Editor, Times-Union: For several weeks I have been thinking about my next letter to blow off some steam or just convince some more of you of how different I am from the status quo.
Well, I have another axe to grind, this time it’s with organized religion. I love to worship the Lord and Jesus but I don’t seem to fit in with the people that have been set in their ways and want no new input or ideas. I decided to go to the church that my grandparents on my father’s side helped to start and build here in Warsaw. Now I don’t think there are many people left from that time because it was constructed the year of my birth, 1956, and I was baptized there in March 1957. We have a stained-glass window at the top of the wall behind the pulpit. No matter where I was, no matter what was on my mind, that is the image I had as I laid my head down to rest at night. It pictures in the most beautiful colors our Lord Jesus looking to heaven praying to our father.
I will regress for a moment and go back to Burbank, Calif., and the Church of God I attended for a couple years, before they asked me to be on one of the boards. Not long after our first few meetings I came to realize that I was supposed to go along with whatever the elders wanted and should keep my thoughts and concerns to myself.
Anyone who knows me should know I am not a sheep ... I am a leader. God did not make me a bobble head to sit on boards to nod up and down to get out and go for cocktails as soon as possible. He gave me a good mind that looks at many angles and possibilities before making any, much less an important decision.
I left that church after much meditation and self searching. I did not attend any specific church but went to different ones in my community and area. It was not until moving back here that I wanted a single church to call home. Once again I am saddened to come to the conclusion that old congregations fight against new blood and ideas. The status quo got us here and that’s good enough for us. Well, Warsaw, and everyone else who is listening, when you stop growing you start dying. If you are so steadfast in your ideals and ways you will be replaced by the new generations and their ways. The Bible will never change but where and what we wear to study and share it will, if we shut out new blood.
