{"id":2714,"date":"2025-12-07T02:54:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T02:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2714"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:17","slug":"god-forbid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2714","title":{"rendered":"GOD FORBID"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the late 1990s, when I first announced to my parents my intention to go to seminary so that I could further my theological studies in the interest of a career in ministry, my father&#8217;s reaction was this:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;God forbid!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it wasn&#8217;t what it sounded like.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My father had been on many church committees over the years and he knew how the sausage was made. His concern was that I was too idealistic and that when I got to my first church I would get chewed up and spit out.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dad was honestly fearful that if I entered the ministry, I would get so discouraged by church people&#8217;s behavior that I would end up leaving the faith altogether!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That never happened, obviously, but a class or two at seminary on the topic of &#8220;people being people&#8221; wouldn&#8217;t have hurt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got a solid real-world education on that topic during my family&#8217;s departure from Haiti 5 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it left me better equipped for ministry today.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the late 1990s, when I first announced to my parents my intention to go to seminary so that I could further my theological studies in the interest of a career in ministry, my father&#8217;s reaction was this: &#8220;God forbid!&#8221; But it wasn&#8217;t what it sounded like. My father had been on many church committees [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}