Sermon Tone Analysis

Alice,

You just never know when I’m serious or joking do you?

That is what makes it fun to joke around with you.

However, today, I was telling the truth and being serious.

The /only/ reason I was at church today was to hear you preach.

Though you didn’t preach, Nathaniel did an excellent job.

He preached what I call authentic Christianity.

Now I know that he doesn’t want to become a pastor but if you stop and think about it, Nathaniel just might be what the church needs to revive itself.

Someone people can relate to, sermons that reflect today’s society which is what he preached on.

I do think he is missing his calling and who knows perhaps something like this is what has been planned for Nathaniel or a Nathaniel and our church all along.

Go back to Rev. Burklow, he was an ordained minister, you are an ordained minister and Nathaniel could be an ordained minister also.

Ok, moving on.

Why did I say you were the only reason I was there today?

After much thought and discussion with Vonnie and others, I have made a decision as to not attend church often.

I will be there from time to time but most of the time I won’t be.

I write this to you because of my respect of you and you are the one and only person I want to know and it needs to go no farther than between you and me, well maybe you can share with Dan but no one else needs to know and I’m certainly not asking anyone to do anything about what you are going to read below.

This is not a letter to complain or gripe, just to make you aware of how I feel.

You of all people will be able to relate to the reasons why I won’t be coming to church because of what happened with Michael and why we (Vonnie and I) both quit coming to church because of him and we all know how that ended and just like Michael I have lost all respect for Mollohan as a pastor, based on the reasons below.

I have to say I am disappointed in him, I really thought he would be a good pastor and I will admit that I was wrong.

If the church ever has a search committee again be sure I’m on it.

My reasons are below and my thoughts:

 

1.

Late February 2007, I sent the pastor a copy of my article God Will Provide and asked him to give me some feedback on it, good or bad.

I never got an answer nor did I even get an email from him saying he had received it.

2.

A few weeks later, I asked him about it and he said he had been too busy to read it but he would.

3.

A few more weeks later I asked again and he said he had 2 or 3 pages written that he was going to send me.

The pages never came and no more was said about it.

4.

Based on 2 and 3, I can’t help but feel both 2 and 3 were lies and said to pacify me.

(This sounds like Michael all over again and what Vonnie went through with him when her mom died and he wouldn’t give her an answer to where her mom was, was she indeed in Heaven or just in the ground.)

 

5.

Regardless of how good or bad the article was, whether he agreed with it or not I should have received some response.

Now if the article was so bad and wrong, it is his job as my pastor to talk to me, find out why I feel the way I do and give me the correct teachings on the subject matter.

If the article was indeed good, then I felt he should have responded and not ignore me.

It really didn’t matter at the time nor does it now if he agrees with what I wrote or not.

The point is as my pastor I should have received some input from him especially since I asked for feedback.

I was talking to a Southern Baptist minister after all of this took place and he was appalled that the pastor didn’t respond in any way.

No names were mentioned of course.

This pastor knows my history with the church and Michael and suggested someone might have told him I am a “troublemaker” which I suppose could be possible.

(Maybe I’m just not church material)

 

6.

I thought about going in and talking to him about this but I feel I couldn’t trust what he would say.

I’ve just lost all respect for him as a pastor and my trust in him is gone.

7.

With the many articles I have put in the church newsletter I would think that he would have made at some point a comment about any of the articles but he hasn’t.

I can’t even be sure that he reads them.

If he doesn’t what does that say about his interest in me as a member of the church or my beliefs?

 

8.

True the God Will Provide could be considered controversial but I did put a disclaimer in the article saying the views in the article may or may not reflect the views of FBC.

When the article came out, I had to laugh.

Someone, I assume him, had made a big black circle around “submitted by John Bailey”.

What childish nonsense.

Is his faith and beliefs so weak they can’t stand up to an article written by someone who was trying to give people a different perspective on the subject?

 

9.

In my last article, Snow White Revisited, the main theme of the story was salvation.

No response from him on it either.

You would think he would have been happy I was spreading the word of God.

 

10.

In my previous article Hansel and Gretel I brought up different subjects, why people didn’t come to church anymore, giving feedback to people and people not being talked to about their ideas and the reasons behind them and communication.

11.

People always hear about if they have any ideas or things they would like to see changed to let someone know.

To what purpose?

You remember very well at the annual meeting we, as a group, decided to stop using the name Commitment Form and change it to something else.

Then he gets up and announces HE doesn’t want it changed and HE thinks we need to become more committed to the church and Christ and HE decided the name wasn’t going to be change.

When I heard that I had to contain myself from bursting out laughing because he just confirmed what I had written in Hansel and Gretel.

How in the world can change be accomplished in the church */when we can’t even change the name on a piece of paper!!!!!!!!!!!/*   What gives HIM the right to change it without consulting the people who came up with the idea, you and me???

He may have consulted with you but he sure didn’t with me.

Maybe he felt it wasn’t important enough or perhaps he was afraid of what I would have said.

Guess we’ll never know.

Whether he agrees with it or not, it’s what was decided last year and it should have been followed.

I personally don’t care what it is called, call it The Daily Rag for all I care but the point is what Hansel and Gretel was about and I’m not upset it wasn’t changed because he validated what I had written.

With that in mind what gives him the right to question how committed we are to the church and Christ?

True he might be able to measure our level of commitment to the church to some degree but there is no way he can measure anyone’s commitment to Christ!!

It is not his position to pass judgment on the congregation.

Vonnie said something about he was just using those phrases in general and I said then he should choose his words more carefully because he sounded like he was accusing us as not being committed to the church or Christ.

12.

When I didn’t come to church on April 6th, I didn’t know his sermon was going to be on money and after reading Vonnie’s notes, he did a fairly good job but Vonnie said he looked directly at her when he said there are those that won’t agree with what I’m about to say and he said he believes in the 10% tithe.

That’s fine, he is entitled to his own beliefs and I have no problem with that, just don’t try to preach to the congregation that we are supposed to tithe 10% because if he does he is preaching false doctrine.

His beliefs are his and he can believe what he wants.

When I wrote the God Will Provide article Vonnie sat down with the article with the intention of disproving what I had written.

All she did was confirm what I had written.

I did receive some positive compliments on the article, even from Bill Schlehyn but it really didn’t matter if people agreed with the article or not and I didn’t write it to receive praise, I was expressing an opinion different from what others have been taught.

If no one had said a word about the article that would have been fine with me but as my pastor he should have said something, anything, even that he didn’t feel he could comment on it but instead I was ignored.

I have no problem with anyone giving 10% if that is what they choose to give.

I’ve heard a pastor take Matt: 23:23 as proof that Jesus commands us to tithe and yes Jesus did believe in tithing however what the pastor didn’t say was that Jesus was talking to the Pharisees who under the Old Covenant were commanded to tithe.

Ok, enough preaching.

13.

After I had written Snow White Revisited I sent the article to a pastor friend I am acquainted with in California from Plain Truth Ministries.

I sent the article to him just to share since we have written to each other many times.

He writes back saying how much he likes the article and can he publish it in his electronic newsletter.

I said ok and he published it.

I then sent him the God Will Provide article and again, he wanted to publish it and did.

This newsletter goes out each week to at least a thousand people.

I thought now that is really strange, here is a pastor that not only likes my articles and subject matter and wants to publish them and spread my words to many people and yet my own pastor won’t even make any comment of any kind about them!!!!!!!! 

 

14.

What does that say about the two pastors?

That one cares and one doesn’t.

He certainly can’t say he does care because his actions don’t show it.

No I’m not looking for any praise from him or anyone else, that isn’t why I write the articles.

They are written to deliver a message from a different viewpoint and give people something to think about like I said earlier.

If only one person comes away with something that helps them in their walk with Christ then I have succeeded.

15.

I have heard him say many times when taking up special offerings for different things and like the last one, HE wanted 100% participation.

That’s a nice sentiment but is he so blind that he can’t see a lot of people don’t have extra money to be giving away, even if they wanted too.

Some people just don’t have it to give, not even a dollar.

I wonder how these people feel when they can’t live up to his expectations.

If people are made to feel uncomfortable or even embarrassed they are not going to return.

16.

When it was announced that the newsletter was being cut back and a lot of extras wouldn’t be in it because of the cost, I kind of took that as a way to stop me from writing any more articles and putting them in the newsletter.

I mean give me a break.

I know it costs pennies to make the copies of the articles I write.

I used to deal with copiers and copier contracts.

If the cost of all of the articles I write during a year would add up to maybe $2 I’d be happy to throw an extra couple of dollars in the offering plate.

So it’s plain to see why I might get the idea that someone is trying to silence me and stop my writings.