Posted on 06/05/2019 11:27:40 AM PDT by Gamecock
Dave Gass, a former pastor who most recently led Grace Family Fellowship in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, has renounced his Christian faith as a system rife with abuse that caused him mental and emotional breaks.
A representative from his former church, however, has accused him of being an unrepentant adulterer.
Gass reportedly first made his announcement in a series of now protected tweets but not before they were copied and shared across multiple social media platforms.
After 40 years of being a devout follower, 20 of those being an evangelical pastor, I am walking away from faith. Even though this has been a massive bomb drop in my life, it has been decades in the making, he began in the thread before moving on to compare Scripture to Greek mythology.
When I was in 8th grade and I was reading Greek mythology, it dawned on me how much of the supernatural interactions between the deity of the bible and mankind sounded like ancient mythology. That seed of doubt never went away, he said.
He explained how he was raised in a hyper-fundamentalist Christian home where Christianity didnt work. The promises were empty. The answers were lies.
Even so, he grew up to be a devout Christian who rarely missed church or failed to study Scripture.
I was fully devoted to studying the scriptures. I think I missed maybe 12 Sundays in 40 years. I had completely memorized 18 books of the bible and was reading through the bible for the 24th time when I walked away, he wrote.
None of it, however, helped his marriage.
As an adult my marriage was a sham and a constant source of pain for me. I did everything I was supposed to - marriage workshops, counseling, bible reading together, date nights every week, marriage books - but my marriage never became what I was promised it would be, he said.
He went on to discuss how miserable his life eventually became as his expectations, including experiencing the supernatural failed to match up with the reality he was experiencing.
An inescapable reality that I came to was that the people who benefited the most from organized religion were the fringe attenders who didnt take it too seriously. The people who were devout were the most miserable, but just kept trying harder, he said.
The entire system is rife with abuse. And not just from the top down, sure there are abusive church leaders, but church leaders are abused by their congregants as well. Church people are just sh*tty to each other, he continued. I spent my entire life serving, loving, and trying to help people in my congregations. And the lies, betrayal, and slander I have received at the hands of church people left wounds that may never heal.
He said he struggled so much with his church experience it began to affect his mental and ultimately physical health.
This massive cognitive dissonance - my beliefs not matching with reality - created a separation between my head and my heart. I was gas lighting myself to stay in the faith. Eventually I could not maintain the facade anymore, I started to have mental and emotional breaks. My internal stress started to show in physical symptoms. Being a pastor - a professional Christian - was killing me, Gass revealed.
To save himself, he said, he chose to walk away from the church.
Eventually I pulled the lever and dropped the bomb. Career, marriage, family, social standing, network, reputation, all gone in an instant. And honestly I didnt intend to fully walk away, but the way the church turned on me forced me to leave permanently, he said.
He apologized to his former followers and said he still loves those who choose to dismiss him as an apostate.
For those of you who want to yell at me, thats fine. I know that many will call me an apostate, say I was never really saved, that I was a wolf in sheeps clothing, and that a hotter hell awaits me. And to you I say I love you. My heart is tender toward you, he said.
To those who have been in my congregations or under my teaching/preaching I sincerely apologize. I thought I was right. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I could fake it until I made it. I was wrong. Im sorry. I love you, he added.
Justin Thuttle, a deacon at Grace Family Fellowship Church, claimed on Twitter that Gass was not entirely forthcoming about his faith journey and branded him an unrepentant sinner.
Yes, he was my pastor when he walked away. He actually just slept with a married women (sic) in the church and got caught. He never repented and they still live together, he wrote in a tweet last Thursday.
Last year all the information came to light. The affair happened for almost a year before it was uncovered. So the whole, I did everything right in my marriage part was kinda funny until I saw how many people liked his story, he said.
The Christian Post reached out to the church for further comment Tuesday and a representative who asked to speak anonymously said Thuttle's response is accurate.
"Justins input is accurate. I would only add that, to our knowledge, none of the churches where Gass was on staff were megachurches. And after he resigned, he cut off all communications with anyone from Grace Family Fellowship," the representative said.
I see Christians walk away from the faith for real shallow reasons. Jesus speaks of this many times but is most clear when he speaks of the “sower and the seed”. The problem with Christianity today is we let the world influence the Church instead of the Church influencing the world. Many Christians believe God is some sort of magician that hands out candy and makes your life easy——False teachers spread these lies and it’s very, very dangerous. Jesus, Paul and the recurring theme in the Bible is “life is full of problems and regardless of circumstance Christ is your foundation”...period! If God made your life easy you’d have no need for him....
i guess you have never been to a baptist church!...lol
The Church should be a hospital for sinners.
Ironically, he denounces his faith then leaves his family high and dry-—typical when we focus on selfish ambition rather than virtues of Christ.
HA! I moved from Seattle to the bible belt about 8 years ago. I then joined a southern gospel band that tours small baptist churches in this rural area.
i.e. DON’T get me started! :)
I had to quit after two years. I could not keep my mouth shut any longer about what I was hearing from unpaid, “seat of the pants” preachers constantly droning on about the people that were not there and, of course, the “pit o’ hell!”
was the affair with a man???
Interesting choice of words.
1 John 2:19 applies.
IF you read his “opus” his problem is quite easy to detect. Everything is all about him and not Christ. He was never a Christian but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be saved. Pray for him.
There is probably a long string of affairs through his pastoral history.
I think in my years there the only 2 things I've disagreed with the pastor are age of the earth (he's a young earther) and initial evidence of spirit baptism is speaking in tongues (I don't believe that). But since he never harped on those beliefs or made either one of them the core subject of a sermon -- only bringing them up in passing -- I was cool by it.
One Baptist preacher used to describe our congregation as a family, a very dysfunctional family, of people who are not perfect but who are united by a love for God.
####I had to quit after two years. I could not keep my mouth shut any longer about what I was hearing from unpaid, seat of the pants preachers constantly droning on about the people that were not there and, of course, the pit o hell!####
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I too have played Worship (Bass/Drums) for 20 years but the bottom line is you’re a follower of Christ and not of man. However, with that being said, the last Church we left was due to left wing agendas being spewed from the pulpit. When God’s Word is is watered down or altered, I do not take that lightly.
I hear you though——
My understanding is that scumbag was cheating on his wife and decided to beat the public outing of such with an anti-Christian message that he probably thought would make him look better in the public eye.
Jesus never promised anyone a rose garden. he PROMISED the exact opposite for his followers. Sounds like this guy was never chosen by God to receieve the holy spirit. Saw the same thing in a guy who did everything his church told him to and then his wife got cancer. He prayed and did volunteer work for the church, partisipated in every church function he could and she still died. He couldn’t understand how DOING for God didnt save his wife.. He denounced God and the church and was the most bitter angry person you ever met! hated god for letting his wife get sick and die and leaving him with 3 kids. So yes, it happens. you never know a persons heart until the sht hits the fan. then the wheat and chaf become separate.
Not my experience. Not even close. Maybe they needed to stop "trying harder" and simply believe. God has NEVER let me down. People will, sometimes. But never God.
In was on a church board for a while and got to mingle with a Catholic priest and a handful of Protestant ministers.
Don’t let appearances fool you. These guys can be just a bawdy and crude as the rest of us. It was kind of nice to know, actually.
Your post could have been written by me. It is my experience and attitude. My first church was AG and I was a member for 18 years. I even drove bus to pick up kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods.
I played trombone, btw. :)
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