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" I went to AC to be in the ministry in spite of warning from Apostles not to think you could come to AC with that goal. It was and I simply reached my personal goal.
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.
I just wanted to share that with my friends here on Banned.