Church Shopping In Lakeland

After moving to Lakeland, I did look for a UCC church.  I had been active in the Fellowship Congregational UCC church in Tulsa so it seemed logical I would continue with the UCC church in Lakeland.  One problem:  there was no UCC church in Lakeland.  The closest UCC church was in Winter Haven.

I drove out to see the church and it was just too far from my home.  I realized that I would probably try to go for a while, but the distance would be just far enough to make skipping church the easy choice.

If I was not going to a UCC church, I still felt a yearning to go to church somewhere.  I liked that the UCC church used the Bible, but they were not a fundamentalist group.  I liked the fact that UCC church was accepting of same sex marriages/unions, they were pro-gun control, they were not anti-abortion, they were, in general, a gathering of liberals.  I knew I did not want to go to a fundamentalist church.  

But there are so many churches.  I wondered how I could most efficiently find a church that would fit with my needs.  [Yeah, and I wondered what my needs were.]

It came to me that the easiest way for me to find a church similar to the UCC church would be to send out a questionnaire to various Lakeland Churches.

I typed up a list of questions and ran off copies.  I got the yellow pages and addressed several envelopes to the selected churches.  I included a self addressed stamped envelope in each packet so they church would lose nothing to mail their questionnaire back to me.

I wish I still had a copy of my questionnaire.  I believe I had questions like the following:

1. If I attended your church would I be allowed to partake of communion?
2. How often does your church have communion?
3. I was baptised in the church of Christ.  Would I need to be rebaptised if I wanted to be a member of your church.
4. Does your denomination have a position on abortion?
5. Does your denomination have a position on gun control?
6. Does your denomination have a position on homosexuality?
7. How does your denomination view the Bible?

I am not sure now what all I asked, but it was a two page questionnaire.  

I mailed the questionnaire out, and waited.  I think I got four replies.

One reply came from a Methodist Church and it was OK.  Acceptable.  It was good enough that I went for a Sunday morning visit.  I found the congregation to be made up of people older than I was, the sermon was a yawner, and no one said a word to me.  I was able to get in, sit, get up, leave, pass the pastor and even the pastor failed to make contact with me.  They were off the list.

The next questionnaire came from the Lutheran church.  I actually expected the Lutheran church to be a possible contender, what little I knew about them.  It turns out there are Lutherans that are mainline denominational, and there are The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS).  I had mailed my questionnaire to the Missouri Synod group, and it sounded similar to a church of Christ group.  They would require me to be rebaptised, because only their baptism was accepted by God.  They were clearly fundamentalists. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) were off my list.

I got a reply from the Catholic Church and the priest that wrote the letter wanted me to schedule an appointment to come in and he would go over my questionnaire with me face to face.

I made the appointment, and when I was ushered into a conference room I found myself greeted by a room full of priests.  My questionnaire had garnered a lot of interest.  Some of the priests were from other parishes.  One priest served as a spokesperson, I guess, and he had an Irish accent.

I started off asking my questions from the questionnaire, but quickly it became a free flowing conversation.  The Catholics were willing to accept me without being rebaptised, but they did not want me to take communion, or the Eucharist.  They wanted me to go through their classes and be confirmed before I would be allowed to partake of the Eucharist.

I asked about abortion, birth control, the infallibility of the Pope, as well as a phrase I’d heard in the past:

There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.

When I asked that last question the Priest said in his Irish brogue:

We call that a sad, sad saying of the Church

There was a lot I liked about the Catholics, but not enough.  I had so many misgivings.  The church of Christ thought all denominations were going to hell, but the Catholics were the worst of the worst.  Kathie told me a story about when she was in grade school and her history teacher had a question:  Name three non-Christian religions of the world.  Kathie wrote:  Buddhists,  Muslims, and Catholics.

In the church of Christ we were so inculcated with prejudice against the Catholics that our children did not even know that Catholics were affiliated with Christ.  The Catholics were off the list.

The Last questionnaire came from St. David’s Episcopal Church.  It was the best one I got back.  Most churches didn’t bother to return a questionnaire.   A Father Kevin F Donlon.  I liked Father Kevin a lot, and I remember going to St. Davids.  I knew nothing of how Episcopalian worship went.  When the time came for the passing of the peace, I thought the service was over.  I headed towards the door, but noticed that no one else was leaving.  

I soon learned that Kevin was the assistant to the rector and the rector and Father Kevin did not get along.  The friction between the two spilled over into disdain for their Bishop John W. Howe.  Eventually the strife between the two priests bothered me enough that I left St. Davids after only a few visits.

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

I noticed on my drive to work that I passed this little church, back in some trees.  St. Stephen’s appeared to be a going concern.  I often passed by and there were a lot of cars parked there.  

I felt a yearning to go there.  This was around the Spring of 1990.  I would sometimes call the church and listen to their phone message, and then I’d hang-up.  Eventually I called and got the Rector, Father Jim Taylor.  

This is Father Jim out of vestments,
with his lovely wife, Glenda.

I set up a meeting with him.  

At our meeting I told him about my conflict in Wewoka, my activities with the Fellowship UCC church, and a little about how I ended up in Lakeland Florida.  I felt good about Father Jim and his reactions to me.

I set up a time for Kathie and Ryan and I to visit.  When we stepped out of the car that first Sunday morning visit, there was a kid standing a few steps away and he he said, “Hey Ryan.”

Ryan said Hey back, but he didn’t seem like that other kid was a friend exactly.  It turned out to be Jamie Hiber a kid that I had a lot of encounters with over the following decade.  

As I stepped out of the car I saw a guy on the sidewalk twist his head and squint at me.  He came over to meet me.  He was David George who turned out to be the next Deacon at St. Stephens.

I loved the way an Episcopal service was conducted.  I thought Father Jim was particularly good at the way he celebrated the Eucharist.  I started attending St. Stephens and became a fixture there.  Father Jim found out I could teach, and I started teaching a lot of the classes at St. Stephens.  

One year Father Jim asked me to teach a class based on the Foster book on Prayer.  I did that.  Somewhere around this same time, the Archdeacon called Father Jim and asked him to teach the Life of Prayer class at the Institute of Christian Studies held at the Cathedral in Orlando.  While anyone could attend the Institute of Christian Studies it was designed to be the place you went to get your diaconal training.  Father Jim told Archdeacon Linda B.  that he was unavailable to teach the course, but he said he had this guy in his parish that had just taught a class on prayer at St. Stephens and that he thought that guy would be an excellent choice to teach the class at the ICS.

That is how, before I ever started the diaconal process of ordination, I was a teacher of the people studying to be deacons.  

I taught the class and expected that to be the end of it.  My evaluations from the class were outstanding, and I was asked to teach the class the next year it was offered at the ICS.  I ended up teaching the Life of Prayer class for 8 years in a row.

Not long after getting to know Father Jim, we moved to the Bluffs of Christina, where we rented a condo.  Father Jim owned a condo just down the street from us.  Kathie and I started to hang out with Father Jim and Glenda.  We participated in Bible groups.  My wife and I and Jim and Glenda were all friendly.

David George was our Deacon, but he got a position with Chuck Colson’s Prison Ministry organization.  Eventually he moved.

I felt really drawn to the Episcopal Church and I started the diaconal program.  Becoming a deacon in the Episcopal Church is nothing like becoming a deacon in the Church of Christ.  

Being active in the church was enough to be considered for a position as deacon in the church of Christ, and if the Biblical requirements were all there, the Elders could appoint you.

In the Episcopal Church it required four years of study at the Institute of Christian Studies.

Over time I was elected to the Vestry.  The following two years I served as the Senior Warden.

My second year as the Senior Warden father Jim and Glenda his wife called us over and Father Jim explained that he was going on a One Year Sabbatical, and he wanted me to run the church while he was gone.  Father Jim had someone to do the Priestly duties, Father Paul Wolf, but he needed me to come in the office regularly, to meet with families who had emergencies, deaths, and to deal with problems if any should arise.

Now I was teaching Summer School at George Jenkins High School when I was called to the office to take a phone call.  The church secretary said that someone had called the office, and explained that a former member, let’s call him Guster Skutter, had been arrested somewhere in Florida on allegations he had sexually molested to members of the Boy Scouts of America.  The person on the phone said that there were sexually explicit materials that belonged to Gus Skutter and that when Gus had been evicted from his Lakeland home, Father Jim had allowed Guster to store his household goods in one of the outbuildings on church grounds.  The voice on the phone wanted someone at St. Stephens to get rid of that child pornography before it was discovered and brought bad publicity to the church.  I told the church secretary I’d head out that way after that day’s summer school classes were dismissed.

I went by the office and got some keys to the padlocks that secured the three outbuildings located behind the Sunday School classrooms.

In the center outbuilding I knew I was in the right place because I could see a bed frame, mattresses and other stuff that you’d expect to find in a household storage locker.  The building was stuffed front to back, and floor to ceiling.  I decided I would lock up and come back on Saturday when I could dress to do this job.

The following day was a Saturday.  I got out there dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

I should add here that starting on my fortieth birthday I started getting tattoos so both my arms are covered in tattoos.  I might not have looked like the guy in charge of a church while the priest was away.

I started unpacking that storage shed.  As I removed items one at a time, I eventually came across two suitcases.  Those little flip up things that lock or unlock the suitcases were taped closed with masking tape.    My mind said, “This will be the stuff.”

I placed the suitcases on the ground and cut the tape with a pocket knife.  When I opened the suitcases I found myself looking at the first examples of child pornography I’d ever seen.  I shut the suitcases and walked to the fellowship hall.  I called the sheriff’s office.

I spoke to an officer, eventually, and explained about Guster, the child porn, and I asked them to send someone out to pick up the stuff.  They asked me to load the stuff up and bring it to the sheriff’s department.  

I refused.

I could just see what would happen.  I roll a stop sign, or get into a fender bender, the cops come, find child porn in my car and I’m arrested.  The newspapers and TV would headline, Teacher and Senior Warden of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church is arrested with child pornography in his car.  I was not about to haul child porn in my car.  I insisted the officers pick the stuff up and made sure they knew who the stuff belonged to.  

It was a long wait.  My best friend, Scott Barham showed up and waited with me.  When the sheriff’s officers showed up they were a little suspicious of me, given that my  arms were heavily tattooed.  I just didn’t fit their idea of a church guy.  But this was Florida.  It was hot and humid and I was doing physical labor unloading all that stuff.

After the officers left I decided this guy’s stuff did not need to be on church property.  Scott and I started to clean out the shed, but we came across several boxes filled with 8mm movies.  The titles indicated that these films were porn as well:  with names like Salute to the Navy, and Horney as Hell.  I called the sheriff’s office to have them return.  We also found pictures of Guster in a party with other men, and in some of the pictures Guster was dressed like a woman.

Some of the people at St. Stephen’s were upset with me.  They felt, if this got out, that there was child porn stored on church grounds, that it would embarrass the church.  I countered, what if it got out that there was child porn on church grounds that might convict a child molester, and members of that church destroyed evidence.  Which would be the worst publicity?

My Views of Faith and Doubt

To some, my views of faith, God, and the Bible will not be a problem.  To others my views disqualify me to serve the Episcopal Church, or any church.  There are, it turns out, degrees of fundamentalism.  Some people are fundamentalists only about a hand full of issues, but on those specific issues they are as stern and undaunting as the most aggressive black-belt church of Christ fundamentalist that ever lived.  Drinking, dancing, instrumental music in the worship service, no problem, but if I said that the Bible is not inspired, or that the Bible really has almost nothing that condemns homosexuality, well if you don’t think right on those subjects you are going to hell.

The Perfect Word of God -- Isn’t

I have come to the point in my life where I no longer see the Bible as the inspired word of God, at least not the way some people believe that.  We use the word Inspired in different ways.  Shakespeare’s writing was inspired, but that did not mean God entered his body and moved his hand to write those words.

I believe the Bible is a collection of writings by humans, probably all men, maybe, and they were writing about man’s struggle to relate to God.  It has been common throughout human history for people to believe in a power greater than themselves, and they have sought to relate to, and to please this Higher Power.

I believe the Bible is a record of people’s struggle to relate to and understand God, and that that humans relating and understanding God was something that evolved over time.  That means in the older parts of the Bible, when men killed babies, and sometimes their own children in an effort to please God, they were just wrong in what they did.  When the Bible condones slavery I just do not support that.  When a man offers his children to be gang raped by a mob, I would not consider that guy one of God's hero followers.  I cannot and I will not believe in a God that thinks it is OK to take babies and dash their heads against stone, but all that stuff is in the Old Testament.  I find that a lot of people that take the Bible literally have no clue what is in that Bible.  Read the Bible and you can't help have questions, doubts, and at times, outrage.  I think people living in a more primitive time, when life was brutal, nomadic, and patriarchal that when they wrote about their relationship to God their God was created in their own image.  That early view of God was a God who was also brutal, and patriarchal. 

If the Bible is from God and it is perfect then why would God sometimes change his mind?  Why would Matthew and Luke feel the need to copy parts of the Gospel of Mark into their version of the Gospel Story if God inspired them.  It seems like research would not be needed if the words were coming directly from God.  Why would Mark's Gospel have grammar errors that were later corrected by Luke?  Would God make Grammar mistakes?  The more I study the Bible the more moved I am by the scriptures and the less I accept it is inerrant. 

Over time life for humans changed, and those changes were reflected in their writing about God.  The evolution of how humans viewed God had its ups and downs, the evolution of faith was reflected in the early scriptures so that sometimes God was loving, and forgiving, and compassionate, and sometimes He wasn’t.  

When we come to Jesus I believe the evolution of mankind’s faith had improved significantly, so that there is a greater emphasis on love, compassion, an understanding that our love of God motivates us to love one another and that love is not just a feeling, but that it is demonstrated through acts of love and compassion to those around us who are in need.

By looking at the Bible as an evolving document that recorded man’s struggles to understand God and relate to God, I no longer have to be upset because there is a talking snake in Genesis.  The focus of the Adam and Eve story is on what the story teaches us, and it is not a textbook for science that forces us to reject the theory of evolution, or the effectiveness of antibiotics.  

I can see other sacred writings in this same light.  No matter how meaningful, or ludicrous the writings of some faith different from Christianity might be, I can believe it was written by people trying to relate somehow to a Higher Power. I can accept that their scriptures are not worse or better than mine.  I can believe that there are other faith traditions, many that do not appeal to me, but that does not single them out to be burned forever in Hell.

CS Lewis wrote, and this is a paraphrase: 

We know that no man comes to the Father except through Christ, but we do not know that every person that comes to the Father through Christ comes calling on his name. 

If you believe Jesus came to save us, then he did that.  We are saved.  It is a free gift of Christ and it does not depend on our belief, or our action.  We do not go to church and love our neighbor because we are afraid, if we don't, that we will scream in hell forever.  We go to church and believe in Christ because Christ loved us and our response to love is to be loving.

I can actually view Heaven and Hell as symbols rather than something to be taken literally. For me it seems silly to hate another person because they do not share the same exact collection of dogmas.  For me Heaven and Hell are symbols to point me to new understandings.  Heaven and Hell are real in the same way Eden is real, as symbols.

The Book of Common Prayer, in the section entitled Historical Documents, under Section VI Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for Salvation it states:

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation. . .

The historical document does not say that EVERYTHING in Holy Scripture is necessary to salvation. If this is true, then what are the parts necessary to salvation? 

I have come to believe that Jesus gave us a hint as to what parts of Holy Scripture are necessary for salvation:

Matthew 22:37-40 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

 

37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

 

I can discuss what I think it means to love God, and get some disagreement, but there is little to no debate over what it means to love your neighbor.

Jesus told a parable to explain who your neighbor is, and it was not limited to the people next door.  My whole goal in being a Christian, and a religious person is to seek to have a relationship with God, as I understand Him [or Her], and to seek to love others around me.  Maybe I can’t change the world, but it might be possible, No it IS possible, for me to change the world around me through love and loving acts.

ON BEING A DEACON

i was seeking to be helpful to Father Jim in as many ways as possible.  I remember once when he asked me to go out late at night [late for me, after 10 pm] to pray with and visit an elderly woman in a Lakeland nursing home.  

When I got to the nursing home, the doors were locked.  I knocked and got someone’s attention, but they refused to let me in.  I realized that if I had a clerical collar on that I would probably have been let in.  

My first desire was to become a priest.  I discovered that that was not a desire shared by my

wife.  My next desire was perhaps to do what Deacon David George had done, to be ordained.

It was a hard process.   One of the members Duncan Kilpatrick became a close friend, and she would take the diaconal classes too.  We drove up together Saturday after Saturday.  Sometimes I had to go alone, but she was a frequent flier with me making the studies easier for me to get to.

It is very odd that I was one of the instructors at the Institute of Christian Studies at the same time as I was a student there.  I was a member of the class over and over again, and then one day I was the teacher of my peers.  I’m not sure that had ever happened before.

I was a drama teacher at George Jenkins High School around the time of my ordination.  I invited my students to come to my ordination services, but Lakeland is a 45 minute to 1 hour drive from Lakeland to downtown Orlando and it was on a Saturday.  I didn’t expect any of the students to show up.  About 20 of my students showed up.

I was told later by one of the parishioners that at the reception, while they were in line for cake or peanuts or punch, the woman spoke to one of the students, Mark Nixon, and said, “It was very nice of you kids to come to tex’s ordination.”

They said that Mark’s reply was, “We would do anything for him.”

I had a number of students at George Jenkins that I loved.  I had a number of students that enhanced my life.