me as I hurl gospel flamers at the fashionable idols of our day. Let’s get you fired up to FIGHT the good fight of faith!

Reserve your copy of my forthcoming e-book!

“Put In Order” is a politically-incorrect sermonic commentary on the book of Titus. For a donation of any amount, you can reserve your copy today!

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Why support Bring The Heat Podcast?

Hi, I’m J.B. Durham. Bible-teacher, pastor & church planter in the Florida Panhandle.

Preaching the hot gospel comes at a price. As Plato put it, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”

• In 2020, I was pushed out of my East Texas pastorate by a woke, feminist faction in the local church.

• In 2021, I was defamed by national media outlets (read here) for my effort to help godly singles find godly spouses. I was mocked and ridiculed across the internet with wildly absurd accusations and libelous slander. (here) My crime?—having the audacity to articulate a biblical, historically orthodox view of marriage and sexuality.

• In 2021 & 2022 Amanda and I weathered local smear campaigns that trashed my reputation & decimiated my pastoral ministry. (See here, here, & here.)

• During this time, Amanda was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent two major surgeries, back to back, to remove her uterus, fibroids, endometriosis, appendix, gallbladder, right colon, a (re)section of her small intestines, and two malignant tumors. Amanda has undergone 6 surgeries in our first six years of marriage.

We’ve been in the fight of our lives, but God has been faithful every step of the way. We rejoice over being counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. (Acts 5:41) And we will continue to rejoice and be glad when people insult us, persecute us, and falsely say all manner of evil against us because of Christ. (Mt 5:11)

If you believe Bring The Heat blog & podcast is needed in our day, then you’re invited to partner with me through prayer, donation & sharing with others. Your support helps me bring the heat on the pressing issues of our day as I plant & pastor a local church, preach weekly, work to launch a Christian school, and blog/podcast on the side.

If you’re in the area, we’d love to have you join us for Sunday worship!

Bring The Truth Podcast & Blog are initiatives of Durham Ministries, which exists to exalt Christ, equip the church, and engage culture.

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Introduction

For the second time in 8 months, the circus has come to town!  (For the first time, read here.)

I had not planned to put the spotlight on the mayor in my first year as a new pastor (more on that in a minute); especially not when John the Baptist lost his head for calling out King Herod’s sexual sin. It seems the ringmasters of the clown show simply won’t let me conduct my pastoral ministry quietly.

This time, the mean girls of Freeport have teamed up with the outrage mob of Tiktok to bring down the new pastor of First Baptist, making for quite the clown show! 

Most of this traveling sideshow has moved on down the road, to trash other pastors in other towns, leaving only a few clowns and some broken beer bottles in the parking lot of FBC’s google map reviews.

There’s a lot to juggle here, but essentially, some bitter biddies on Tiktok appear to have had too much wine and started trying to outdo one another in smearing a pastor (me) whom they’ve never met. 

Apparently, they took exception with some things I’ve said, not to mention, my mere existence as a card-carrying member of the patriarchy.  Hoping to dirty me up real good, they cranked out a series of videos shoveled high with more manure than a Joe Biden “State of The Union” address.

This traveling circus might have passed us by if not for the heroic efforts of the Freeport Mean Girls Association (FMGA).  Thanks to them, our small town got a nose full of the greatest dung show on earth.  They broadcast these slanderous videos far and wide, including on a Freeport community page (Facebook), to thousands of people, and gave a valiant effort at slaying my reputation. 

Older Than Barnum & Bailey, Plus More Star Power!

Smear campaigns against preachers are nothing new.  Two thousand years ago, we read (in Acts 13:50)  that “women of high standing and the leading men of the city” attempted to drive out faithful preachers of the gospel (Paul & Barnabas) by stirring up controversy with lies and slander.  (Don’t worry. Most of Freeport’s pastors are safe, because they pose no threat. See here).

The all-star cast fueling controversy here in Freeport are very well connected and exert an oversized influence through their variously held community roles and positions.  

Once again they’ve set up tent to fling manure at the preacher.  They keep hoping something is going to stick.  I just hope they can get their nails clean before church on Sunday.

Two of the ring masters are former members of First Baptist (where I pastor). They left disgruntled after they didn’t get hired for the job they wanted.  On their way out the door, they poisoned a third of our church against leadership, resulting in a church faction.

I don’t want to take anything away from these ladies.  They say they have other reasons for leaving, and I believe them!  By their own words, these ladies are against what I preach, especially when it comes to gender & sexuality. 

In reality, I simply preach the Bible; the same truths that orthodox Christians have believed for 2000+ years. It's only in recent decades that radical feminist ideology has crept into the church and led many astray.

Circus Elephant In The Small Town

The ugly truth is, Beth Jackson, Leslie Barr & others in our community have aligned themselves socially with a small, but LOUD “progressive” crowd in Walton County whose “sexual ethic” is diametrically opposed to God, in His Holy Word.  

Take a gander at all the folks piling on to Beth & Leslie’s online smear campaign, and you’ll see more rainbow than Noah did after the flood.

That’s what ALL of this is about; there’s a sexually perverse undercurrent here in Freeport, that runs clear to the top.  

I don’t know to what extent local churches and pastors have bowed the knee, but there’s an elephant in this small town that few are willing to talk about. Anyone who’s been here longer than 5 minutes, and is paying attention, knows this. 

Naturally, the folks waging war against God, right here in Freeport, can’t have anyone pointing out how far to the left they’ve leaped in their rejection of God’s Word on sexuality. Pastors & churches who actually preach a Biblical sexual ethic are bad for business, and must be silenced.

I’ve clearly committed the unpardonable sin…of talking about sin.  But, that’s part of my job!  I’m a preacher. No less, I’m a follower of Christ.  Jesus said, “the world hates me because I testify that their deeds are evil.” (John 7:7)

To quote David French, (who hasn’t said anything good in a long time): “It took me a long time to realize the following truth: No matter how compassionate, charitable, winsome, and kind you are, if you oppose the sexual revolution you are the enemy.”

Lies & Slander; A Small Town Recycling Program

In order to get rid of me, they’ve set about to destroy my reputation.  (Which I don’t mind, after seeing how Nick Sandmann fared.)  They’ve got their crew working overtime, digging up every speck of dirt they can find, and twisting it in the most creative ways.  Imagine what they could do at a birthday party with animal balloons!

We all (myself included) keep holding our breath, hoping they’ll find a smoking gun of sorts, but each time it’s something more wacky and contrived than before.  

It’s almost as if these “Good Christian folks” don’t believe bearing false witness is a violation of God’s law; almost like they have no fear of God.

So far they’ve spread all over town that I’m a racist, a misogynist, a pedophile, and a sex trafficker, even the devil himself.  That reminds me of a good joke: A “racist” is anyone winning an argument with a liberal. 

We saw this same dirty play run during the Kavanaugh Inquisition. Wicked people wanted the good judge gone because they hated the righteous rule he upheld.  So, under the guise of "believe women" they fabricated lies, brought in shady witnesses, and did everything in their might to drag him through the mud. 

 And they got away with it because, in clown world, women are never devils, and men are always devils.

This latest spectacle was almost entirely recycled from the previous show in July.  They’re hurting for new material!  If you’d like free admission to the original showing of their Big Top lies, then you can read my previous refutation of their recycled refuse program, here. 

For the sake of time, I'd like to turn my attention, now, to the newer manure being flung around town; something about the devilish preacher calling some sweet angel a skank.

Tiktok; When Mean Girls Go Slumming

When the mean girls of Freeport go slumming, they go all the way!  This time they rented an 18 passenger van, drove down to the Big Easy, parked on Bourbon Street, found the skankiest bar in town, went straight to the back, gave a password to a big hairy man, and followed him down a long, dark corridor strewn with the bodies of passed out crack addicts before finally reaching a rusty door underneath a dimly flickering neon sign that read, "Tiktok."   As they opened the door, sulfuric smoke billowed out and a dark, shadowy figure summoned them to gather round.

Meet Rachel.  Rachel runs a mudslinging smut channel on Tiktok, proudly dedicated, in large part, to slandering pastors.  She’s a veritable geyser of vulgarity, spewing and sputtering profanity as she mocks faithful Christians and pastors, bragging, on video, that she has a long list of names (of pastors & Christian men) that she plans to target.  She boasts, over and over again, that her spiritual gift is “pettiness." She's not wrong. Small-minded spitefulness is her brand, and bitter, misandric women come from all over to get their "petty fix" in her sadistic man-bashing sessions.

In one of her videos Rachel dresses down a pastor for his sin of encouraging Christian women to dress modestly.  In order to demonstrate how moderate and reasonable she is, she dons a low-cut shirt intentionally exposing her breasts as she tells that pastor, “I have great fuc*ing breasts, and I can fuc*ing wear whatever I want.”

Amazingly, this obscene, R-rated accuser-of-the-brethren became super triggered, and fell on her fainting couch, when a PG-rated Baptist preacher threw the mild (and accurate) word “skank” in her direction.  (skank; a sleazy or unpleasant person.) 

Even more amazing is how contagious her conniption fits have become here in Freeport.  Contrary to all the conflated cackling around town, I did not call Rachel a "skank," which is to say, I may owe her an apology.  Perhaps I should have just called a spade a spade, but, alas, I did not.  The actual phrase I used was “skank lens.”  For context, Rachel was trolling pastors (and men, in general) on Twitter, and mocking anyone taking stand on modesty. Like the loud demoniac woman hassling Paul, I could hear Rachel coming from a mile away, and when she crept up behind me with her derisive dismissal of modesty, I simply told her the truth—”Your skank lens has blinded you to logic.”

For anyone with eyeballs in your head, my above statement clearly runs in the same vein as the old quip: “You’ve got your beer-googles on.”  My point was that Rachel is obviously under the influence of something that is clouding her judgment; namely a warped view of sexuality which condones women exposing themselves in public.  Contrary to local gossip, I do not go around flippantly calling women names, but I am willing to issue an appropriate rebuke when rephrensible behavior calls for it.

To Rachel’s credit, she did help me prove my point, (which I thought was charitable of her), by living up to her reputation of being extraordinarily petty...and skanky!  

Rachel produced a series of “hit pieces” loaded with as much fake tabloid news & phony outrage as she could muster.  She then directed her eighty thousand online circus fans to harass our church.  Our office was bombarded with emails and phone calls.  Our Google Map Reviews was trashed.  Our secretary resigned. Rachel even found a way to monetize all that petty outrage by selling shirts that say, “Skank Lens.”  And for extra measure, she announced a special fundraiser, in my honor, to help murder babies at a local Planned Parenthood, with all donations to be made “in honor of Pastor Brandon Durham.”  Naturally, this back-alley affair attracted additional shady characters and soon #BrandonDurham was a hashtag on Tiktok for more smut videos. 

If you’re wondering why the mean girls of Freeport got taken in by the slum show of Tiktok, consider this Proverb (17:4): “A wicked person listens to deceitful lips; a liar pays attention to a destructive tongue.” 

There are clearly some folks in our small town (in every small town) who revel in controversy, “going from house to house and being not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, discussing things they should not mention.” (I Timothy 5:13)

Drunken Camel In The Tent

This ongoing effort to paint the new preacher as a creepy clown is nothing more than a dirty, desperate attempt to divert your attention from the real circus–the sexual revolution happening right here in Freeport! The revolutionaries are working tirelessly to get their camel nose underneath the tent without causing too much commotion.

It’s no secret that feminists, homosexual activists, and now, wokesters have infiltrated our nation at every level, including politics, public education, the workforce, social media, and even the local church.  Yet, our normalcy bias makes it hard for us to believe that it could be happening in our town, but it is! If you don’t believe me, ask the mayor…and his boyfriend.

Shouldn’t every Christian in Freeport find it the least bit odd that after just three months in town there was a concerted effort to brand the new preacher as a danger to children? Yet you can look on Facebook and see two of Freeport’s most prominent men, living, openly, in uprenentant homosexual sin, and, for years now, they’ve had their hands all over Freeport’s children. We’ve been played. The powers that be have legitimized, especially in the eyes of our children, a sexual immorality that violates God’s Holy Word, and now they’re demonizing anyone who dares to say that.

To give you a better idea of the play being run right here in Freeport; in 1987, two homosexual activists wrote a landmark piece titled, “The Overhauling Of Straight America.”  Their opening line reads: “The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights…to help it view homosexuality with indifference…the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.”

For decades (even longer) Christian pastors and parents have sat idly by as our nation has been lulled into passive indifference to sexual perversion.  We’re now so deep into clown world that even prominent “conservatives” have defended the insanity of pedophilic men dressing in drag to read to children.

Feminism has wrecked homes through no-fault divorce. Abortion has slaughtered 60 million babies in their mothers’ wombs.  Pornography & the hook-up culture have rendered an entire generation of men and women barren & impotent through fake, fruitless sex. And gay is the new black. 

A recent poll showed 30 percent of U.S. Millennials identify as LGBTQ, while a staggering 40% of Gen Z (age 18-24) claim LGBTQ identity. Gender confusion among children and teens has spiked 700%+ while children as young as ten take puberty-blocker drugs, and 13-year old girls have their breasts cut off and genitals mutilated.  

In other words, the sexual revolt has made it inside the tent and they’re trampling upon everything sacred, like a drunken camel dancing around in a tutu, smashing all the good gifts our Christian Heritage handed down; like joyful marriages, intact families, and a deep reverence in our hearts for God the Father, who made and ordered everything according to his good & perfect will.  

Enough Clown’n

Those driving this smear campaign against me (and First Baptist) are as cunning as the devil.  And that’s not an insult.  Rather, it’s a wake up call to faithful Christians.  Christ tells his followers that he sends us out as “sheep among wolves,” so, therefore, be “shrewd as serpents, innocent as doves.”  

The problem facing us is that the devil’s doers have “shrewd as serpents” down pat, while today’s church is a total patsy, proud as a peacock over taking home first prize in the “always be nice to everyone” contest, which, as it turns out, is sponsored by the devil.  How nice of Him! 

We’re at war, and we’ve got to snap out of this “only always nice” nonsense.  We need Freeport’s Christian leaders to wake up, and stop playing footsies with the world. To quote another: We see a shepherd out in the pasture with the sheep. Our ethical evaluation of this man is not determined by whether he is nice or not. Rather, if he is nice to the sheep and mean to the wolves, he is a good man. If he is nice to the wolves, and mean to the sheep, he is not a good man.” 

In Acts 20:29 the Apostle Paul told the Church at Ephesus, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock." 

Wolves can’t abide a shepherd in their way. They're hell-bent on ruining the reputation of any church, pastor, or Christian who stands in the way of them having their worldly way & devouring the Lord's flock.

Those howling over my "mean tweets" have shown themselves to be either goats with sore throats, or worse, wolves. They've lied & slandered, and spread lies & slander, to know end.

For those sheep concerned about my tone, consider Dr. Voddie Baucham’s recent remark: "Here is what I’ve found out about those who complain about tone: the tone they don’t like is “masculine.” They don’t like strong, direct, and clear communication." 

Evangelicals have grown so accustomed to soft, effeminate preaching that they can’t stomach the truth, manfully spoken. This has created an environment where rank heresy and dangerous ideology run rampant. As G.K. Chesterton noted, “Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it.”

When it comes to my preaching ministry, I strive to give God’s Word to you, straight. I don't preach ear-tickling, self-help TED talks so popular today. I've been known to call a spade a spade. In the thick of battle, as occasion calls for, I do fire heavy artillery in the direction of those seeking to disarm & destroy the Lord's Church in our generation. Per Paul’s instruction in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “we destroy…lofty (proud) opinions that set themselves up against the knowledge of God.” 

None of that is inconsistent with the call to love our enemies. When the Judaizing clown show stuck their nose under the Lord's tent in Galatia & Philippi, the Apostle Paul called them wicked dogs, and told them to go emasculate themselves! (Gal. 5 + Phil. 2) The Lord Jesus called the corrupt establishment of his day all kinds of mean names. But Jesus, and his servant, Paul, also held forth the gospel and called the Lord's enemies to repent and produce fruit that evidenced that repentance. 

I haven't returned evil for evil. Our church's Google Map Reviews was thoroughly trashed and my personal phone/email was fed to the wolves so they could call and harass me night and day. I could have just as easily asked my people to retaliate, in kind, against Rachel by trashing her wedding photography reviews and calling her at all hours of the night via her listed phone, but I didn't.

Likewise, I’ve not returned spite against Beth and Anne by disparaging them in their Christmas Angel reviews, or in any number of easy marks on social media. They’ve run all over town, and even out of town (via social media), trying to ruin my reputation and life. I’m still holding out hope of their repentance.

In 2 Peter 3:9 the ungodly are warned to flee God's judgment and told that the Lord, "is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." To all those trying to bury me underneath a pile of manure for the truth I preach, you need to know it’s God’s truth, and it’s HIM you oppose. You’re storing up wrath for the day of judgment (Romans 1). You need to know that you’ve transgressed the law of a Holy God, and therefore deserve death & hell (as we all do). The good news is that you don’t have to die in your sins. You can be forgiven. God has made a way, thru the atoning death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, for you to be washed white as snow and reconciled unto God the Father, for eternal life.

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” – I Corinthians 6:9-11

I don't hate my enemies. My greatest hope is their salvation, through faith in Christ, to the glory of God. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” I love God’s people, God’s truth, God’s Salvation & God’s glory. As long as I have breathe, I’m here for this fight—the good fight.

By J.B. Durham

Originally published in June 2021. Revised & Updated 12/16/21

Introduction

I’d like to address a series of accusations and concerns raised against me on Facebook, in June of 2021 as well as a screenshot, which made the rounds, of one of my social media posts. This “mean tweet” controversy caused quite a stir in Freeport, and eventually made its way to the Destin In The News Facebook page, with a following of 30,000. A few threats were made, and an on-line mob with pitch-forks demanded my head on a platter. Mind you, all of this has unfolded after just 3 months in my new pastorate. You might recall that John the Baptist’s public ministry lasted about 3 months before he lost his head, and that, for calling out Herod’s glaring sexual sin. Perhaps this is what happens when you start pointing out elephants in…small towns.

Firstly, it’s true, I did make an ill-advised tweet which has given Freeport’s Busybodies Anonymous (FBA) something to fuss about. Secondly, the primary spokesperson for FBA, Leslie Barr, has published three patently false accusations, which amount to libel and defamation of character.  As Proverbs 18:17 says, “The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.”

What I want to do, as clearly as possible here, are three things: 1) Own any wrong doing on my part. 2) Make plain what is patently false and slanderous in Leslie Barr’s original post which took Freeport by storm. 3) Tell you what is at stake in all of this.

My main focus and concern here is to speak for myself regarding the controversy; taking full responsibility for any and all real faults, while refusing to give an inch to cry-bullies.  Therefore, I want to begin and end this response on a note of apology & clarification. 

My ill-advised tweet was not done maliciously, and it was not false.  Nonetheless, I am sorry for not being more careful and I’m truly saddened for how my enemies have wielded my tweet to cause hurt & pain to a particular family, to my church family, and to the greater community.  I have since deleted that comment, and I will not republish it to cause further undo hurt, though I will address the contents of that tweet momentarily, to provide context. 

Once this controversy went public, I called and talked to the father of the family involved, and have apologized to him and his family for not being more careful.  Despite understandable feelings of hurt and anger, he extended grace to me and told me he forgave me.  I am grateful.  I have likewise stood before my church family and made a public apology for not being more discrete.  They, too, have extended grace, and stood by me.

Due Process & The Lack Thereof

Our church leadership met twice and put in long hours to get to the bottom of this dust up.  I was asked to give my account and answer questions, as were others.  I remained in full cooperation with the deacon board during this entire debacle.  Our deacons followed due process, under difficult circumstances, on a sensitive issue.  Despite loud public outcry, all but one deacon (majority) have determined that my comment did not merit suspension, dismissal (firing), or any form of penalty.  They asked me to learn from my error and to exercise better judgment moving forward.

Leslie Barr has claimed she gave our leadership time to follow due process before publishing her grievances on Facebook. Yet, according to her own published words (see below), Leslie went public, concerning my tweet, less than 24 hours after she herself had learned of it. In fact, she initially published her accusations, directly to our church Facebook page, on Sunday night, which is to say, immediately.  We deleted her post, twice, but she was determined to go public and circumvent due process. 

Keep in mind, our entire leadership council are near or well into their 80’s and, not surprisingly, unfamiliar with social media.  They gave their very best to handle this hard situation in a timely manner.  These are men who have lived and served in this community for longer than most of us have been alive.  They’ve served our nation, in fox holes, in times of war.  And yet, they’ve been slandered, name-called, threatened on the phone, and torpedoed during this entire process.

In fact, some person(s) leaked information from the inside, feeding the controversy on the outside.  Much of the business discussed in these closed meetings somehow became common knowledge on Facebook within an hour of those closed meetings. Nonetheless, these men stood strong.

As the dust settles, with the exception of my infamous mean tweet, I’ve been cleared of any wrong-doing, by church leadership. I want to briefly make available to the public the same information I made available to our leadership (and church) as they decided this case.

Refuting Libelous Claims

Let me refute Leslie’s three libelous claims, which she made publicly to defame my character, as well as our church, by association. (see pic below) She claimed: 1) That I don’t believe in higher education for women 2) That I believe women only belong in the kitchen or pregnant 3) that I believe “children” should be married by age 15 and pregnant shortly after. She claims (see below) that she got all of that from my “preaching.”  Entirely False. In fact, Leslie has never been to our church to hear me preach, and all but my first three messages (before we could record) are online.  (See for yourself. Here & Here).  We have nothing to hide. We’ve not taken any sermons down or offline. (*Update: the YouTube sermon channel was taken down in late 2023, upon request from the new pastor)

Contrary to Leslie’s libelous claims, I strongly believe that both men & women should be well educated, principally, so we can know and love God through the study of his Word & World.  I’m an ardent proponent of Christian Education & Christian Higher Education.  My wife, from Brazil, has a higher level of education than I do.  I hold child-bearing and motherhood in the highest esteem, and I thank God, with all my heart, for my wife who loves to bless our household with her delicious work in the kitchen, among other things.  (Don’t faint, but sometimes I cook and do the dishes, too!)  The fact is, Leslie has accused me of preaching a truncated view of womanhood that I simply don’t hold.  If you want a Biblical picture of a woman’s role in relation to work and the home that more closely represents what I believe, here you go.

Lastly, Leslie sought to incite anger against me by painting me as a monster who wants to marry off “children” by age 15.  Her basis for that?  She evidently dug up an interview promoting a project I’m working on; a Christian dating site built on Biblical principles of marriage & sexuality.  She took a single sound bite, completely out of context, from that interview, to falsely malign me. She got that sound bite from a previous outrage mob who used the same tactic several months prior. 

In the interview, Eric Conn and I briefly contrasted previous generations (like our Grandparents!) that married much earlier, and our modern era that delays marriage and family. I made a straightforward comment that age 18 is arbitrary, and I said, “I know someone who married at 15.”  (Actually, I know tons of people who married before age 18. So do you! Hello Grandma! Hello Mary, mother of Jesus!) I made no endorsement of anyone marrying at 15. (See for yourself. Episode # 20) The fact is, like every other Christian dating site, you must be 18, at minimum, to even join our site, and our target audience is in their mid 20’s & 30’s.  My wife and I met on such a site.  I was 36. She was 33.  Our vision for this project is a marriage reformation, to the glory of God.  We want to see our generation re-enchanted by God’s good design for marriage in Gen. 1:28 “to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and take dominion.”  Marriage is an exciting mission of fruitful dominion-taking, as a man and woman join their two lives together, becoming “one flesh” on the same mission, together. (learn more: www.dominiondating.com) Imagine hating someone this badly for trying to help solve the marriage crisis, that you’d stoop to destroying their reputation with bold-face lies. I guess folks in Freeport will do whatever they can get away with these days!

I don’t think Leslie, or you the reader, would want to be treated the way she and these busybodies are treating me.  If I was playing the same shady game as these ladies, I’d have a field day with Leslie’s tweet below:

What This Is Really About

All the evidence we have suggests that a small, disgruntled, influential group in Freeport, both inside and outside the Lord’s church, have conspired behind the scenes, for at least a month now, to build a case and get me fired; all for preaching the Bible. 

I’ve never met Leslie Barr, but according to her own words, (see pic below), she has harbored a serious grievance against my preaching for at least three full weeks before my infamous tweet was unearthed. Again, In her words, (see below) she is “completely disgusted,” by my preaching. 

In fact, it appears her disgust over my preaching the Bible is what’s driving this entire campaign against our church.

This is nothing new.  In Acts 22, some people took serious issue with the Apostle Paul preaching the truth of God’s Word, so they set about to silence his preaching by spreading false accusations and stirring up outrage against the preacher: “Then they (the crowd) raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”  (Acts 22:22)

I’m not the first preacher to put my foot in my mouth. In Acts 22 & 23 the Apostle Paul made a misstep when he publicly reviled their High Priest saying, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!” For the “outrage mob,” this was an egregious misstep. But then again, they were already looking for any reason to “rid the earth” of Paul, for the things he preached! Some things never change.

Paul’s blunder prompted an over-the-top Greta Thunberg response: “HOW DARE YOU insult God’s high priest!”  To which Paul responded, ““Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’   Paul owned his fault, not because he feared man, but because he feared God, and he recognized his clear violation of Scripture. He owned his blunder, but he did not allow his accusers to use his blunder as an overblown distraction from the real issue.  He cut through the noise, and refocused the issue, by declaring, “I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

That’s what this is about. Every Sunday, I preach straight from God’s Word about the hope of the resurrection of the dead. This good news is polarizing because it calls us to faith & repentance. There are many, in our day, including here in Freeport, who love their sin, and refuse to give it up. They’ve been looking for a reason to “rid the earth” of yours truly. They’re willing to make a mountain out of a mole hill, if need be.

Like Paul, I’ve blundered a comment in public. And like Paul, I want to own it.  I was wrong, not because the cry-bullies say I am, but because I violated God’s Word, eg. (I Corinthians 13:7); “love…always protects…” I failed to protect the privacy of a family on social media. I was careless. I’m truly sorry.

“Mean Tweet” Context

My infamous tweet, in full: “I met a very flamboyant & prissy little boy at VBS today. I asked about his family, and he proudly stated that his sister is in the U.S. Marines. Transgenderism was raised in the shadow of his older sister, feminism.”

Admittedly, that statement appears, on its face, a bit out of step with our PC culture, but then again, so is smiling, if it’s done by Nick Sandman, or in a woke church without a mask. If you don’t believe Christ has risen from the dead, then I don’t expect to win you to my argument here, but I’d like to, at least, offer some context for folks on the fence.

Every June, “Christian Twitter,” as it’s sometimes called, trends on at least two threads of topic: 1) cracking good-natured inside jokes about Vacation Bible School (VBS) and 2) speaking plainly & boldly on the cultural rebellion of “Gay Pride” aka “Sexual Sin” month. I contributed numerous tweets on both threads, and in this case, I’m guilty of being an over-achiever as I tried to tackle both topics in a single tweet!

It’s plain as day that I was speaking anecdotally, to illustrate a point. My comment was not a malicious attack on anyone, as my enemies would have you believe (both on social media, and around town, as they spread their juicy gossip).  I didn’t use anyone’s name, nor did I reference my location. My Twitter audience had no reference to my new pastorate in Freeport, or even of my living in Florida.  (More on that in a minute.) In NO WAY did I attack anyone’s identity. I simply described a case of misguided effeminate behavior. (I say misguided, because effeminacy is listed in Scripture as a sinful deviation from God’s good design for men, and we must shepherd/father boys to grow-up in a God-honoring way.) The effeminate behavior in question was, in fact, disruptive and over-the-top demonstrative; as evidenced by the fact that everyone knew at once who I was talking about, despite no names given.

My blunder of a tweet was intended to provide commentary on two behaviors which are undeniably connected. Effeminacy & feminism are two sides of the same coin, as they both invert God’s good design for sexuality; men behaving as women, and women behaving as men. Christian tolerance for the slow creep of feminism (read “pastors and husbands afraid of women”) has only paved the way for other sexual perversion to overtake our once Christian nation. It started with “no-fault” divorce and the subversion of the Christian home, and it’s progressed to abortion-on-demand & the total abolition of “gender normativity.”

We now have the U.S. Department of Education proudly flying the rainbow flag on social media, with “gender-inclusive” bathrooms/showers popping up in schools around the nation, and TedTalks openly esteeming the virtues of pedophilia. In my effort to critique culture on the glaring issues of our day, I displayed a lapse in judgment in the example I chose to share.

What my enemies won’t tell you is that during VBS I went out of my way to show care and kindness to this boy. I spent time talking to him, and kept an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t attract negative attention for his pronounced, misguided behavior. (In fact, my entire life testifies to that fact that I’ve stood up for the vulnerable, against mistreatment, including for the unborn, against abortion.)

During VBS, I taught a lesson from Genesis 1 on biblical gender—“God made them male and female.” In the middle of my teaching, one of the adult workers cut me off in the middle of my lesson, and introduced a line of questioning aimed at undermining my message. She was entirely out of order, and showed complete disregard for my role as pastor. She clearly had an agenda. Additionally, there were multiple reports made during VBS which corroborate this point. There’s a lot of details I’m not disclosing, but one thing is for sure, I’m not the threat to Freeport’s children. I’m the one trying to address that threat, and for that they’re trying to silence me.

Brief Back Story

A couple of months before this controversy hit, a separate, but related turn-of-events necessitated that I move my social media identity “under ground” to evade yet another outrage mob. Out of nowhere, my homemade (bootleg) promotional video for my Christian Marriage project went viral. I subsequently made the NY Post, and suddenly folks were coming out of the woodworks trying to dox and ruin me.

For this reason, when I made what is apparently the only mean tweet in Freeport’s history, I wasn’t even using my first name, and my twitter account had zero links to First Baptist Freeport, (or even to Florida, for that matter). I had just accepted a new pastorate, so I was doing my best to lay low while this initial firestorm blew over.

I can’t stress this enough—the only way anyone in Freeport would have found me hiding out on twitter during this time, is if they were looking really, really hard! Which is to say, super motivated! (Almost, as if they already had an axe to grind.) Now, my obscure comment has been unearthed & brought, by Freeport’s Busy-bodies Anonymous (FBA), to the forefront of a local controversy.  It has caused hurt.  For that, I am sorry.

Cancel Culture

The folks driving this controversy are trying to make it entirely about my “mean tweet,” but that’s really not what this is about, at least not for them. This is Cancel Culture. The church is facing an onslaught of crybullies; men & women who foment rebellion while feigning victimhood. When cry-bullies decide you must be silenced, they comb through your life with a fine-tooth comb, digging for any words or deeds that can be used against you. Then they take what little they’ve got, twist it up real good, and try to turn you into a monster, so they can feed you to the perpetual outrage machine. Every single faithful Christian & church should be paying attention, because you may be next!

The real reason they’ve been plotting against me, at least three full weeks before digging up this tweet, (and in truth, for much longer), is because I have, on occasion, called out beloved sins (I am a preacher, after all!). Jesus said, “the world hates me because I testify that their deeds are evil.” (John 7).

I don’t wish any ill-will to the Busy-bodies Anonymous. My greatest desire is that they truly come to know Christ, find forgiveness and eternal life, and walk in obedience to his commands.

At our church, we unapologetically preach HARD on sin, but that’s so we can preach BIG on grace! To quote John Newton, repentant slave-ship captain, and author of Amazing Grace; “I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”

Until next time, expect the digging for “dirt” and slinging of “mud” to continue. If you have a question, you can always reach out and ask.

Thank you for letting me bend your ear…hopefully, in the other direction!

Sincerely,

Brandon Durham

*As a related aside, for another time, if you want to know my views on women in combat, go here and here. I’m confident, you’ll find they’re in line with the clear & compelling truth of Scripture. We live in a sexually-confused & rebellious time. Yet, God’s Word is clear & coherent on the matter. Letting the world pressure us to “get in line” with their sexual rebellion is ONE way to be “ashamed of the gospel.” Now is the time to speak the truth in love, and to fear God, not man; now is the time for courage. Stand with, and encourage your pastors to stand strong against the fiery darts of our present, evil age.

Update (12/16/21): The Destin In The News Facebook page initially shared Leslie Barr’s false & libelous post with their viewership of more than 30,000, hoping to ruin my reputation and run me out of town. After I posted this response online, they immediately took down their post. To date, Leslie Barr, Lisbeth Jackson, Tim Ard and the online mob they incited have not apologized or admitted wrong doing. I’ll leave that between them and God Almighty.

Yesterday, Joe Biden was installed as President.  As the inaugural proceedings got under way in our nation’s capital, I, myself, was thousands of miles away, driving the rural back roads of East Texas, when suddenly, I happened upon a bald eagle perched on the side of the road!  Eagle sightings are quite rare around here.  I can remember 1 or 2 sightings in all my years, and never have I seen a bald eagle this close, in the wild!  As I cruised by our nation’s noble bird, it flew away, clutching a dead carcass!

Now, I do not believe in omens.  I am not superstitious.  I’m not even a little “stitious.”  (Couldn’t resist.)  But I do believe in a good metaphor, and think this one’s an eagle on a par 4.  Hopefully, I can keep it in the fairway.

Four years ago, a strange bird, named Trump, took office, with promises of “draining the swamp.”  This sounded really good to conservatives, including us non-woke Christians.  We rallied, with high hopes, around insolent Trump, willing him to do something the “nice guys” seemed incapable of doing—run the smooth-talking swamp monsters smooth out of town.  In a word; we hoped the eagle would carry away the dead carcass!  If we’re honest, many of us were clutching this fantasy down to the wire, hoping Trump had some ace up his feathers, to catch the wicked in their own trap.  I get it.  I was taught to “play till the buzzer sounds,” too.  And Trump is a fighter.  For many, it almost seemed unpatriotic to not stand with him until the last. 

Trump did a lot of good for our nation.  He grew our economy (twice, counting post-shutdown).  He kept us out of foreign conflict.  He was extraordinarily “pro-life” and “pro-religious freedom.”  He served blacks and minorities well; signed prison reform, increased funding to black colleges, and brought black and minority unemployment down to historic lows.  Not bad for a “racist.” Trump crushed the “PC” culture, helped expose Mainstream Media & Big Tech tyrants as propagandists, and smoked out all the woke whiney weenies of evangelicalism.  We ought to praise God, and be grateful for all the good accomplished by President Trump and his administration, in the face of relentless attacks and deception by the deep state and their propaganda arms.  It was a good run. 

And I won’t deny, it would have been glorious, yesterday (at the Inauguration), if President-elect Biden & Commie Harris, along with the Clintons, Obama, the House, the Senate, the FBI, Twitter, Facebook, Google, George Soros, et al, had been rounded up on national T.V. and herded into the “paddy wagon” by 25,000 troops, (to be tried for treason) as Trump took the stage and Garth Brooks sang, “Amazing Grace.”  Harris could have broken the glass ceiling as the first woman VP-elect to go to prison.  And everyone who’s been banned on social media said, “Amen.” 

But it didn’t happen.  As it turns out, the left has too many friends in high places.  Trump has been trumped.  And while we’ll likely never know the extent of the cheating that took place, including with Dominion Voting, one thing is clear; the Socialist, Marxist Left has taken dominion; and to prove they’re in charge, they’re censuring anyone who doesn’t use a “library voice” to challenge their legitimacy. 

In short, yesterday, we watched as the dead, rotting carcass of a godless regime sunk its claws into our feathers, to drag our nation further into the gutter than ever before.  Everything good Trump did via executive order will now be undone with a stroke of Biden’s pen.  The legal ground gained, to protect the unborn, will be torn from us.  The LGB-Cutie-+ sexual revolt will molest like never before.  The economy is about to be mugged in a back alley by a thug named Socialism. And freedom of speech will be largely relegated to speakeasies like Gab and a faithful remnant of churches that aren’t drunk on CRT like it’s love potion # 9.

And that brings me to the point of this metaphor; while it’s part of our Christian duty to concern ourselves with politics and those who rule over us, such can never be our ultimate hope!  The cross (gospel), and not the eagle (politics), is our ultimate hope for carrying away the rotting carcass (national sins) festering with the putrid smell of death in our land.  Four more years of Trump would not have been enough to drain the swamp.  And that’s because, buried beneath the trash heap of our political landscape lies the real problem—America itself is a rotting corpse of unbelief and moral decay.  As the saying goes; politics are downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from worship. In short, the heart of the problem is the problem of America’s heart!

There’s no masking the ugly truth—Americans have rejected the God in whose image we are made, and have consequently been saddled with tyrants of our own making.  Francis Schaeffer warned that humanism, “having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state." Our idolatrous generation has adopted many false religions; most notably “statism” & “scientism.” (the deification of state & science.)

In the name of “protecting our public witness,” the American church has gone along to get along for far too long!  The average pastor, steeped in the unprincipled pragmatism of their seminary training, lacks the spine to drop the hammer on CRT, LGBQT, feminism, statism, “good-ole-boy-ism” and all the other damnable beliefs which set themselves up against the knowledge of God; nor do these well-credentialed pastors have the courage & conviction to call parents NOT to send their kids to godless government schools to be catechized—in the name of science, tolerance, and diversity—to hate God.  And the reason most pastors don’t tell the truth on these matters, in most churches, is because they’d lose their jobs faster than Trump lost his lead on election night.  I lost mine.

So here we are.  The Trump Train got derailed, and the Biden Bus is headed off a cliff. There will be more pressure than ever to “get on board.” David Chilton writes, in Paradise Restored, “Our primary response to persecution and oppression must not be political. That is to put our trust in the State. The Church’s primary response to persecution must be liturgical (worship). We must pray about it, personally, in families, and in the organized, corporate worship of the Church, whose officers are divinely empowered to bring judgments.” To quote Randy Travis, now is the time to “cling to the father and his holy name, and don’t go riding on that long black train.” 

Jesus, and not Cesar, is Lord.  His Kingdom is here, and now, and he won’t stop till all of his enemies are put under his feet.  The message of Christ is, “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”  Don’t get caught on the wrong side of eternity.  Only Christ has a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and a will that cannot be thwarted.  Christ said he would build his church, and the gates of hell would not prevail.  Chilton, again, writes, “We must stop acting as if we are forever destined to be a sub-culture. We are destined for dominion; we should straighten up and start acting like it. Our life and worship should reflect our expectation of dominion and our increasing capacity for responsibility. we should not see ourselves as lonely outposts surrounded by an increasingly hostile world; that is to bear false witness against God. The truth is just the opposite of that. It is the devil who is on the run, it is paganism which is doomed to extinction. Christianity is ultimately the dominant culture, predestined to be the final and universal religion. The Church will fill the earth.”

2021 can be a historic year, to the glory of God, where the church goes on offense, and rocks hell on its heels.  It starts with getting on your knees.  Men, take the lead. Repent.  Dust off your Bibles.  Find a gutsy, non-woke, Bible-believing church that will discipline you for sin, and feed your family when you get fired or arrested for defying tyrants.  Plug in.  Move if you must.  Pull your kids out of public school before they lose their soul.  Raise them in the fear, admonition, and joy of the Lord.  Sing loudly.  Fight the good fight. And, by all means, ruffle some feathers. 

Recently, while eating pancakes at IHOP, I noticed, at an adjacent table, a young man frowning intently at me.  I was not offended, as I quickly realized he had a mental disability.  In fact, he reminded me a lot of my cousin (Jason), whom I love dearly.

Imagine my delightful surprise, when, after finishing his breakfast, this young man sauntered over to my table and extended his hand to shake mine!  His poor mother rushed over, apologetically, to intercept him.  But she was too late! I eagerly put my fork down and grabbed his hand, thrilled that he’d take a moment to spread some unabashed kindness my way!  And then something revealing happened.  His mother gently placed her hand on top of ours, and she patiently instructed him, “Ok, let’s count to three…one…two…three…and…LET GO!” 

Amazing! I was not expecting, there inside ordinary IHOP, to encounter such a rare & glorious creature, so entirely uninhibited by social norms, self-absorption, or pretense that he actually had to be retrained, and taught by his mother, to “rein it in” with his friendliness! 

I later pondered, how often do professing Christians have the exact opposite problem?  Too often, we can’t be bothered for 3 seconds to look up and smile, shake a hand, give a hug, or offer an encouraging word.  As sinners, (which we all are) we are tragically impaired in our capacity to show kindness, and most often our impairment lies not in our head, but in our heart. 

The dictionary defines “kindness” as “the act of being caring or warm in spirit.” Kindness begins in the heart as a generous attitude towards others, and inevitably spills through our hands in benevolent acts.    

As Christians, we can’t excuse ourselves from being kind, for the Bible (Galatians 5:23) expressly says kindness is a fruit of God’s Spirit which inevitably blossoms in the life of every Spirit-led, obedient Christian, regardless of temperament.  When Christ’s church is infected with unkindness it unravels unity and drives people, who need God, yet further away from God!  In 2 Corinthians 6:12-13, the Apostle Paul addressed the Church of Corinth over such coldness: “We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange — I speak as to my children — open wide your hearts also.”  As a spiritual father, Paul gently placed his hand over the Corinthians’ lives and instructed them to “open wide” their hearts; to let love and kindness flow!

Imagine a church distinguished by the remarkable peculiarity of kindness!  Imagine the impact on our surrounding communities IF ordinary churches produced those rare & glorious creatures who saunter over to greet their neighbors with a smile, embrace others with eager arms, and never “let go” before counting to 3!

In a very real sense, Western Civilization owes its very existence to the kindness of Christianity!  As someone said, “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.”  Apart from Paul, of mortal man, it is St. Augustine who stands head and shoulders above so many intellectual giants!  He gave the West our first autobiography (Confessions) along with a massive library of more than 5 million words!  Yet, up until age 32, Augustine was a wayward, restless soul, squandering his life!  Disgusted by religion, Augustine turned to mistress after mistress, dove headlong into philosophy, poured himself into the ambition of oratory, and eventually joined a cult. It was Christian kindness that first led him home to Christ! 

Everything changed for Augustine, and for us, when he showed up to hear the renowned preacher, Ambrose!  In Augustine’s own words, “My heart warmed to him, not at first, as a teacher of the truth,…, but simply as a man who showed me kindness.”  Amazing! It was the kindness of a Christian (Ambrose) that opened the door for Augustine to eventually embrace the kindness of God found in the gospel!  Because of that kindness, for the past 17 centuries, we have framed our worldview, filled our museums, and formed our civilization around Augustine’s prolific life & words!  As one pastor-theologian, Nick Needham, writes, “If Western Christians are to understand their own heritage, they cannot escape engaging with the titanic figure of Augustine.”  And might we add, if we are to continue in this heritage, we cannot escape engaging with the titanic power of kindness!

The remedy to our lack of kindness is to (re) experience the abundance of God’s.  As Romans 2:4 says, “God’s kindness leads us toward repentance.”  In the Gospel, God interrupts our breakfast!  We look up to find Him frowning intently at us, and with good reason—our sin offends him greatly!  As Romans 1:18 reads, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” And yet, in the most delightfully surprising act in all of human history, this very same God makes the decisive move to our table, extending his hand with the offer of salvation—“believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31)   In the kindness of God, through the cross of Christ, a way has been made for sinful man to be forgiven and reconciled to our Maker!  As Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”  

For some, it may be time to put down our fork, and receive, by faith, the warm embrace of God’s “Welcome Home!”  For the Church, as we take serious the task of representing God’s kindness to our community, perhaps we need the Heavenly Father to gently place his hand on top of ours, and remind us: “Ok, let’s count to three…one…two…three…and…let go!”

“Keep me from deceitful ways…I have chosen the way of truth…I hold fast to your rules, O Lord; do not let me be put to shame.”  Psalm 119:29-31

“Oh Lord help me hold fast to your rules!”  It’s a blast coaching 4th & 5th grade boys in our local (American School-Taipei) youth basketball program!  One of the major rules is that all players get equal playing time, regardless of skill level.  This is to help ensure that ALL players have opportunity to improve their game.  At this age, developing as a player is priority and winning is supposedly not yet “everything.”  But try telling that to a bunch of “grown” men as coaches!

“Oh Lord, keep me from deceitful ways!”  I’m a deceitful human being!  When winning becomes all consuming, I’m tempted to do what it takes to get what I want!  That’s why I absolutely need God’s transforming power in my life!  I’m counting on God to change me and keep me from deceitful ways.  And I’m thankful that God, like a good coach, gives me enough “playing time” to develop….my character!

“Oh Lord, help me chose the way of truth here!”  Our boys’ last ball game was a real “nail-biter!”  We were “neck and neck” in the last quarter, and I wanted to win badly!  The thought actually occurred to me, “how convenient it would be if one of our players on the court were to suffer a minor injury, allowing us to legally “sub in” one of our best players.”  (Did I mention I’m a sinner?)  Suddenly, it happened!—one of our guys was hit in the mouth and sustained minor bleeding.  He was forced to come out of the game, and we “subbed in” one of our best point guards.  I was feeling hopeful!  But with the game on the line, and the clock dwindling to two minutes, the bleeding had finally stopped, and I was faced with a major decision—if I kept our “sub” in the game, nobody would ever know, care, or complain and this seemed like our best chance at winning—but it was deceitful.  What was I going to do?  I’d never make it in the NBA as a coach if I couldn’t win at the “Pee Wee” level!  Praise God—in the heat of the moment, with winning on the line, and my heart being pulled in a dishonest direction, I quickly chose the way of truth, and our injured warrior checked back into the game!

“Oh Lord, do not let me be put to shame here!” He played like a champ!  And with 16 seconds on the clock, down by one point, our team stole the ball, and stormed towards the basket.  The first shot was no good!  Hustle.  Rebound.   Second shot.     Crowd gasping.     Close! Ohhh!   But no good!

And with hope ticking madly off the clock, our injured warrior scrapped for the loose ball, and released a shot just as the buzzer sounded!  Against all odds, the ball crept its way right into the basket—game winner!  Parents, players, & coaches all leaped with joy!

Thank you God!

Two little boys went home ecstatic that day after sharing one of the biggest moments of their lives!  And one of them was me.

Has fabled Eden faded

From memories made for more?

Has the bright sun set

Upon that which our hearts were rising for?

Have we who played beneath her shade,

As children, lost all trust?

And dreamed away a life beyond

The haze of mortal dust?

 Our virgin love now withered.

It died upon the tree.

God’s garden guests are banished.

Sin summons us to flee.

Have we hope?” cry naked souls,

Who in the leaves are hiding.

Who will come and lead us out

From fear to true abiding?

See sinless Savior suffering

Who died upon our tree.

Bright Son of God now risen cries,,

“Ye weary run to me!”

I wrote this poem in 2008, in the midst of some personal heartache.  It reflects the relational brokenness and distance I often feel with God, with loved ones, and with myself.  It expresses my deep longing for redemption; to get back to the garden, to the way things were before the fall of man.  In the end, I return, by faith, to my true hope; the Good News of the Cross & the Kingdom.

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  —Jesus, Matt. 11:28