"So, if you were losing your faith, why did you stay in the ministry so long?"

That's a fair question and one I struggled with I'd say from the mid 1990s to finally being free from it by '98

I went into the ministry in 1972.  Ted Armstrong was out, then he was in and then in '74, when I was working in Chicago during the Great East Coast Rebellion, he was out and I got fired by association with my boss, the Regional Director for whom I was his man Friday.

Got rehired when the dust cleared for me personally and I wanted to go on in ministry.  In my mind, I really thought that my generation of ministers would mellow and balance the church.  LOL.  Sorry about that.  I was naïve.  But by 1975 I was pastoring my first two of 14 congregations, Findlay and Mansfield, Ohio.   From then on, it was one scandal, drama, trauma after the next and I wondered while driving my 60,000 miles a year visiting what I had gotten myself into.

Yet I believed the Bible as seen and understood through the eyes of the WCG.  It was better , it seemed than my Presbyterian perspectives which left out, it seemed, whole parts of and topics in the Bible.  I really wanted it to be true. I thought that after HWA died, and I always thought he would, the church would mature and the beat would go on better and better than ever.  We know how that went!

But there was that one thing, always in the back of my mind and it was personal between me and my dad. And it was this.......

Me on the left and my brother

My only brother, a couple years older than me, was born a preemie at a pound and a half.  In the day they poured on the pure Oxygen, minus the nitrogen  and it burned up his tiny retinas, ear bones and as a result could not speak either growing up.  His birth for my parents was a traumatic experience to say the least.  He spent his early life at the NYS Hospital in Newark and we visited him every Sunday after church.  Thus this picture.  

Back to staying in the ministry.

In 1972 I sat breathless during a forum at AC where they were announcing the ministerial assignments for my graduating class.  Not the best way to do it, but it was dramatic.  When they got to my name, and said,  "Dennis Diehl...Minneapolis, Minnesota" my personal goals were unfolding just as I had planned.    I went to AC to be in the ministry in spite of warnings from Apostles not to think you could come to AC with that goal.  It was my goal, I wanted to be a minister and I simply reached my personal goal.

I had also been accepted to the Roberts Wesleyan Theological Seminar in NY but choose AC for various reasons. I only mention this to say that I wanted to be a theologian type minister and had no idea AC had not concept of proper theological teaching in the history, background, origins and composition of the Bible.  Had I gone to RWTS, I suspect I would have learned a more realistic view of the Bible and probably had my mid-life exit from it much earlier. 

After the forum I went out to call my dad to tell him I was going into the ministry.  He got real quiet on the phone and I could tell he was a bit overwhelmed.  I had no clue why until I asked him if he was ok and he said...

"Son, I never have told anyone this.  When your brother was born with all his handicaps and disabilities, it practically killed me.  I even drove with him in the car around once thinking of just running the both of us into a tree.  Then I prayed to God that IF he ever gave me a normal son (I know, I know...no wise cracks please!) He could have him.  Seems God has taken me up on this. Congratulations!"

And so forever more I felt that not only had I reached my goal of ministry, wrong one not withstanding,  it also was an answer to my father's prayers.  And so while some of the reasons I stayed on after perhaps my own expiration date, had to do with really loving the local people and not wanting to hurt them or thinking that things would get better and I could be force for the good etc, this sincere perspective my equally sincere  father, who went on to be a local elder in Rochester,  gave to me in that one phone call home was fundamental to not walking away too soon.  

After my dad died, I was looking through his Bible and in the back on one line he had written, "April 1998.  Dennis Terminated from the ministry."   I wonder how he felt when he had to write that. 

And too...  Transitions in life can be very messy. I just wanted to share that with my friends here on Banned. 

Would You Buy Your Liver Pills From A Church of God Prophet?

 This is even more pathetic than his sermons!

Doesn't this well-polished video just make you want to call him up and buy it from him?

Quakery at its finest

PCG: Gerald Flurry and Elite Grandkids Travel In Luxury While Members Stay In "...nasty fleabag motels."

Paris Turgeon welcoming aboard Flurry and his fellow Elites...

images from Twitter/Facebook/Instagram

From a PCG source:

...it appears that Gerald Flurry has given his privileged and elite grandkids Grant and Paris Turgeon prestigious “Air Steward” jobs paid for with the tithes and offerings of the “sheeple” of the Church. They went on an all-expenses paid trip to Florida to attend an expensive Flight Attendant Training school. Gerald Flurry wants the best for his own family of course. Not only were all of Grant’s and Paris’s expenses paid for (Travel, Food, Lodging) – but they were PAID for their time as well as Church employees. This is in stark contrast to the common lowly non-Edmond/HQ sheep class of the PCG who had to stay in a Motel 6 or Day’s Inn at the 2017 Feast because they could not afford the rooms listed in the Feast Brochure.

That Prophet and his elite grandchildren

The Apostle arrives in style to his destination.....

All this is in stark contrast of course to the recent letter posted on Exit and Support Network which tells of the common non-Edmond class of PCG member who are stying in "Fleabag" motels and bouncing checks because of their own dire financial problems. 

This is the letter referenced above:

Flurry Uses Guilt and Threats at Feast Time:

April 8, 2018

Hello to Mike and all of the workers at Exit Network Support™. I have been out of the PCG for 5 years. I came into the PCG in the '90s under Dennis Leap and Wilbur Malone. Things were kind of strict back then but now....boy, it is hard to believe.

I do read your letters section to try and keep up with what has been happening since I have been out. I have been reading your postings from 2018. I was told by someone in the know that Flurry in November of 2017 gave a corrective sermon to the PCG people. 

Apparently two things happened connected with the 2017 FOT. (See November 30, 2017 letter: Some Members Not Staying at Designated Hotels at Feast) One was that people are starting to rebel against the strict hotel reservation commands given out from HQ. So many PCG people are finding it hard to pay for the over-inflated prices at these ritzy hotels that people are going to Motel 6 and Day's Inn, Ramada, etc., without telling their local ministers. With prices on the Feast brochures of the cheapest rooms around $80-99 dollars a night (budget rooms) people have disobeyed the orders of Flurry and have booked non PCG approved accommodations. 

Well, Flurry said that there were so many rooms not used by the PCG members that HQs had to pay thousands of dollars in fees/fines to all of the hotels per contract. This hit into the PCG budget as it costs even more to fuel up Flurry private jet. He said that from now on people have to counsel with the minister or they will have to be corrected. 

Also, Flurry said that after the Feast was over and all of the personal checks from the members were cashed, quite a few checks bounced. Flurry was very upset because the HQs had to pay fees once again--this time to the bank. Apparently, a lot of pressure was put on the membership this Feast to pay up. I suppose the usual guilt and threat of eternal death was dangled in front of their eyes. So a lot of people gave more money (wrote checks) under that influence than they had to give. 

I remember in the mid/late '90s that we had some wonderful Feasts. I know it was all a lie but back then we had money to spend. We stayed in some nice hotels and ate steak and drank nice wine. We even bought whole bottles of wine for the table. I never heard back then of checks bouncing like that or rooms not being used. I think things are so hard on my friends still in that they are trying so hard to please God/Flurry that they are doing things that they never had to do before, like staying in nasty flea bag motels. So many are old and retired and on fixed incomes. They are not getting in any new members and the young singles are fleeing once they turn 18--some even before they reach 18. I have quite a few dear ones that have died after I left. I never got to say goodbye.

A member told me that they do not care anymore about "getting a lot of members" anymore. They prefer to be small and stay small. They are "God's Elite" and only a small elite are going to be stationed in the Millennial Temple in Jerusalem. Flurry has told them that God is separating out the chaff from the wheat and only those totally loyal will be allowed to go to the Place of Safety. I know of one old couple in their mid 70s who have cut out eating little luxuries like ice cream and sending the money to Flurry so he can fly to where he wants to go. 

I hope the whole PCG collapses and I can see my friends again. 

Please, all of you have a good weekend and God bless. --[name withheld] 

Getting the red carpet treatment for the
most imporatant human on the face of the earth!

Flurry's Million-dollar plane is quite the tourist attraction in Edmond. There are entire PCG families who go just to see Flurry’s grand ego manifested in aluminium and steel:

An adoring PCG family having a Kodak moment with the new G450

(faces obscured for privacy)