As I mentioned in my previous post, Sherri’s Daddy knew before we did that marriage was God’s plan for us. Sound crazy? He’d say the same thing. In fact, he told us a few years ago that he had never had anything like that happen in his life before or after that day that God spoke to him as I walked down the aisle and took my seat in his church in Sweetwater, Florida.
I sometimes wonder if that’s the only reason he didn’t object to our marriage.
When Sherri called her mother from my parent’s home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to tell her we were engaged, the first words out of her mouth were, “Are you sure?”
We’d only known each other for three months. But during that time, as I responded to God’s lifelong calling to serve as a pastor, our lives began intersecting in ways we could have never imagined.
I’ve shared with you the story of our dinner at Denny’s Diner. That was when I discovered that not only had God placed a lifelong calling on my life to serve as a pastor, but Sherri had a clear and unmistakable calling to serve as a pastor’s wife.
We didn’t realize it at the time, but eight months after we’d met, as we stood at the altar to say our vows, we were standing on the launching pad that would send us into a lifetime of ministry. One which, in spite of deep, painful wounds and soul-searching struggles, would lead us to unspeakable joy and a freedom from the chains that ensnare and enslave so many in today’s church.
If you’ve followed my posts and podcasts and read my books, you know I have a lot to say about the institutionalized religious camps we find in our day. (Though they’ve always been around. Just read the gospels.) The circles of inclusion - who’s in and who’s out - continue to shrink. The worldly wisdom of bitter envy and selfish ambition continues to breed disorder and every evil practice. The pure, peace-loving, considerate, and merciful wisdom of God is dubbed as a form of compromise and heresy.1
The anger, hatred, and intolerance in our nation today are both the cause and effect of this perverted Christianity.
On June 13, 1988, I sat in a packed convention center in San Antonio, Texas. Over 32,000 members of my denomination would attend our annual meeting this week. The ongoing fight over who was going to control our 14 million-member denomination was at a fever pitch.
Before the meeting began, I bumped into a local pastor known for his staunch fundamentalist conservatism. “Back these liberals into a corner, and they turn into snakes,” he told me. A year later, he resigned from his church after it came out that he had had multiple affairs with several women in his church.
The keynote speaker for the evening stood at the podium. His message was entitled “The Curse of Liberalism.”2 “Today,” he told us, “the liberals among us in our denomination call themselves ‘moderates.’” Then he continued, “A skunk by any other name,” he cried out, “still stinks.”
A deafening roar of shouts and applause filled the auditorium, as we all leaped to our feet in a standing ovation. I remember it as if it were yesterday. And I remember the “spirit” in that room. A spirit in which I, myself, was completely caught up.
A couple of decades later, during a time of prayer, the Lord carried me back to that moment. It happened when, as John tells us in Revelation, “I was in the Spirit.”3 The horror I experienced as, through the Spirit, I relived that moment is beyond words. The “spirit” in that packed auditorium of pastors from my denomination which so powerfully moved and inspired the resounding shouts of “Amen,” and the deafening applause, was not the Spirit of Christ. It was the exact opposite. It was the spirit of anti-Christ. And it is that zealous and very religious spirit that continues to seduce and lead so much of the church astray today.
I came so close to following that pathway to “ministry.” Just one year prior to that experience in 1988, a beloved and highly acclaimed professor of preaching at my seminary sent my resume to a prestigious church in Fort Worth. They chose another man as their pastor, and that man is one of the key leaders in his denomination today. In fact, he is one of the foremost fundamentalist leaders. Meanwhile, I decided to extend my seminary studies and pursue a Ph.D.
I began serving a small country church in order to devote myself to the rigors of the doctoral program. My experiences in that church changed my life.
(to be continued)
In Christ,
Dan
Check out my latest book, “Where is the God of Elijah? Overcoming Spiritual Drought.”
James 3:13-18.
https://wacriswell.com/sermons/1988/the-curse-of-liberalism-sbc/
Revelation 1:10.