Looking back over the last several years of my life conjures up a lot more frustration and brutal memories in my mind than I would like to admit.

We have seen more people die whose lives we fought to save than I have been able to keep track of.

I lost track after 40.

I have spent countless hours writing articles, shooting, producing, and editing videos, designing graphics and creating products that would spread the message that I have felt God has put in my heart to share.

I have spent more time than I can accurately describe designing and redesigning this website, compiling articles and teaching materials that myself and others have created in order to serve the Body of Christ with Biblical, truthful, and empowering teachings that would launch people forward.

There have been a lot of ups and downs–and as much as I don’t like to say as such, there have been a lot more downs than there have been ups.

I have seen firsthand the dark underbelly of “ministry” that goes on behind the curtain of the Sunday Morning Charade. I have seen blatant deception and lies run rampant behind the scenes of ministries that people around the world have grown to love and respect.

I have watched with horror as people that I had long looked up to have discarded those who have dared to question them or their ‘ministry’ friends like yesterday’s newspaper.

I cannot even fathom how much time I have spent going back and forth with self-professing Christians whose ‘god’ sounds a lot more like the devil than Jesus Christ.

I have cringed time and again at the kinds of emails and messages that have been railed at us — the accusations of being “dishonoring” and “divisive” simply because we have adamantly refused to swallow everything that is put in front of us and called “gospel”.

I have cried harder than I thought possible…hot, burning tears of frustration and turmoil over the state of the church and how much those who profess Christ tolerate the abuses and bondage that people are placed under at the hands of controlling, manipulative ‘pastors’ who seem to care for little more than making sure their own agendas are taken care of.

I have cried over the fact that despite what I believe and see in the Scriptures, I have not yet been able to produce the kind of results that I profess and see in the life of Jesus and His disciples.

And so people have died.

People close to us, people far from us, and everything in between.

We have watched as a new father has defended the 8 inch tumor on his newborn’s neck as an act of a “sovereign God” when we had been called in to pray for the boy.

A few days later, the father opted to pull life support and write it all off to “the will of God”.

All this after having spent hours counseling his wife that Jesus never said such atrocious things about sickness.

We have spent hours trying to raise the dead multiple times — staying long after everyone else had given up.

I have been to the funeral of a wonderful toddler in the city where the church I first heard about trying to raise the dead was located.

And while we were speaking life up to the moment that the boy was put in the ground, many of the attendees of this church were also laying hands on the coffin…but they were trying to get some of the deceased boy’s ‘anointing’, not trying to bring him back from the grip of death.

I have been to the funeral of a man who was an avid smoker his whole life and who ended up dying of lung cancer…but not before we spent days and days at the hospital commanding the cancer in his body to die…and not before he miraculously came out of his cancer-induced coma and was up and walking around, seeming like he had totally rebounded…only to succumb once again to the death-grip of his addiction, smoking one last cigarette that ended up killing him within a day.

I could go on and on with true stories of things we have witnessed that would horrify you.

The amount of pain, frustration and despair that we have encountered over the last several years in ‘ministry’ is something I would not wish on my worst enemy.

I say all this to lay a foundation for you for something that does not come easy for me to say.

I say all this to communicate something that many will try to write off as a rash decision and one that I indeed hope will change at some point in the future…but for now, and for the health of my family and myself, it is a decision that I have to make.

My wife and I have decided to indefinitely suspend any and all ‘ministry’ activities that we have been engaged in or will be engaged in.

We have been so burned by the seemingly endless barrage of needs and complaints and other people begging for our help…moreso than I can adequately convey in this feeble human language. I know full well about those ‘wordless groans’ that Paul talks about in the book of Romans.

The best way that I can describe what this has all felt like is like having a Sunday-Afternoon-Only Spiritual Buffet that is attended only by Christians who are extremely temperamental, impossible to please, and beyond that, really, really bad tippers.

The amount of selfishness that we have encountered as we have set out into the world of ‘full time ministry’ is one of the most appalling things that I can’t even begin to express to you.

The amount of time, energy, effort, blood, sweat, and tears that we have poured into trying to help the most people possible is unfathomable. We have received wonderful testimonies from around the world of people who have been healed and set free as a result of what we have done in getting the Gospel out to them, and for those things I am eternally grateful.

We have had a handful of people who have helped support us, prayerfully and financially, over the last few years, and again, we are extremely thankful for you.

On the flip side, it has been mind-numbing to me how much those who profess Christ can reflect so little of His heart, His character, His generosity, and His self-less-ness…and instead reflect the aforementioned “spiritual buffet” mentality — consume, consume, consume…take, take, take…yet seem to care very little for those who make sure the ‘buffet’ is there for them.

Maintaining this website and all of the other sites that we have created has never been a side ‘hobby’ of ours.

I have worked longer and harder on creating all of this stuff than most people work in years at their 9-5 jobs.

The reality is that the number of people who have begun to look to us as their saviors has simply become far too much to handle…emotionally, physically, spiritually, and especially financially.

Less than half of 1% of the 350,000+ views on our site have even bothered to see how they could support us in our efforts to keep this thing moving forward.

It is incredibly frustrating when we preach the polar opposite of what churches today preach and say what Paul said — to “give what you have decided in your heart to give” — only to find out that very, very few people actually feel like supporting us.

It is insanely disheartening.

I don’t say all of this to guilt trip anybody. Seriously.

I say all of this because it is the truth.

I say all of this because the perception that people have of who we are, how we are, what we do, and how we do it is severely skewed.

I say all of this to express to you all why we have decided to take an indefinite hiatus from all of it.

I say all of this to hopefully convey to those of you who are considering trying to ‘follow in our footsteps’ so to speak and join the growing bandwagon of internet ‘ministries’ that it is not all fun and games, it is life and death.

I say all of this to warn those of you who are still young and have stars in your eyes that you’re going to be the next great ‘anointed’ speaker that is going to help usher in that great ‘move of God’…I warn you that you are deceiving yourself.

If you really are preaching the Gospel, then you will be hated, ridiculed, misunderstood, maligned, persecuted, disregarded, dishonored, and disrespected a whole lot more than you are lauded, loved, praised, and welcomed.

I didn’t say that first. Jesus and His disciples did.

I say all of this because there are staggeringly few who will really tell it like it is.

I say all of this because I don’t mince words and life is too short to live it with regrets.

I don’t regret the last few years of my life, do not hear what I am not saying.

It has given me a lot of perspective and understanding. It has given me a lot of answers but at the same time it has given me a lot more questions…questions that I am going to talk to God about instead of trying to find someone else to give those answers to me.

Either way, we are moving forward with the next chapter of our lives.

I do not know what that will look like exactly, but I do know that it won’t look like me spending hours of my life giving out endless articles and videos that get passed around and then discarded after repeated use like a package of chewing gum.

I still plan on compiling a lot of my writings from this page into book form but will probably release them under a pseudonym because well, frankly, I’m tired of my actual name being associated with the institutional religious nonsense of Christianity today.

I am not going to be deleting this page or the Facebook page that is associated with it — as I trust that those who I have given administrative privileges to will continue creating content that will serve and help people move forward in their walk with Christ — and I am thankful for and applaud them for doing so.

The fact is, at this point in my life, I don’t have much else to write or talk about that I haven’t already written or talked about.

I am not going to simply keep creating content for the sake of creating content and feeding the machine of consumerism that so many Christians suffer from today. 

I will write and create things as I am inspired to do so, and not a moment sooner.

I have decided to continue on this journey of life and learning what it really means to love as Christ loved — and for me to do that, at least at this time, I need to pull back from the crowds, work on repairing broken relationships, spend time with my family and friends, and do what is in my heart to do…and for now, that looks like going out into the world and not spending so much of my time around Christians who think like me.

Kind of like how Paul gave up trying to preach to the Jews in the synagogues and went instead to the Gentiles, those who were avoided by the religious crowd and thought of as ‘unclean’.

Those are the kinds of people I need to be around at this stage in my life.

Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”

That said, please stop sending us prayer requests and theological questions. We are not a spiritual vending machine.

There are many others who are much more aptly able to address those things right now than I am.

I love and appreciate all of you who have stood by us and supported us through thick and thin–you know who you are.

I don’t know what the future holds…but I do know that God is good and that He will continue bringing us into a deeper understanding of who He is and how to love as He loves.

And for now, that looks like putting our ‘ministry’ as we have known it on the shelf and getting out into the real world that is full of real people with real problems and learning through practical experience what it looks like to be Jesus to the people around us.

We love you guys.

Over and out.

 

 

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