Why I Launched This Newsletter
and what you can expect from me.
Welcome, reader. As I say in my bio and “About” page, I am passionate about mutuality in God’s family. I help people envision a blessed alliance of women & men from all tribes and tongues, mutually serving Jesus Messiah. Here’s why:
I was born into an End Times Doomsday cult in 1971, which was an offshoot of the movement by William Branham, a mid-twentieth-century faith healer who was at one time more popular than Oral Roberts and a forerunner of the prosperity gospel and the New Apostolic Reformation. Among many alarming beliefs (everything from KKK-funded racist doctrines to a denial of the trinity), Branham taught deeply misogynistic biblical interpretations (“Now, there is nothing designed that can deceive, and be deceived, as easy as a woman”). I began to see how wrong this church was in the early 1990s when I became a Christian music DJ and was, for the first time in my life, regularly exposed to Christian coworkers and music lovers. It took a decade to leave because it was all I knew, and it contained my entire support network: family, friends, and respected elders.
A few years into my healing journey, I became a deacon and entered into full-time church ministry. In 2016, I became a pastor. Along the way, I wrote some worship songs that, while certainly not anything close to hit records, have been sung in thousands of churches around the world (like “Lead Us Back, All I Have Is Yours,” and “Let Justice Roll”).
One of the most disheartening things I’ve discovered in the last two decades is the depth of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and lust for power in many orthodox/mainstream Christian denominations, movements, and churches. Some of this masquerades as Christian teaching, undoing the reconciliation Christ brought us. I want to do my part to correct these errors. That’s why I’m here, and I hope you’ll be here for it, too.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28
Thanks for sharing a bit of your story, Bobby, I am sure it’s been a long and hard journey but praise God for the light. Thanks for your ministry. I am still unpacking the impact of some of the things you write about in my own church and abuse recovery.
Praise God for bringing you out! I have a similar message but mine is geared more toward the political addiction many have which includes how divisive and hate-filled many Christians have become.