Who is Ron Goetz?
I grew up as a child of the church. My earliest memories of church are Presbyterian and Baptist. As an adolescent in a fundamentalist church I thought to myself, “Church doesn’t have to be this dowdy and old-fashioned.” In high school I felt called to what Baptists call “full-time Christian service.” At the time I said, “I don’t know what God wants me to do because I don’t know what the Church will need in the future.” I decided to go to a Bible college, believing that a good Bible education would help me in whatever I did.
When I graduated from Simpson College (C&MA) in 1977 I didn’t pursue ordination. I thought to myself, “If I am going to lead laypeople in their ministries, I need to know what it is like to minister as a layman.” Little did I know that God had both of these plans for me, full-time Christian service and ministering as a layperson.
Diane and I fellowshipped and ministered in the Christian and Missionary Alliance for about fifteen years. After a brief stopover in a community church we migrated to the United Methodist Church and have been members of two UMC churches.
My son Jonathan came out during high school. He had been president of the high school Bible Club, and was on the Praise Team at church. When he came out, evangelicals silenced him in both settings. He attempted suicide three times after coming out, but has recovered and is vigorously involved in local political campaigns.
After Jonathan came out, I became heavily involved in PFLAG and GLSEN, and co-produced the documentary, Holding Families Together, which you can view on four YouTube segments.
Segment One, Segment Two, Segment Three, Segment Four
Who is Ron Goetz?
- In high school they called me Reverend Ron.
- My pastor calls me a Member of the Loyal Opposition.
- My wife calls me Bad Boy.
- My grandkids call me Papa.
- In jail they called me Protester.
- In hospital waiting rooms they call me ”Gotez” or “Goats.”
- On conservative websites they call me “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” and worse.
Who am I?
I’m just a guy trying to do my best with the hand God dealt me–just trying to live with the results of my past decisions and mistakes to make the best of the rest of my life. Like some sort of alchemist I’m trying to transmute regret into hope, and God is blessing those efforts.
For more, click on Some Autobiography. There are posts about experiences that had special meaning for me.
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If you get in with http://www.biblethumpingliberal.com you should be able to read everything I’ve posted so far.
I just started the blog, so there are no archives to search yet. But there will be!
So… hmm… interesting. What was it like being hooked-up with the Christian and Missionary Alliance? What are your overall thoughts about it? And what made you leave it?
Also, just my opinion: You probably should have pursued ordination, after all.
______________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Sorry for the delay in replying, Gregg.
Simpson College (official college of the C&MA) was an excellent, broadening experience for me, but the C&MA and I never were a good fit. Theologically it worked, while I was still an evangelical, but then I got deeper into the Bible for myself.
I was a licensed minister in the C&MA back in the mid-eighties, serving at Chula Vista Alliance Church under Dr. WarrenThompson, a former D.S. In the congregations the people are as wonderful as people are in every congregation and outside the church. Overall, I’d have to say that evangelicalism is simplistic, and has little room for a fresh examination of the Bible.
Many years after I left the C&MA my son came out of the closet, I examined the Clobber Passages, and discovered how weak the standard anti-homosexual case really was. I began posting on the C&MA website forums, and endured an onslaught of fundamentalist ire for a very long time. I was eventually told by the mods to, well, I forget exactly how they put it, but a particular moderator in Colorado Springs let me know my participation was no longer welcome.
About ordination: That’s a long story, Gregg. Like they say, “It’s complicated.” The major factors that made ordination a bad dream: anti-institutional, intellectual, bipolar, etc. Never would have worked.
Blogging and writing are my ministry now, and at church helping out in the church nursery.
Pastoral ministry was a dream that died very, very hard. And it’s still very complicated.
I read your posts about the lesbians grinding and the abominations … Very good and VERY funny! I shared the lobster one on facebook … I’m always arguing a similar argument, but nobody listens to me … but I’m never funny about it! Thanks so much! I’m going to keep your site around … Blessings!
I’m glad you got a good chuckle out of it! I go back and forth between humor and being sooo, sooo serious.
First of all, your idea to have a blog page like this is great! I first saw it a few weeks ago and was surprised (almost shocked) to read the post about — two men sleeping in a bed —two women grinding together—. So timely, after May 21st, and sort of scary! Dare we make light of this without danger of eternal damnation?
As you might have guessed, I have a similar, and (possibly) more crazy, religious upbringing to the one you describe. I was raised in an Evangelical minister’s home in Pennsylvania (mostly). Dad was the pastor of small congregations of the God’s Missionary Church, a conservative Holiness / Wesleyan denomination. I nearly got thrown out of the church when I was 7 for playing with a hula hoop! That did it! I was condemned to live the rest of my life as a sinful, unrepentant Sodomite! (Queer!)
We grew up having first row seats to some of the most scary horror stories you might imagine!
Revival services went for ten days each spring and fall. The evangelists had long ago honed their skills at telling stories from personal experience, of sinners sitting in the pews of churches like ours. They usually didn’t confide what sins had been committed, skipping right to the dreadful end! Leaving church the sinful young couple (had to be male and female – coitus?) were heading down the road, lost control of the car, ran into an embankment, and went screaming into hell, to be forever tormented for their undisclosed sins!
Many other equally horrible stories were spewed from the mouths of these Godly Evangelists, night after night, resulting in a new crop of repentant sinners running front to the altar to beg forgiveness for their sinful ways – hula hoops or whatever toys or other items they had messed around with. Many would then go home, get rid of all their “heathen jewelry”, smash their TVs (Hellavisions), throw away their ungodly indecent clothes, have a good, old-fashioned, healthy book burning, and take up their cross and follow the church doctrine – to wherever!
Anyway, when I realized who I was, I knew I didn’t stand a chance in that group of fakes and liars!
You know, I sometimes forget that churches like yours really exist. I guess what we call “fundamentalist” here in California really can be different from what others experience. But I only attended the GARB church for three or four years. There was some hell-fire and brimstone though, that’s for sure.
I still live with the fallout of those years: a certain fundamentalist tone that enters my writing from time to time, a kind of prudishness, and an anger that is morphing into mourning, disappointment, and resignation–but never totally goes away.
Has there been any new information regarding the lesbian wedding performed by Jon Powers? (My personal prayers and blessing go out to everyone involved there.)
And as to the wider question raised by one of your respondents — why do we want to pursue the question of “marriage” at all, yes, I would have a couple (or more) comments. Basically they boil down to two arenas — the civil side and the religious side. On the civil side of course there is the plethora of legal issues that we are currently not privvy to — hospital visitation, inheritance rights, “spousal” inclusion on all manner of procedures such as partner’s financial actions, employee insurance, etc. And on the spiritual side, it is a matter of enjoying the same benefits that any hetero couple receives in having the formal and public blessing of their union bestowed by their chosen community of faith.
The fact that those two arenas are largely melded in most current church weddings is rather unfortunate in my opinion, since that tends to mask just what benefits come from which sources.
I haven’t found any fallout, although I assume he caused a bit of a stir in his Annual Conference.
Anti-homosexual Christian leaders bemoan “homosexual acceptance.” They specifically do not want homosexuals or homosexuality to be “acceptable.” The opposite of acceptance is rejection, right? They want us to reject homosexuality and, dare I say it, homosexuals as well. Some will quibble over that, but they want us to reject homosexuals as pastors, as bishops, as church members. They rejected my son as a singer on Sunday mornings and rejected him as president of his high school Bible club. They say they’re not against homosexuals, just homosexualty, but the way that gets translated into actions is that individual homosexuals are personally rejected as a matter of policy.
All that to respond to your desire that all couples have “the formal and public blessing of their union by their chosen community of faith.”
Formal and public blessing is precisely what they do not want to extend.
Thank you for clarifying Leviticus for me! I feel like I can continue my renewed journey now.
Dear Ron,
I just wanted to say thank you for posting this site. I wish I had found it sooner as for some time I’ve been searching for a site which is so insightful on the topic of gays and Christianity.
My best friend died of an overdose this year and has struggled his whole life with being homosexual. The church had much to do with his self loathing and in trying to be a proper Christian he even married and had children. All to no avail he “fell back into the lifestyle” of his true self and, I believe, beat himself up over being himself. I dont know if he ever was able to truly love. And living a lie, I believe, made him learn to lie about other things to the point you never knew what was and wasn’t truth. I miss him greatly, but I know that him is in GOD’s care now and his suffering is over. With the exception of a few years in high school, he never got to be himself.
I am sharing your site and your videos about your experience with your son to as many friends and family as possible. Again, thank you for this blog and I hope that my 4 cousins, who are all involved in the ministry, will read this and be able to better aid their congregations in learning how to love ALL of god’s children.
Thanks so much,
John
;^]>
I’m sorry to hear about your friend, John. Life is very complicated, and we all go through seasons of confusion, when we compromise and stumble. But God has seen tens of billions of us stumble, fall, and sometimes do outrageous things (as we see in the Bible). He knows we are but dust, and loves us dearly–because of it.
I hope what I post here helps your cousins minister more effectively in the way you hope. Thanks for pitching in and helping, John.
Hi Ron. I apologize for the post like this but this is the only way I could find to contact you as Facebook is being a pain. Anyway, Mike Morrell and I really appreciate your blog, and think you’d be an excellent candidate for our Speakeasy Blogger Network. Do you like to review off-the-beaten path faith, spirituality, and culture books? Speakeasy puts interesting books in your hands at no charge to you. You only get books when you request them, and it’s free to join. Sign up here, if you’d like: http://thespeakeasy.info
You’re not on any contact lists, I promise; if you don’t respond, that’s it, and the invitation is open as long as you’re actively blogging. Hope you join us!
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Changes do come about in the UMC. When I first believed God wanted me to pastor a church the Methodist Church would not even consider my request. Women pastors now abound in the UMC. Change accepted by the masses takes years.
Yes, large-scale institutional change takes a lot of time. So many different things need to change: people, theology, rules, habits–very complicated–requires a lot of patience.