I’m an Adventist minister who left the church 23 years ago. This is my story: Why I left, and why I’m back.
Raised in an Adventist home in Boise, Idaho, I felt called to the ministry quite young. As a child, sitting in the pews and watching the preacher, I knew in my heart that this was what I wanted to do.
I graduated from Gem State Academy in 1966, and then went to Walla Walla College, where I finished four years later with a Bachelor of Arts in Theology. Though utterly sure of my calling, I was caught by my Greek teacher playing tennis during the Week of Prayer the year I graduated. She told me, right there on the court, and in no uncertain terms, that God had not called me to the ministry. But I knew better. I got calls that year from about a half dozen conferences.
I pastored in New England for about three years. I enjoyed every minute. I especially loved working with people, going to their homes, praying with them, pointing them to the hope we have in Jesus. Then I got into evangelism, where I worked for six years in the Colorado and Upper Columbia conferences. All my life I had wanted to be a Seventh-day Adventist minister, preaching the three angels’ messages; and now I was doing it. They were, for the most part, happy years.
Something Brewing
But storm clouds were brewing. The 1970s was a time of theological ferment in the church. I had been exposed to the teachings of Robert Brinsmead and his so-called awakening message, which centered on the concept of perfectionism and the “final generation.” We focused on the idea that God would have a sinless generation of people who would stand in the time of trouble without a mediator. Perfectionism and sinless living became the focal point for a lot of members, including me.
Eventually, though, I discovered, as did others, the great truth of justification by faith alone, through the substitutionary death of Jesus. There is no better news to fallen, sinful humanity than the news of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ; that we are saved by a righteousness outside ourselves. To know that Christians are saved and entitled to heaven by Christ’s becoming their substitute and living a perfect life of obedience on their behalf was the greatest news I’d ever heard. The church needed to rediscover this truth, I reasoned.
Unfortunately, many of my colleagues didn’t stop there. We twisted the meaning of the gospel until it became one of the reasons for throwing out the Sabbath, the pre-Advent judgment, and Ellen White’s ministry. Anything that didn’t fit within our view of what the new covenant gospel meant was swept away. Eventually, that meant Adventism too.
I’ll never forget the day in 1982 when, after a long and tense meeting with the local conference officials, I left not only the ministry I had been called to but also the church I had loved since childhood.
Sometimes God has to allow something to happen to get our attention.
My Wandering
After I left the church and renounced my calling, I ended up doing something I never dreamed of doing: selling insurance. I hated it. This wasn’t my calling; being an Adventist minister was.
Five years after leaving the ministry, I developed deep anger toward the church. After I left, not one individual—pastor, administrator, or lay member—ever approached me about returning. No one from the church showed any interest in me as a person. Was I not a soul to be nurtured for the kingdom of heaven? Was I so lacking in spiritual value that no one saw in me one who was worth saving for God’s kingdom? Apparently not, for in 22 years of wandering, no one called or knocked on my door.
The frustration of not having fulfilled my calling was overwhelming. I remember listening to radio sermons by Charles Stanley, Bob Moorehead, Ron Mehl, Alistair Begg, John MacArthur, and others about spiritual healing, God’s love to sinners, and His willingness to forgive and accept. Many times while listening to sermons in the car, I pulled to the side of the road and wept uncontrollably. The burning desire to serve God and His people never left me. And yet, as the years passed, I felt I could not return to Adventism. After all, no one there cared. I believe now that if someone had come to work with me, I could have been won back much earlier.
In 1990 my wife, Leslie, and I decided to visit an Adventist church in Washington. As we were about to go into the service, we met Natasha* on the church steps. I didn’t know her, but she knew me. She called me an apostate, told me that I was going to hell, that I had the mark of the beast, and that God was going to destroy me. This was my first contact with Adventism in nine years.
Leslie and I then moved to Montana in 1991. We lived less than a mile from an Adventist church, and one Sabbath we visited. During the service someone recognized my name in the guest registry as a former Seventh-day Adventist minister. It was one potluck Sabbath I’ll never forget. As the guests, we were the first to go through the line. When we sat down to our table, no one joined us. Leslie and I ate our meal by ourselves. Never did we feel so unwanted or unwelcome; never did we get a call or visit, not even from the pastor.
Needless to say, we were deeply hurt. People want to be loved and accepted in spite of what they believe doctrinally. One only need look at Jesus Christ and His infinite love for a model of how He accepted the ungodly.
Time of Trouble
In 1998, after years of frustration in the insurance industry, I found a niche in sales, which I loved. I began a seminar-lecture-workshop business doing estate planning. This proved to be extremely successful. I worked the seminars six months a year, made a nice salary, and spent the rest of the year in semiretirement. I was going to do this until I retired; I had it all worked out.
But then disaster struck. Having become comfortable, having achieved goals I could live with, having positioned myself and my business where it could basically take care of me for the remainder of my life, I lost it all. Through a series of unfortunate events and false charges, I lost my license to do business, and my career came to a screeching halt. When my license was revoked in 2002, this ordeal became one of the most heart-wrenching experiences I’d ever encountered. For the second time my life fell apart before me.
You’ve heard the story of the man who sold his prize mule, guaranteeing that it was an obedient and cooperative animal. The buyer returned the mule, stating, “You said this was a cooperative mule, but I can’t get it to do anything.”
The seller said, “No problem.” He picked up a two-by-four and hit the mule over the head. “First,” he said, “you have to get its attention.”
Sometimes God has to allow something to happen to get our attention. In my case He used a lot of pain to bring my thoughts back to Him. The loss of a successful business was devastating. I had never faced so difficult a challenge.
Damascus Road
It was then, at my life’s lowest valley, that I walked into the Adventist Book Center in Spokane, Washington, in April 2004. My intent was to browse and leave, something I did once every few years. Just browse and leave.
I hadn’t been in an Adventist bookstore for about five years, and the first thing I noticed was a book called Graffiti in the Holy of Holies. The author, Clifford Goldstein, was unknown to me. For some reason I purchased the book and drove 120 miles back home to Lewiston, Idaho.
That night my life was changed. That book became my own Damascus road experience. In Goldstein’s book were answers to the questions that—had I been given years ago—would have kept me from leaving both the ministry and the church. For the first time ever I could see how the gospel, far from contradicting Adventism, was given its fullest expression through the teachings of the church. I had to go up to my home office to read and reread the book because I didn’t want my wife to see me sobbing like a baby.
Graffiti in the Holy of Holies was the most commonsense approach to the pre-Advent judgment I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. For more than 20 years I had wandered in the wilderness. And here, in this book, were all the answers I was seeking! I read the whole book that night and reread it on Friday. I’ll never forget feeling the warmth of God’s Spirit upon me and the change of attitude that accompanied the reading of that book. That night I gave my heart to Christ and determined to return to the Adventist Church.
On Monday I drove back to the Adventist Book Center and bought every book this Goldstein guy had written. The one I badly needed, The Remnant, is a book every member and former member needs to read; it should be required reading for every new Adventist believer. The book had a message that I, the hard-hearted, angry, backslidden preacher, needed to hear.
When I went to the counter with Goldstein’s books, the clerk said, “By the way, Mr. Goldstein is going to be in Spokane this coming Sabbath, and he’s going to be holding four meetings.”
The next Sabbath Leslie and I went to that church in Spokane. There were no Natashas to greet us at the door, and we did not sit by ourselves at the fellowship meal. Goldstein’s four sermons were just what I needed, too. If someone had told Goldstein that a backslidden minister on his way back to the church would be at his meetings, I don’t think he could have picked four sermons better suited for me.
When I spoke personally with Cliff, he told me that his trip had been planned more than a year and a half in advance—and yet a little more than a week earlier I had walked into the Adventist Book Center and bought his books.
“The Lord is talking to you, Dennis,” Cliff said to me that weekend. “You better listen.”
The Prodigal Returns
I did listen, and I’m back. At my request, on May 8, 2004, Clifford Goldstein rebaptized me into Jesus Christ, and it is my decision to live out my life of salvation in Jesus in the context of the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
It was a long and painful road home. As I look over the past, I’m convinced that as a church, however correct our doctrines, we need to live out the compassion and mercy that Jesus embodied. So many who leave us, I believe, would not leave, or would be so much more apt to return, were we to better represent the love of Christ. I know, because I have experienced for myself firsthand what happens when that love is missing. Though I’m not judging those who treated me poorly, and I forgive everyone, even Natasha, I wish we could all learn to love as Christ loved.
I don’t know yet what the Lord has planned for me. I know, though, that the same God who didn’t abandon me—even after all those years—and who providentially brought Clifford Goldstein into my life isn’t through with me yet.
“O give thanks unto the God of heaven: for his mercy endureth forever” (see Ps. 136:26).
*Not her real name.
