Darrel Sipes of California is a PK (Preacher’s Kid) whose father closed his church last spring before re-opening on Easter. Darrel explains his dad’s reasons—but he also points out that pastors should have seen through this lunacy from the start. 

I told my dad he should have never closed.

And I used his own logic to prove it.

I remember being young and working with my dad (he was a full-time carpenter and unpaid pastor for 10 years).

Ahem. I have known so many godly men in this situation, serving without pay or recognition in spreading the Gospel. Yet when Christianity’s many enemies attack the Church as a money-making racket, they speak as if only “megachurches” populate the country.

One day while driving we were talking about “Global Warming” and I was saying (something like), “Oh, man, dad, everyone is saying this could be very bad.”  And he responded with, “Well what is the ultimate thing ‘they’ say will happen?”

I said, “The whole earth will be flooded…”

And he stopped and said, “Well son, then we know the whole thing is either an outright lie, or they are just mistaken, because we as Christians KNOW the earth will never again be flooded.”

So I used that same logic, the logic that would NEVER trust evolutionary, Pro-Choice, pedophile, satanists (whom I DO pray find Jesus) when they tell me that part of what “needs to be done” is the “forsaking gathering together.”

And the SAME pastors who preached for YEARS that “online church is NOT church” all of a sudden said, “We can gather online and still fulfill the mandate to gather together.”

Yo, Parson Goat: if the church-thing doesn’t work, you could always apply to the CDC or the WHO. They hire personnel willing to change their principles on a dime like that.

So I saw through it from literally Day 1.

My dad saw it a little different.  When he saw billionaires be willing to cancel the sports and events that make them billionaires he thought, “If these greedy people are willing to lose money, maybe there IS something to it.”

Of course we know that the government “bailed out” those billionaires with OUR children’s labor, and future labor, so the reason it “might have been real” was not a reason at all.

My dad knew where I stood.  He knew that it was his raising of me to “trust the Bible, not man” that made me disagree with him ever closing.  But he has stood firm ever since Easter, repented of ever closing, and if I didn’t live on the other side of the country I’d be proud to call him my pastor. 

Thank God for Pastor Sipes’ devotion and humility. May the Goats follow his example.

The Best of Becky Akers