Did I really want to become a pastor?

I was very young (19 or 20) when I chose the course of becoming a pastor. Never in the previous 19-20 years of my life had I ever considered this course, nor would anyone that knew me well would’ve dreamed I would have become a pastor!

So, where did it come from? It came from the heavy influence of my pastor. I had newly become a Christian, and my charisma and passion was rubbing off on people, especially the youth of our church. At the time I was going to Kirtland Community College to get my associates degree in Art.

I always wanted to be an artist.

Pastor planted the seed of me becoming a pastor in my brain and it grew.

I always wanted to be told what to do with my life.

Unfortunately, the “I always wanted to be told what to do with my life” outweighed the “I always wanted to be an artist” and I chose to follow his influence.

Why do I say “influence”? I say influence because he knew my talent to draw and my abilities to draw (they are obvious). He also knew I was going to school for this. He also had plans of starting a pastoral school and knew because of my neivity and passion that I would blindly become his first student.

I realize this sounds harsh, but I do not intend it to be. But, I say it because I realize now that when you want someone to follow your influence you do not help them think through their situation, but you provide the path you want them to follow.

Instead of helping me choose what was best for me, he laid out a course for my life that sounded good and fit his desires.

He led me.

I followed.

I didn’t become an artist.

I did what he wanted me to do. Which was what I wanted to do because I wanted someone to tell me what to do, and what better person than someone who speaks directly to God?

This man knew the hearts of men! He would share with me often that he knew what they were thinking, feeling, etc. He knew what God was going to do. He knew the direction for our lives. He told me he could see the paths people were taking and he even shared with me that he knew where these people would end up in life.

That was influence!

He told me he could see God’s hand on me, etc, insert your religious verbage here _______

I guess what I am getting at is, I feel it is important for me to expose this as well as get it off my chest, but the deeper issue is not what he or anyone else has said, but rather my desire to let them lead me.

Am I the leader of my life, or am I a sheep, led by others?

My ability to be so easily influenced has caused me a lot of pain and heartache over the years.

You’d make a great boss! You should be this! You should do that! Blah, blah, blah. All of that is great. All of that is normal. Some of that is manipulative bullshit by religious leaders who know nothing of God, or man.

But, regardless, I want to listen to me!

I don’t even know the sound of my own voice sometimes.

So, as I journey now I am searching for myself. Trying to uncover me, dust me off, and ask myself: what do you want to do?

What do you want to do, Tobias Abraham Neal?

…

Fear is so real for some people. I find it hard to believe that we try to control our fears. It just seems odd to me that we miss out on so much because of something we are afraid of, rational or not.

When we are afraid we try to stop whatever it is from happening that causes our fears to increase, or become active. We let our fears stop us from becoming what we want, or could be, fear aside.

For a lot of us this translates into not allowing those around to succeed. We want them to succeed…who wouldn’t? But, our fear gets the better of us, and we hold them back. We withdraw support. We change our minds. We ridicule. We make fake arguments to stop them from walking out the door. You name it, we do it.

I found this true in the churches I was apart of.

Church was not a safe place to grow and learn because of fear.

“What would Jesus do?” Who cares, cause we are too scared to find out!

It became unsafe to share growth in your life because people were afraid of the changes it would bring. “If he figures that out then sure it will be good for him, but it will be bad for us, because he wont be the same anymore.”

Things will change.

We are so afraid of change.

We are so afraid of everything.

No wonder the most often quoted command from God and those influenced by him was

FEAR NOT

Fear, more than Satan, has his grip on church.

The few real friends I have had and the community I have experienced with them was the only place I could express my growth, my changes, my maturity, without their fear.

Their bravery made it easier for me to face my fears.

I have never seen that in a church.

I’m afraid I never will.

Jan 1 2008

Dec 31 2007

Jan 8 2007

Dec 29 2006

Jan 30 2006

Dec 7 2005

Jan 7 2005

Dec 14 2004

Last night I spent four hours on the phone talking to one of my closest friends.  We talked about a lot of things but we often came back to the subject of truth.

Speaking the truth.

Like John the Baptist spoke the truth.

Before his head was cut off.

One of the reasons I walked away from Christianity is because I believed that the church wasn’t interested in the truth.

They had no passion for it.

They had no desire to let it shape and mold their life.

Hell, most of the people cared very little about anything but their own lives let a lone the lives of others.

I was passionate about the truth.  I was passionate about change.  I was passionate about Jesus!  I was passionate about living this shit out!  Whatever it took, however it looked!  It didn’t matter what it cost!

And I walked away because nobody else did.

I can’t think of a single one.

Except my friend I was talking to last night…and maybe another fellow pastor, but I think even he was scared of the truth. 

As we talked last night I made this dark confession to my friend:  I have become the people whom I left.

I don’t care anymore.

Not in a cold, callus, bitter way. 

But, in a life has went on and I have left that behind and in doing so I have walked away from something that I was even before I was a Christian.

I was before and during my time as a Christian someone who was passionate and zealous about the truth.

I will be again.

It seems I’m not the only one who thinks this way!  I can safely assume I was in the minority of Baptist pastors who thought that way, though!

I am going to “paste” a section of a remark I made because I have since thought the same thing repeatedly over the last couple years.  The context is a post I put up about how the Christian concept of Jesus being our Savior doesn’t seem to fit with Jewish thinking.  You can follow the post here if you wish.  I submit my comment it here for you to think about…

“Isn’t Jesus’ life and message enough?

Why does he have to be a) God, b) a sacrifice for my “sins”, c)salvation for eternity, etc?

I believe what Jesus taught is powerful enough, if followed, to change the world. Evidently, so did he. I believe what he taught could save people from injustice, self-centeredness, help eliminate poverty, make for good government, etc. But, why do we have to make him a GOD? A god who died, rose, and sits at another God’s right hand? Why does he have to be a priest?

Know what I mean?

In other words, the question I keep coming back to is: what if he isn’t what Christians said he was – WHAT DOES THAT CHANGE?

I think it changes nothing.

Nothing.

Follow what he says.

Live how he lived.

And do something Christians haven’t been able to do, nor will ever:

Change The World for Good.”

I have always had this deep connection with the spiritual.  I still do.

My journey through Christianity seems like it was so long ago…a lifetime ago.  I find myself thinking about it from time to time throughout the day, especially when asked about it.

Where I am at in my life now not many people know I used to be a pastor, which, in some ways, is nice.  However, I still am very pastoral, and a lot of people have said when they find out, “yeah, I can see that”.

I find that when I talk about it that no matter how much I think I don’t care about that part of my life anymore I still do.  For instance, today, a lady I work with invited me to join her at her church this Sunday for their “in gathering service” (not sure what that means…).  She said it was a special service where they were going to make a push for an offering for something they needed.

I made some comment about not going because of company or something but in my head I was thinking “I will come when they announce they are selling their multi-million dollar building, firing all their highly paid staff, and using the money to help end poverty and hunger in Otsego county for the next couple decades, because Jesus was about ending hunger and poverty not about in-gatherings and special offerings for their budgets!”

Some church service that would be!

Rather than copy and paste I will just direct you to this post.  I started writing about my journey towards a HUGE shift in my thinking as a Christian in 2006.  As I remember it, it was dangerous for me to think this way…no one was going to kill me for it, but rather something far worse was going to happen…

…I was going to loose the salvation that Jesus came and died to give me.  That’s scary, but I made the shift.

It is a lengthy post, and there are some editing errors in it, but it takes you through my childhood and teenage years as I think through how I was always attracted to God.  I wrote this in light of a sermon series I was preaching about The Smell of Cardboard, which basically was my way of talking about how Christians are so often “in the box” with their thinking, ways, etc, and I wanted my church to think differently…

…which they ended up doing, only about me, and I resigned.

or, my story, my take on my journey into, through and out of Christianity.

That’s the intent behind this blog from here out.

For 19 years I was not a Christian.

For 13 years I was.

For the last 5 I have been trying to figure the previous 32 out.

During this time I have come to realize that I should probably share my story.  So many people seem to have questions and my story might help.  Some might just be intrigued in which case my story is definitely interesting!  Anyway you slice it it should be a good story.

So, let’s begin at the beginning…

He is absolutely correct.

When, though, is the question.

I am done writing on this blog until further notice.

I’m not even sure what that means, really.

All I know is I don’t have access to internet, don’t have time, and honestly, I don’t have the desire to write right now.  Thus, I’m saying goodbye for the time being.

I would like to thank everyone who has follow my blog(s) for the last 4.5 years.

So, farewell and good luck, until we meet again…

Philippians Series

To sum:

I think what I valued most in my journey as a Christian was: honestly, humility, doubt, openess and discussion.  Funny that conviction, and things like that weren’t on my list.

I think one of the problems for me with Christianity is that Christianity never allowed people just to be who they were in Jesus.  Jesus always allowed people to be who they were.  He told those people, as they were, to follow him, and in the end he still called them by their names.  They were who they were.  He liked them that way.  He wanted them to be with him, to dine with him, to enjoy him, to walk with him, to converse with him, not just to be in awe of him, worship him, bow before him, quake in his presense, etc.

For some reason whenever I write about my Christian experience I want to scream about some things!  I want to cry out against some people!  There is still some unfinished business there, I think.

Dean Hahn (who most recently commented on my POWERAGE post).  Dean was one of my prof’s at serminary in Fort Worth, Texas.  He was also the first Christian who asked questions outside of the box – practical and theological.  He introduced me to some thinking that went contrary to that which I was being brain-washed with at the time – actually, he gave me a GIFT – the gift of free-thinking, which is rarely known or used in most Christian circles.  it was think gift that caused me to question EVERYTHING and it was that thinking that caused me ultimately to leave the ministry behind.  So, Dean, you could say you brought me out of Christianity!  LOL!  Just kidding, bro!

Corey LeCureux (who, with wife and child in-toe, moved on up to Bellaire, MI – sweet!  See you this weekend, bro).  Corey and I met when he was 15 at a Independent Fundamental Bible-believing Camp.  It was there that he said, “I’m a Southern Baptist, I just don’t fit in around here.”  Now he’s pastoring a SBC church re-plant saying, “I’m an Emergnt, I just don’t fit in around here.”  Ha!  Anyway, his faith and practice have always been worthy of following, and I just wish things would have been easier for us in the beginning of our ministries, but his kindness, forgiveness and Christ-likeness have won over my mind and heart many times.

Jonathan Mays.  Jon is the pastor of a Pres church in Boyne City, MI.  When I met him he was the church planting pastor of Jacob’s Well here in Gaylord.  Jonathan was the piece of the puzzle that finally did it for me in leaving my Calvanistic, Fundamentalism behind and trying to follow Jesus instead.  His life and family were exactly what I thought Christians should be.  I still admire him and Kathy to this day.  I can only hope – inconsistencies and everything included – that my family turns out like theirs!  Jonathan, we need to hook up.  I miss you, bro.

Jessie Lester.  Jessie is a young lady that I work with at Ponderosa.  She goes to a church in Atlanta and is very devout in her faith and practice.  She reminds me of the purity of what Christianity once held for me.  She’s been engaged for some time now, and I recently gave her and her fiance some of my Bible-study material.  Even though her practice reminds me of what I walked away from, her walk and talk reminds me of the good things I knew and felt once a long time ago.

I kid you not, every time I go into Wal-mart (well almost every) I look to see if “Powerage” is in.  Powerage was a album made in 78.  It was the first album to feature Cliff Williams on bass, and was their last album before they reached HUGE worldwide fame with “Highway to Hell” in 79′.

It is also my favorite album by AC/DC.  So I was pretty damn geeked to see it (finally) at Wal-mart this week – and for 7.00$ I nabbed it up!  (As I’m writing this I’m wondering why it is that I didn’t grab a couple others that I’m missing…??  Oh yeah, the “4,2,1″ reason: 4 kids, 2 dogs, 1 mortage!  LOL!)

As a huge fan, I have owned all of their CD’s through 1992.  I recently burned “Stiff Upper Lip”, so I have some catching up to do.

Anyway, with Black & Black, Highway to Hell, Razor’s Edge, etc, how can I say “Powerage” is my favorite?

Simple: I LOVE bluezrock and Powerage is probably their best b-rock effort to date.

You can sample some of it’s greatness here.

Album Tracks:

Rock n’ Roll Damnation

Down Payment Blues

Gimme a Bullet (to bite on)

Riff Raff

Sin City

What’s Next to the Moon

Gone Shootin

Up To My Neck In You

Kick In the Teeth

If you’re even slightly a AC/DC fan you should check out this CD.  It’ my favorite.  You can not go wrong with this CD.