Sandusky Baptist Church
My Confrontation with the Church Part V
When we first arrived in Sandusky we attended services for a while in the Sandusky Baptist Church. It was located right at the end a Fulton Street and a few blocks from our house. But we never were completely sold on the church because it had a Central Baptist affiliation and Doris believed the only “good” Baptist churches were those linked to the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, or GARB.
After the pastor of Sandusky church refused to take a stand on the local abortion issue, we decided to start going to church in nearby Marlette. That was a large GARB Baptist church, the minister there delivered powerful sermons, there was an active youth ministry, they had a piano and organ player who had amazing rhythm, and a great choir. We even started taking some of the neighbor children with us to that church.
Our early association with the Marlette church didn’t last long. I think it was because the Sandusky Baptist Church had a change of pastors and the new minister came to the house one day and enticed us back to that church. The details of just how that happened remain somewhat cloudy now. All that I know was that it wasn’t long before I began to get heavily involved in that church. They needed lots of help, and I ended up teaching a junior high Sunday school class, soon got promoted to the job of Sunday School Superintendent, and as a church officer, I also was expected to attend regular meetings of the church Board of Deacons.
That was a mistake for the members of that church. I now found myself privy to all of the dirt that goes on inside church circles, and believe me, the politics there can be as dirty as they get in public circles.
I threw myself into the jobs I was given. We attended a few men’s retreats at a church camp near Houghton Lake, Michigan, where we had some amazing spiritual experiences, and I began feeling at home in Christianity. I liked the friendships made in the church, and felt for a while that I was accomplishing something good for God and the community. I staged some radical Sunday school promotions that included our pastor taking a cream pie in the face if we hit a certain number of people attending Sunday School on or before a specific date. Everybody got busy and invited people. Our pastor took that pie in his face, on the altar, in front of the whole church congregation. He took it in good nature, knowing that we were building a church attendance that was already causing that place to start bursting at the seams. We were bringing in folding chairs and putting them in the aisles to seat everybody.
We were active at that time in organizing a church sponsored private school to give children in the area an alternative to the public education program. From our experience with the public schools, and the way our children were being treated, I was convinced that a better education system could be developed. This project was moving right along. Someone even donated land at the edge of town on which to place this school.
It wasn’t long before we were talking about a building project. We had a special meeting on a Wednesday night as a church body to decide on whether to hire an architect to design a new church or an expansion of the church we had. Something very strange occurred at that meeting. The church members got into a violent debate and could not make a decision. Something was radically wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Three days later I got word that the preacher ran off with one of the women in the church.
The woman he ran off with was one voluptuous female. I remember that. She and her husband were new to the church. They went forward to accept salvation when we had a traveling evangelist at our church. They immediately got involved in church work and became regulars. Doris and I went to visit them one Sunday afternoon at their home near Applegate. They had a swimming pond on the property and invited us to go for a swim. That woman wore a bikini that showed off every curve. That was the day she and her husband told us that they had been deeply involved in witchcraft before accepting Christ. They said they became fearful of what they had been into after furniture started lifting off the floor and they s saw spirits walking around in the mobile home they lived in.
The pastor and his wife were parents of two or three children. One was but a babe in arms at the time he left her. What he did virtually destroyed the church. We lost membership and everything that we had been building fell apart like a pile of Lincoln logs. High officials from the Central Baptist Association came to try to cement the pieces back together. They sent visiting pastors to fill in and conducted special meetings for the church members, setting up a search for a new pastor. I was elected to the pulpit committee that had the job of inviting potential pastors to speak, and then setting up elections by the church body that would decide if we wanted to invite any of these people to be our next pastor.
That was where the politics came in. I was interested in finding a man that preached right from the “Word” and leaned toward hard-core fundamental Christian principles. Some of the other board members were more lenient and did not want to bring in such a harsh messenger. It became a weekly tug-of-war between the members of the pulpit committee. Some of the more powerful and money motivated people in the church were fighting me every step of the way. One was George Haupt, a man who operated a fur business and apparently made a lot of money at it. The other was Mr. Ritchie, a man who owned and operated the IGA Grocery store, directly across the street from the church. Haupt had a reputation as a man with a fast hand who would do just about anything for a buck. It was common knowledge that Ritchie was carrying on an affair with one of the cashiers in his store. Yet because they had the money that kept the church afloat, they virtually ran the business of the church. I saw all of this from my vantage point as a church officer and as a member of the pulpit committee. And I was not happy with what was happening.
Some of the young men of the church that were as concerned as I was agreed to join me on Saturday nights, when the church was usually empty, to conduct special prayer meetings at the church altar. We prayed those nights for a cleansing of the church. That was when I had a key to the front door of the church. One night George Haupt showed up and joined us. When he heard what we were praying for, he lectured to us about careless praying, saying we needed to be careful what we were asking for. After that, the lock on the church was changed. I discovered that I could pick the lock with my jack knife, so we went in and prayed anyway. The next week something was added the prevented us from picking the lock. That was the end of our Saturday night prayer meetings.
After that we had a minister come that everybody liked. I was especially attracted to him and wanted to call him to be our next minister. I remember the night we held our pulpit committee meeting to decide on calling him. I asked God to give me a sign. If everybody on the committee attended, I would take it as a sign that we should call this man. At the beginning of the meeting we were told that one of the members was out of town and could not make it. But as we were in prayer before starting our business meeting, this man miraculously walked in. That cinched it for me. We all voted to call the man back for a final sermon and then let the church body vote.
He came, preached both Sunday morning and Sunday evening sermons, then announced that he would only answer the call if it was by unanimous vote of the church body. When we went into a business meeting, Mr. Ritchie made a motion that the election be by secret ballot. His motion carried. When the votes were counted, there was one vote against calling this man. He did not come.
I left the church that night deeply troubled. By the next Wednesday I had made my decision. When the church met for prayer meeting that evening, I showed up and asked to speak. I got up and announced my resignation from the church. I denounced some of the members of the church for the lives they were living, and told everyone how disappointed I was in what had happened. Then I walked out. I was crying as I did this. I felt as if a large hole had been drilled in my heart that night.
Within the week, several other families followed me out of the church. Nearly all of the men who had joined me in those Saturday night prayer meetings were among them. It struck me that the cleansing occurred in reverse. We left the dirty rats behind.
After that, Doris and I returned to the Marlette church. And that is another wild story.
My Confrontation with the Church Part V
When we first arrived in Sandusky we attended services for a while in the Sandusky Baptist Church. It was located right at the end a Fulton Street and a few blocks from our house. But we never were completely sold on the church because it had a Central Baptist affiliation and Doris believed the only “good” Baptist churches were those linked to the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, or GARB.
After the pastor of Sandusky church refused to take a stand on the local abortion issue, we decided to start going to church in nearby Marlette. That was a large GARB Baptist church, the minister there delivered powerful sermons, there was an active youth ministry, they had a piano and organ player who had amazing rhythm, and a great choir. We even started taking some of the neighbor children with us to that church.
Our early association with the Marlette church didn’t last long. I think it was because the Sandusky Baptist Church had a change of pastors and the new minister came to the house one day and enticed us back to that church. The details of just how that happened remain somewhat cloudy now. All that I know was that it wasn’t long before I began to get heavily involved in that church. They needed lots of help, and I ended up teaching a junior high Sunday school class, soon got promoted to the job of Sunday School Superintendent, and as a church officer, I also was expected to attend regular meetings of the church Board of Deacons.
That was a mistake for the members of that church. I now found myself privy to all of the dirt that goes on inside church circles, and believe me, the politics there can be as dirty as they get in public circles.
I threw myself into the jobs I was given. We attended a few men’s retreats at a church camp near Houghton Lake, Michigan, where we had some amazing spiritual experiences, and I began feeling at home in Christianity. I liked the friendships made in the church, and felt for a while that I was accomplishing something good for God and the community. I staged some radical Sunday school promotions that included our pastor taking a cream pie in the face if we hit a certain number of people attending Sunday School on or before a specific date. Everybody got busy and invited people. Our pastor took that pie in his face, on the altar, in front of the whole church congregation. He took it in good nature, knowing that we were building a church attendance that was already causing that place to start bursting at the seams. We were bringing in folding chairs and putting them in the aisles to seat everybody.
We were active at that time in organizing a church sponsored private school to give children in the area an alternative to the public education program. From our experience with the public schools, and the way our children were being treated, I was convinced that a better education system could be developed. This project was moving right along. Someone even donated land at the edge of town on which to place this school.
It wasn’t long before we were talking about a building project. We had a special meeting on a Wednesday night as a church body to decide on whether to hire an architect to design a new church or an expansion of the church we had. Something very strange occurred at that meeting. The church members got into a violent debate and could not make a decision. Something was radically wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Three days later I got word that the preacher ran off with one of the women in the church.
The woman he ran off with was one voluptuous female. I remember that. She and her husband were new to the church. They went forward to accept salvation when we had a traveling evangelist at our church. They immediately got involved in church work and became regulars. Doris and I went to visit them one Sunday afternoon at their home near Applegate. They had a swimming pond on the property and invited us to go for a swim. That woman wore a bikini that showed off every curve. That was the day she and her husband told us that they had been deeply involved in witchcraft before accepting Christ. They said they became fearful of what they had been into after furniture started lifting off the floor and they s saw spirits walking around in the mobile home they lived in.
The pastor and his wife were parents of two or three children. One was but a babe in arms at the time he left her. What he did virtually destroyed the church. We lost membership and everything that we had been building fell apart like a pile of Lincoln logs. High officials from the Central Baptist Association came to try to cement the pieces back together. They sent visiting pastors to fill in and conducted special meetings for the church members, setting up a search for a new pastor. I was elected to the pulpit committee that had the job of inviting potential pastors to speak, and then setting up elections by the church body that would decide if we wanted to invite any of these people to be our next pastor.
That was where the politics came in. I was interested in finding a man that preached right from the “Word” and leaned toward hard-core fundamental Christian principles. Some of the other board members were more lenient and did not want to bring in such a harsh messenger. It became a weekly tug-of-war between the members of the pulpit committee. Some of the more powerful and money motivated people in the church were fighting me every step of the way. One was George Haupt, a man who operated a fur business and apparently made a lot of money at it. The other was Mr. Ritchie, a man who owned and operated the IGA Grocery store, directly across the street from the church. Haupt had a reputation as a man with a fast hand who would do just about anything for a buck. It was common knowledge that Ritchie was carrying on an affair with one of the cashiers in his store. Yet because they had the money that kept the church afloat, they virtually ran the business of the church. I saw all of this from my vantage point as a church officer and as a member of the pulpit committee. And I was not happy with what was happening.
Some of the young men of the church that were as concerned as I was agreed to join me on Saturday nights, when the church was usually empty, to conduct special prayer meetings at the church altar. We prayed those nights for a cleansing of the church. That was when I had a key to the front door of the church. One night George Haupt showed up and joined us. When he heard what we were praying for, he lectured to us about careless praying, saying we needed to be careful what we were asking for. After that, the lock on the church was changed. I discovered that I could pick the lock with my jack knife, so we went in and prayed anyway. The next week something was added the prevented us from picking the lock. That was the end of our Saturday night prayer meetings.
After that we had a minister come that everybody liked. I was especially attracted to him and wanted to call him to be our next minister. I remember the night we held our pulpit committee meeting to decide on calling him. I asked God to give me a sign. If everybody on the committee attended, I would take it as a sign that we should call this man. At the beginning of the meeting we were told that one of the members was out of town and could not make it. But as we were in prayer before starting our business meeting, this man miraculously walked in. That cinched it for me. We all voted to call the man back for a final sermon and then let the church body vote.
He came, preached both Sunday morning and Sunday evening sermons, then announced that he would only answer the call if it was by unanimous vote of the church body. When we went into a business meeting, Mr. Ritchie made a motion that the election be by secret ballot. His motion carried. When the votes were counted, there was one vote against calling this man. He did not come.
I left the church that night deeply troubled. By the next Wednesday I had made my decision. When the church met for prayer meeting that evening, I showed up and asked to speak. I got up and announced my resignation from the church. I denounced some of the members of the church for the lives they were living, and told everyone how disappointed I was in what had happened. Then I walked out. I was crying as I did this. I felt as if a large hole had been drilled in my heart that night.
Within the week, several other families followed me out of the church. Nearly all of the men who had joined me in those Saturday night prayer meetings were among them. It struck me that the cleansing occurred in reverse. We left the dirty rats behind.
After that, Doris and I returned to the Marlette church. And that is another wild story.