A question about your beliefs.

[Sharon]

[David Flick]

[Sharon]

[David Flick]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: The reasons I left the SBC are very much like what David has written above. In short it came to a point when I no longer trusted many in SBC leadership and I began to look for a place to move.. The Church that I Was a member of in Florida Was one of the first to support CBF. About the same time (1989) I felt compelled to return to Seminary. I had dropped out in 1954 to feed my family and allowed myself to get to busy with other things. Ended up divorced and immediately found myself un needed by a number of So. Baptist Churches in Indiana. (My home state, to which I had returned when I left School) I drifted in and out of several churches until I retired from my state job in 1985. But I did learn a good bit about singles Ministry from the inside. Through one United Methodist and one Wesleyan Church. I went to Florida and had the good fortune to become involved in a moderate SBC church. Then I moved again and was in a solidly conservative church with a great pastor who would be called moderate today. That pastor retired and they hired a first time pastor who was very conservative and who pandered to the most conservative in the congregation. His Idea of singles ministry was a vehicle to get all the singles in the church married off unless they where at least 60. I left there to get out of his way. I then became very involved in The FBC Ft Myers which was moderate. There I was part of starting a Singles Ministry. 6months before I left for seminary a woman came to our 4th of July picnic who I immediately saw as potential leader for that group, some one to take my pace, if you will. We got to know each other well and after I had been in Louisville for nearly a semester she came up to visit. She fell in love with Louisville and Moved up there. Eventually she fell in live with me and we where married in the spring of 91. in 92 We went back to Florida for her to compleat her undergraduate degree . We attended FBC in Ft Myers again unto she finished a 2nd A.A then moved to Tampa where she attended the University of SO. Florida. There we made a point of getting into a moderate church. In 95 after she received her B.A. Magna cum Laude, we returned to Louisville for her to do an M.Div. But she did not plan to be involved in a church vocation, she planned to go on for a Ph.D. and return to a State School religion department similar to USF, to teach Hebrew and O.T.. So being a female at Southern 95-98 was not nearly a uncomfortable for her as it was for many women planing on church vocations, generally requiring ordination. After she Graduated with honors in 98. We moved to Cincinnati for her to attend Hebrew Union College-Jewish institute of Religion. In Cincinnati we found no SBC church of interest to either of us. But God led us to visit an ABC church where we immediately felt at home. There I began to learn that The ABC is not nearly a liberal as I had been led to believe for most of my life.. After two years at HUC and being active in our church Trudy began to feel that God was leading her in a different direction. She began working as an unpaid assistant to the pastor but at that time she was still of the opinion that Women could not be preachers. In a short time she was invited to take a paid position in another ABC church. The pastor was a very controlling sort. For one thing he insisted that she preach a the churches Back of the Track program.
She loved it. A short time later he told her she would be preaching both services one Sunday when he would be away. She was VERY reluctant but again she loved it and was forced to begin reexamining he stance on Women in Ministry to day we are in Upstate NY, the Adirondacks to be more specific, where she pastors two ABC churches. As David has said I am still involved in CBF, being on the coordinating council of the NE Baptist Fellowship.