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Have you been hurt by the church? Are you done with all the betrayal, pain, and suffering? John Smith knows exactly what that is like. He experienced it when planting churches in Arizona and starting a biker ministry to those seeking Christ. John candidly tells us about how he came to know Christ, start his ministry and suffered abuse from the people he served with. Join us!
Here is the link of my guest interview on John’s podcast Open Wounds!
I’m the pastor at Maricopa Alliance Church in Maricopa, AZ. My new podcast “Open Wounds” is a journey we can all take together to learn ways to overcome church-hurt. I’m married with 2 adult children.
Http://youtube.com/@OpenWoundsPodcast/
email: openwounds@maricopaalliance.org
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John Smith Part One
[00:00:00] [00:00:05] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer, songwriter, speaker, and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. [00:00:31] Now, here is Diana. [00:00:38] Hey everybody out there. How are you doing? Thanks for listening to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. [00:00:47] I’m still here. [00:00:48] Couple weeks ago, I was a guest on a show called Open Wounds Podcast. And that was started by Pastor John Smith. I’m [00:01:00] going to leave a link in the show notes for you to listen to our conversation, but, we felt it was a good match because, you know, he’s talking about open wounds and my podcast is the wounds of the faithful. [00:01:14] So. [00:01:15] Uh, that we really should get together and record something. So I had a conversation with him about my story on Church Hurt, and we had so much fun that I invited him to also record on my podcast. and tell his story of church hurt. So he is a pastor in Maricopa. That is about an hour or so south of me. [00:01:42] He’s a pastor of Maricopa Alliance Church. His podcast is about a journey we can all take together to learn ways to overcome church hurt. He is married with two adult children. So I’m not sure where the conversation is going to go. I don’t [00:02:00] have a script, but we’re gonna have a good time and see where the spirit leads. [00:02:05] Gonna find out all about him and his ministry. how he got called into the ministry, how he met Jesus. And some of the church hurt that he has suffered just like you guys have suffered. I know that you have suffered a lot of church hurt. I think, this is going to be a great conversation. [00:02:25] So, Enjoy my conversation with Pastor John Smith. [00:02:29] I am really excited to have Pastor John Smith on the show. Welcome. Thanks, Diana. Thanks for having me on your, your podcast. Wow. We had so much fun on your podcast that I decided we’re going to do this again and have some more fun. That’s on, except I’m in the hot seat, right? Yes, I was just gonna say that. [00:02:51] You’re in the hot seat now. Yeah, I think, the Lord is putting a calling on a lot of pastors and a lot of church leaders [00:03:00] to start talking about this topic, about people that have been injured or hurt by the church, church leadership and things. [00:03:07] So I think he’s laid it on your heart, he’s certainly laid it on my heart, and, I think it’s, something that the church really needs to, to recognize. And, uh, ultimately repent from. Yes, yes, we talked a lot about that, when I was on your show. So, I’d like to start from the beginning, what was it like growing up? [00:03:29] Were you raised in a Christian home? No, I wasn’t. I, I was, uh Born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, and grew up on a small, I guess, you could say a farm, or, something like that. We had, we had farm animals, we had chickens and pigs, we had a couple horses, a small garden, that type of stuff. [00:03:46] And my dad was agnostic, my mother was a non practicing Catholic. And so when I was young, she would read some of the Bible stories to my brother and me through like a picture Bible, a [00:04:00] little story Bible type thing. But we never attended church, we never prayed together, we didn’t pray before meals. [00:04:07] Sometimes I recall praying before bed. Occasionally it was like, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, type of thing. But it wasn’t a regular practice, and I knew nothing about church, knew nothing about Christianity, really. I just knew some of the stories from the Old Testament about the flood, about Adam and Eve, and things like that, that were all taught when we’re little. [00:04:31] So I grew up in a non Christian home, and I would say somewhere around fifth grade, sixth grade, I started hanging around kids that were troublemakers. And I fit right in, and so I became a troublemaker. I was getting in trouble a lot. My mom was being called into the principal’s office a lot. [00:04:50] So I was, not, going down the right path. And then when I was in seventh grade, a friend of mine, his name was Paul, a friend of mine. He and I, we met [00:05:00] a pair of twins. Lisa and Lori. They were identical twins. Super nice young girls. And, we became friends with them, started hanging around them quite a bit. [00:05:11] And ultimately they invited us to go to church. Well, Paul didn’t want to go to church. He wasn’t interested at all. I said, why not? These two girls are kind of cute. I might as well have an opportunity. I’m a 13 year old boy, right? So I thought, you know, I’ll be glad to go to church with them and hang out with them. [00:05:32] So I started going to church at a non denominational Christian church. It was a very large church and they would separate the youth group from the adults during the service. And so the youth group had their own service. And I remember the youth leader talking about the book of Job, and I was fascinated by this story, and it’s something I wasn’t familiar with. [00:05:54] Over the next few months, he was teaching, teaching from the book of Job, and I was [00:06:00] learning a lot. And I remember going home one day, and my mom said, so tell me about this church that you’re attending. And so I told her about the church, and being the Catholic minded person, she said, that sounds like a cult. [00:06:14] That you’re going to, my parents said the same thing. . Yeah. When you said it, when we were talking last time, I, I’m like, oh my goodness. This is, this is so, familiar. And so, she told me I was no longer allowed to go. And, so I had got plugged into their youth group. We were going to, roller skating events. [00:06:34] with the church, and I’m hanging out with these nice kids who don’t swear, they don’t smoke, they’re not getting in trouble. And so she pulls me out of that. Well, naturally, I went right back to the group that I used to be with, the troublemakers. I don’t understand that. You know, my mom did the same thing. [00:06:53] So I didn’t get that. Yeah, well, I don’t know either. I don’t know why it happened. [00:07:00] But it did. And so I got back into the same old friend group, started getting back into trouble, things like that. I started smoking cigarettes and, just being stupid. And as I got older, probably, I would say maybe 10th, 11th grade, my mom and my dad were having problems in their marriage. [00:07:20] Being a recovering Catholic, or she was still, I guess, an unpracticing Catholic at the time, she turned to the Bible for answers. A friend of hers had told her, you need to start reading the Bible. Well, again, being a Catholic, she didn’t spend much time reading the Bible. It wasn’t something they did. [00:07:38] And so she started digging in and reading the Bible, and she read it every day. And she read the entire Bible in a year. Well, after she completed reading the Bible, she decided that she had to get back into church because she was looking for solutions to fix the marriage, [00:07:55] and, so she went back, she went to a Sunday morning mass with the Catholic [00:08:00] church and walked out halfway through. She said what they’re teaching isn’t biblical. And so she left, left the Catholic church and, started looking around, starting asking people, she was a nurse. So she would ask people at the hospital where she should go to church. [00:08:16] And so they started recommending different churches and she ended up at a church, very similar to the one that I was attending the youth group at, very similar, charismatic. a big, big mega church. So she gave her life to Christ there. She came home and she told my brother and myself that, we needed to start going to church. [00:08:37] Well, naturally was the one pulling me out of church when I was having fun. So I said, yeah, that’s not going to happen. I’m now probably 16, 17 year old teenager. rebelling, in trouble. And, I said, you know, you pulled me out of church. Why would I go back now? Now that it’s okay for you, right? [00:08:57] So it was kind of one of those situations. She never gave [00:09:00] up. She just continued to ask me to go to church, ask my brother to go to church. we would ultimately give in. I was probably, I would say a junior in college. I finally gave in. I said, I’ll go to church with you just to make you happy. And I went to church and the message was, incredibly touching. [00:09:19] It was, it was really about the fact that we are all, you know, we’re all sinners. Basically the Roman’s road. The only path to salvation is through Christ. They had an altar call. I went up and I gave my life to Jesus that day. So I’d say about 21 years old. Gave my life to Jesus, but didn’t change my lifestyle. [00:09:39] Yes. Yeah. So continued to party, continued to get in trouble. I was just 21 years old, so the nightlife was new to me and I could go to bars and Hang out. My brother was a great singer So we would go to karaoke bars all over the place and he would sing and he’s now a worship leader at the church Back in Pittsburgh, by the [00:10:00] way Yeah, so that God had a plan for him. We would go bar hopping and I would eventually meet a girl we would move in together. I was kind of going down a path that I shouldn’t have been going down and Well, she, sadly, she died of a brain aneurysm. [00:10:16] It was a sudden death. Awful. Yes, we were living together, for quite a while. And then things started to kind of go south. So I moved back home. My dad, my mom had separated by this time. So I moved back with my dad. I was living with him. She was living in her own apartment and she called me and she said, um, I have a terrible, terrible headache. [00:10:38] We weren’t dating, but we were supposed to connect. And she said, I have a terrible headache. I can’t, I’m just going to go home and go to bed. Well, she went home and went to bed and never woke up. And yeah, so that was pretty devastating make a long story short, I began dating, my current wife, Shelly, we were dating. She had a child already. [00:10:59] The [00:11:00] dad was not in the picture. I started dating her. I would ultimately adopt her son, who’s my son now. And, after we got married, we had a child together, our daughter. And I knew I didn’t want my children to go down the same path. I had gone down getting into trouble, always, just doing terrible in school, always hanging around people that were, Just going down the wrong path. [00:11:24] I wanted to get them into church early. I had a motorcycle at the time. It was my first Harley Davidson. I had to pick up a prescription, so I rode my Harley down to the drugstore, I grew up in a very small town, by the way, in western Pennsylvania, so everybody knew everybody. [00:11:39] I, went to the the pharmacist, and he says, Hey, I noticed you got a helmet. What do you ride? And I told him, I said, I got a Harley Sportster. He said, Are you going to the church tomorrow for the blessing of the bikes? I said, I don’t even know what that is. Right. And, so he told me about it. [00:11:55] He said, there’s typically about three to 4, 000 motorcycles at this church. The [00:12:00] pastor rides a Harley and you should check it out. I said, well, maybe I will. So I went home, told the wife, I said, I’m going to go check this church out tomorrow. They they’re supposed to have this big biker thing going on. [00:12:12] So I rode my Harley the next day to this church and there was probably 10, 000 motorcycles because every year this thing just kept growing and growing and growing. I showed up and I’m hanging around outside with all the other bikers and I’m checking out motorcycles and we’re just all talking And, well, the service is about to start, and this motor, this big biker burly dude comes over to me, and he said, Pastor Dan’s getting ready to preach, you need to get inside. [00:12:35] And I said, well, I said, I’m not really here to go to church, I’m here just to check out the bikes. Well, he reaches over, and he grabs me by the leather vest, and he said, I wasn’t asking. Wow, I’m telling you, I said, okay, I’ll go to church, right? And so I went into church. The church was loaded with bikers just wall to [00:13:00] wall loaded with bikers in there and Pastor Dan gave a message. [00:13:04] that was just, incredible. Just the, the forgiveness of God, the love of God, the fact that, he died for all people, that, he desires we all be saved. And so he was reading of the verses. It brought me to tears and I knew that was the Holy Spirit was working on me. And so I left service. [00:13:27] I walked out and I called my wife And I said, I found a church. I want to raise our kids in this church. And that was, it turned out to be, Murrysville Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. We ended up serving about five years there. My kids were raised in the church, spent a lot of time there and ended up my, the company I was working for, the headquarters were here in Phoenix. [00:13:55] And so I got a call one day and said, we want you to come to Phoenix. We want you to come to the [00:14:00] headquarters. And so I did. We sold our home, packed up a U Haul full of everything we could fit in it. And, drove to Phoenix. Never been here before in my life. I figured in a city of 5 million people, surely there’s going to be plenty of Alliance churches around. [00:14:15] I can just pick the one I like the best. And it turned out that there weren’t any. yeah, the closest one was about 75 miles away, I think. That was like, okay, that’s, not in a plan. I don’t know what’s happening. I was so happy at this Alliance Church, but now there isn’t one. [00:14:29] So I, we started church hopping, trying to find a church we wanted to get into. And, we did find one. This is kind of the first church that we found, is kind of my first experience really being By the church. I don’t know if you want to get into that yet or not, but if you had any additional follow up questions, you know, Oh, jump right in. [00:14:50] Okay. So we found the church. It was in the East Valley and I started attending, found out that one of the associate pastors was a writer. I talked to [00:15:00] him. I talked to my neighbor who was also, he rode a Harley as well. Talked to my neighbor, talked to this associate pastor, and I said, I want to start a biker ministry. [00:15:10] Well, they both kind of laughed at me. They didn’t think biker ministry was a thing. Like Hell’s Angels or something, you know? Yeah, that’s what they’re thinking. And I said, no, no, no, this is a great way I said, there are men and women who ride Harleys, but they don’t want to be part of that. [00:15:26] The club mentality. They don’t want to be part of that, but they want large, a large group to ride with. That’s not going to the bars. That’s not going out to get in trouble. They want a group to ride with that they can feel secure with, but not, you know, not doing the things that typical bikers do. We put a flyer in, in the bulletin one week and I called my first meeting and we had four other guys show up. [00:15:50] And so I started explaining to them how biker ministry worked and the vision and things like that. And within, I would say, the first [00:16:00] year, we had over 50 regular riders come into church. A lot of them had never walked into a church before. But, because of the ministry, they felt comfortable. The, affinity that we had about Harleys and motorcycles. [00:16:14] So, started coming to church. The second year, we had well over 75 motorcycles in the parking lot every Sunday morning. And it just continued to grow. This is where things started getting a little ugly. And this is where I learned a little bit about how independent, non denominational churches really have no accountability structure, and they really have no authority structure. [00:16:37] I’m not, I’m not dogging anybody cause you know, but it’s just, it’s just a fact. That’s the reality. Yes. That’s the reality of it. So, the lead pastor was not a fan of the motorcycle ministry. And so he started kind of, having his leadership kind of nitpick at us, because this church was so big, it had a big foyer when you walked in. [00:16:59] And [00:17:00] each ministry within the church had kind of a podium to give information about the ministry. And so on Sunday mornings, our podium, we had 50 to 60 people that were hanging out in that corner. Well, then they moved our podium to another secluded part of the church because we were too, uh, obtrusive, they said. [00:17:20] Yeah. We were okay with that because bikers are outcasts, you know, they’re always seen as outcasts. So we’re like, okay, we’re just the outcasts. That’s okay. It’s who we are. We’re the black sheep. They didn’t Do anything to warrant that reputation? I mean, they didn’t, you know, graffiti the church. They didn’t do anything to deserve being treated that way, right? [00:17:39] No, no, no, no, not at all. In fact, we were doing a ton of outreach. We were, every year at Easter, we would collect, Hams and then we would deliver hams to, the less fortunate in our area. And at one point I think we delivered 200 hams. And so if a ham is 10 pounds, that’s like 2000 pounds of ham [00:18:00] that we’re delivering on our motorcycles to the less fortunate around the area. [00:18:04] We would attach, cards with the names of the church on it, with invitations to the church, and we would give out small Bibles, we would give out a lot of things to go with the, with the church. [00:18:12] With the hams. But anyway, they just felt that we were too obtrusive. We were, blocking or taking up too much of the foyer. So they would, they pushed us back into the corner. They would ultimately push us outside. we would have people, because the nature of motorcyclists or bikers, whatever you want to say, a lot of them were older, a lot of them were veterans, Vietnam veterans. [00:18:36] Eventually we had one of the gentleman, his name was Drew. He got sick. He went into liver failure and was in the VA hospital. So we put up a little white erase board that said, please pray for Drew. Well, they came over and they said, you can’t have that on the podium because you’re, uh, you’re kind of stepping on the toes of the prayer team. [00:18:58] It should be. It doesn’t make any [00:19:00] sense. I know, right? We said, well, yeah, but. It’s one of our guys. We’re just asking the church and the people to pray for one of our guys. They said, well, you need to take that down if you want the prayer team, the prayer ministry to be praying for them, but you can’t. [00:19:18] And I said, okay, I think we need to meet with, the pastor. I mean, I was there for two years, and I had never met the senior pastor face to face. so I called a meeting with him, he had me come in and sit down, and the whole time I was trying to talk to him and ask him, how do things work here? [00:19:36] One, he didn’t know my name. He didn’t know who I was. And two, the whole time I tried to talk to him, he was on his computer paying bills. And so he wasn’t even really paying attention. I said, am I bothering you? Am I, you know, should I do this another time? Cause I feel like I’m, I’m bothering you. [00:19:54] And, he says, well, I just have things to do. I’m a very busy person. I said, no, that’s [00:20:00] fine. I get it. It was just a weird situation, but ultimately, he would send his associate pastor, a different pastor, not the one that rode with us, but a different pastor who would, he would sit down with our, motorcycle ministry and he told us that, we’re not tithing enough. [00:20:15] That based on the amount of, parking spaces we take up with our motorcycles, that we’re not, tithing enough. You’ve got to be kidding. Yeah. In other words, we weren’t paying, you know, a Membership days. They knew who was tithing and who wasn’t tithing. They did. Yes. And so it was just, motorcycle ministry wide. [00:20:36] It was like, they specifically said, your ministry isn’t tithing enough for the amount of space you take. Like, you know, we weren’t paying enough per square foot, basically is what they were saying. and so they told us that we have two weeks to decide whether or not we want to tithe enough or give enough offering or, find another church. [00:20:59] Well, that [00:21:00] wasn’t a difficult decision. And so that was my first, experience with, church hurt. It was like, wait a minute. You don’t want me to pray for people that are sick. You don’t want us to be seen, you continue to hide us and push us away, and now, it’s either pay more or leave. [00:21:20] And so, I just said, this isn’t Jesus to me, this isn’t, The Jesus of the Bible. This isn’t what I understood who Jesus to be when I was at the Alliance Church back in home, man, my, uh, my whole family are bikers. I wish I had a church that had a bike ministry that I could have brought them to hear the gospel. [00:21:42] I don’t understand that. I think that’s the craziest story that I’ve ever heard. Yeah, it was pretty insane. So we decided as a ministry, some people stayed. There were some people that were loyal to that church. There were some people that, were like, okay, if this is church, I don’t [00:22:00] want anything to do with church. [00:22:01] And then there was about 30, 35 of us who said, okay, we’re going to stick together, but we’re going to find a church that welcomes us. So we would start dry and we would start attending different churches and different, and it’s like every time we showed up to a church, we just never felt welcome. We would show and people would give us the, you know, Squint eye, look at us like, what are they doing here? [00:22:22] What’s the And so nobody really, we never felt welcome. So I called my pastor back in Pittsburgh, and I said, how do we plant an Alliance Church? How do we go about this? he gave us some contact information to the district superintendent here in the, South Pacific District. [00:22:40] And so I reached out to them, And we had a meeting, told them the whole story, and they said, Yeah, we believe you have a church plant here. We believe that God is working to build a church plant. And it can be, possibly, a motorcycle or biker church. That might be what God’s doing. I said, [00:23:00] well, good. That’s exciting. [00:23:01] I’m glad that you’re on board. How do we go about finding a pastor? And so they excused me and my wife for a few minutes and called us back into the room about, I don’t know, maybe about 10 minutes later. And they said, we believe we have a pastor. I said, okay, this is really simple. What’s his name? [00:23:23] John Smith. They said, oh, . Gotcha, . Yeah. I said, is that a coincidence? Are you talking about me? They said, no, we believe that you’re meant to, to pastor this church. And I said, I, I don’t think so. that doesn’t even make sense to me. And they looked at each other and they said, well, that’s the right answer. [00:23:43] Because if you would have said, yeah, I’m the guy. We would have said, no, you’re not. long story short is that was my first church plant. That was my introduction to church planting. I’ve since, planted two churches, including that one and replanted a third. And so that’s, [00:24:00] uh, That’s kind of my story, but unless you have questions about that, I can get into the situation where I really, experienced church hurt. [00:24:09] That was, far more devastating than the first one. What did, the other bikers feel about you being the pastor of the church? I would say about half of them were on board. Maybe a quarter were not totally on board, but kind of, let’s see how this goes type thing. [00:24:28] And then I would say the other, maybe the other 25 percent said, yeah, this is not what we’re looking for. Oh, so I was thinking that they were all like all gang ho, you know, yeah, we’re going to start a little church, but it didn’t work out that way. No, I think because I had no, training, no schooling. [00:24:48] The only biblical study I knew was from attending church and attending Bible studies. I was not formally trained and I think they were concerned about that. And, maybe rightfully so. I think it’s [00:25:00] okay to feel that way. I didn’t judge them. I said, yeah, that’s fine. [00:25:03] You know? Yeah. I was a church planter too. And I was part of church plants with pastors that had zero training at all. And, didn’t know how to, interpret the Bible at all or put together messages. Yeah, so it, didn’t work out very well. No. And it’s very difficult. [00:25:24] And that was, I was bivocational, so I was working in sales, 40 to 50 hours a week and trying to plant a new church and trying to write sermons on Saturdays. And, it was extremely stressful. It was very difficult. We lasted the, that church plant lasted two and a half years. [00:25:43] Because we had grown, we’d grown to about 80 people. and that we were meeting every Sunday. I was not drawing a paycheck at all from the church and so we had, quite a good sum of money in the bank from tithes and offerings. We had really no expenses other than the facility that we rented. [00:25:59] And so [00:26:00] we were very financially strong. I was burned out. Trying to work, trying to raise a young family, trying to be a full time husband, full time church planter, full time worker. It was too, it was just, uh, I was burned out after two and a half years. And so we did a pastor search. We got one person to apply. [00:26:18] And, so the district felt good about him. We hired him and within a month he closed. our church, our location, and tried to take everything, all the, assets, if you will, of the church, and tried to take it from East Mesa to Tempe. Oh, that’s rotten. Yeah, and that was kind of his intention from the beginning. [00:26:40] So we found that out. I contacted the district, told them what was happening, and they just took all the assets they assumed ownership of all the assets, told him basically to hit the bricks, and they gave everything that the church had to another church plant, which is funny, another [00:27:00] church plant here in Maricopa. [00:27:03] Yeah, which I would eventually come back to 12 years later. All the same equipment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weird. Very weird. And so after that church, this is where I experienced church hurt. Um, could never anticipated this, but after we, closed that church out, I began again looking for other churches to go to. [00:27:27] And, came across an Evangelical Free Church, which was great. Loved, everything about them. Their pastor was amazing. I was, I was very happy there. And we were doing biker ministry again, and then the pastor decided, that he was moving to California. And so we start going through the pastor search again. [00:27:48] Now this church was big. It was about 200 people. And I, I know that’s not big, but it was bigger than, yeah, it was bigger than our, than the church we left, that we planted. But so, uh, [00:28:00] this pastor, he moved to California. We go through a transition phase, takes about a year. They hire a new pastor who’s a biker. [00:28:09] Again, he’s a biker missionary guy. And I said, I can’t believe this. God is working. Like miracles. This is awesome. And so, uh, that pastor and myself, we hit it right off, started doing biker ministry right away. He was 100 percent on board with it. So we had started doing some planning to do some missionary work at Sturgis. [00:28:31] I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sturgis, but it’s the, like the world’s largest biker rally. Yeah. Up in South Dakota. My husband, Brian, before he, retired, he worked for, the extended warranty company for Harley Davidson. And we went to Sturgis. He worked at Sturgis one year doing claims. And we were the only ones there without a bike. [00:28:56] So we rented an SUV because we neither of us had a [00:29:00] bike. So yeah, I’ve been to Sturgis. Okay. So, you know, Sturgis is, I mean, it’s the Mecca of motorcycle rallies. So we know that in that biker community, there’s a lot of people that are seeking God, but they don’t know how to get there. [00:29:15] They just don’t know how to get out of the life they’re in. And so what we would do is we would go up and we’d stand on Main Street and we would give out Bibles. If someone took a Bible, we’d say, Hey, do you need some prayer as well? You know? And so we would pray with a lot of people and, get the word of God in their hands and things like that. [00:29:32] I had done that before with the church in Pittsburgh. And then I, here at this church in East Mesa, this Evangelical Free Church, now we have a biker pastor, he’s all on board, and I said, I want to plan a mission trip to Sturgis. I know what to do, I know how to do this, I’ve been trained in this, let’s do this. [00:29:51] So we put a team together, he didn’t go, but we put this team together and we went up to Sturgis and we did it. One of the people [00:30:00] that went, well a few of the people that went, saw it more of an opportunity to party. than to do mission work. And I had warned them ahead of time. I said, this is not a vacation. [00:30:11] We’re going to be in the rally, but not of the rally. Yeah. And I said, so we’re going to go up. We’re going to stand all day. We’re going to give out Bibles. We’re going to pray with people. Well, a few of them decided that this was an opportunity to drink and party and that just didn’t sit well with me. [00:30:26] I was not happy about it. And we weren’t clearly, completing the mission. We weren’t accomplishing what we were there for. Some of us were, but others weren’t. And so when I got back, I met with the pastor and I said, I think we need to sit down with these three individuals or this individual, whatever, however you want to do it. [00:30:42] And along with the elder board, and I think we need to talk to this individual about what a mission is and what the point of it is. Because this person wasn’t listening to me. This person, uh, blatantly said, you’re not my authority in this church. You have no authority over [00:31:00] me. Et cetera, et cetera. [00:31:01] So I said, okay, I said, well, we need to, then we need to meet with the authority. We need to meet with the pastor and the elder board. And we did. So they put together an elder meeting. And, and I sat down and she sat down and she started sharing her story. It was almost like I was on trial. It was very strange. [00:31:18] The tables were flipped. Tables were flipped hard. And so, she started sharing her story, and she was crying and sobbing and saying how important this church is to her. And that she got married in this church. And, just was just Manipulative crying. Yes, manipulating the whole situation. And she was, unfortunately she was telling her side of the story, which was a little bit less than accurate. [00:31:46] And I know there’s always, you know, three sides to a story and all that type of stuff. So, she gets finished the elder looks at me and he said, you’re not crying. You’re not showing any emotion. I said, I’m not sure what you’re, what are you trying to, uh, to [00:32:00] say. He said, you have this lovely person here, this lovely God fearing Jesus following person who is sobbing and crying and you’re sitting here stoic. [00:32:11] He goes, nothing of nothing is bothering you. I said, Oh, I’m bothered. I’m very bothered because a lot of what she’s telling you unfortunately isn’t true. And he said, well, I’m going to stop you right there. He said, I’m going to tell you something that you may not want to hear. He said, but you have a hardened heart. [00:32:32] You have the heart of Pharaoh and you should, yeah. He said, not only are you not welcomed to do ministry in this church, and I’m looking at him and I’m looking at the pastor saying, are you like allowing this to happen? He remained silent, didn’t say a word. And this pastor or this elder, he said, not only will you not do ministry work here at this church. [00:32:57] But I would highly recommend you never [00:33:00] do ministry outside anywhere because you will just destroy lives. And that broke me. That absolutely destroyed me. And I looked at the pastor and I said, are you going to defend me at all? And he just looked out, didn’t say a word. The two other elders didn’t say a word. [00:33:19] This man had it in for me and uh, it just destroyed me. Were there any witnesses to what this person was doing at Sturges to back you up? Oh yeah, there was several other people that went that would have collaborated my story for sure. She and a couple other people brought fifths of alcohol. [00:33:41] We were invited to stay at another pastor’s home. He had a basement in his home that was set up for, for missionaries and people traveling through and he invited us to stay there for free. And so we’re unpacking their stuff and they’re breaking out bottles of booze. And I said, no, no, no, we’re not doing that. [00:33:59] [00:34:00] That’s not happening here. Oh, you’re not my authority. I took time off work to be here. I’ll do whatever I want to do. Blah, blah, blah. You know, I said, that’s fine, but go get a hotel room, go spend 5, 000 for a hotel a Motel 6 in Sturgis, but you’re not going to do it here. This is a pastor’s home. [00:34:17] You’re not going to do that here. Yes. so it was just a rocky whole thing. And so, she had become kind of a thorn in my side. And so everything was second guessed, because again, as I’m leading this ministry in the biker world, you have what’s called a road captain, and that road captain leads the group. [00:34:37] That road captain is responsible for the safety of that group. That road captain’s responsible for all stops at gas stations, restaurants, everything. And just making sure that everybody is safe and gets from point A to point B, you know, in a safe manner. And so I was the road captain of that trip. So I would pull the group over into the gas station and she would [00:35:00] come up behind me and say, there’s a gas station down the street for five cents a gallon cheaper. [00:35:04] And then they would just peel out and leave the group. And you put maybe five gallons into a tank on a motorcycle, you’re talking 25 cents they’re And they’re putting the whole group at risk by doing this, by separating, by splitting up. And so it was like that over and over and over again. [00:35:22] And then when it was time to actually do the ministry, to, hand the Bibles out, to pray with people, they were more interested in the vendors and checking things out, checking motorcycles out and that type of stuff. And so I just said, you know, that’s unacceptable. You should have never come on this trip. [00:35:38] If this was your plan, I wish you would have told me, I would have just told you, you’re not welcome to come. That’s where the kind of the conflict started. When she got back and I got back, when I asked for the elder board, I assumed it would be everybody. [00:35:50] Everybody that went, but it was only myself and her that got invited to this elder board meeting. She had. about 10 minutes to explain her side of the [00:36:00] story, which was explained not in detail. She left all the alcohol and everything out of her side of the story. And then when it came to me, I never had an opportunity to give my side of the story. [00:36:11] It was like the verdict was in. Yeah, I wasn’t emotional enough. I wasn’t taken back by her, taken aback by her story. And so He started coming out with the pharaoh heart that, you know, the heart of pharaoh, the hardened heart, you should never do ministry again. And he was looking me right in the eye and telling me, that, you’re just going to ruin people’s lives. [00:36:33] You’re going to, scare people away from church. I was like, what? You know? So I was broken about it. I went home and, I told my wife, I said, I think I’m done with church. I’m done. I’ve had it, if this is what church is, I don’t want any part of it. So I went into that mode of, I can have a relationship with Jesus, in the woods, I can have a relationship with Jesus on my Harley. [00:36:57] I don’t need church. [00:37:00] And that’s why I started Open Wounds Podcast is because I think a lot of people get there. They’re exactly where, yeah, we get to that point where, we just wash our hands of it. We say, you know what? I don’t need the phoniness of church. [00:37:16] We’re having such a great time with John today. I wanted to stop here and continue the story next time. The story gets even crazier and unbelievable, so I know you’ll want to hear [00:37:33] what happens to him and what is he doing today. How has God redeemed his ministry. And how you can heal from church hurt. So be sure to be with us next time on the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. Thanks for listening. God bless and bye for now. [00:37:54] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. If [00:38:00] this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You can connect with us at DSWMinistries. org, where you’ll find our blog along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week!