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Good morning church. Welcome to the eternity life podcast. This is pastor Daniel of Christ. The king Lutheran church in Cary, North Carolina. Today I'm interviewing Reverend George Fuller. Just a little bit of background. George is like a father figure to me and a pastor. He was the one who preached at our wedding and, 20 years later, he is. now a mentor in my life and was at my senior pastor installation just last month. George, his two sons trip and Steven are two of my best friends. And that's how I got to know George, but later he became a pastor. For me. We started going to his church and then the summer after I graduated high school, I lived with George and his family. And, they've always been like family to me. He is such a brilliant theologian. And has the passionate heart of a pastor. I'm excited for you to hear his faith story, the ups and downs. Some of the trauma of working for the church is part of this story and also where he sees church going forward. Enjoy.

Speaker: 1:15

I'm back with Reverend George Fuller.

1:18

He's one of the people I most look up to in the world. So I appreciate you being on the podcast today.

Speaker: 1:24

I'm glad to be here.

1:25

I'd love to hear a little bit of your story and your call story.

Speaker: 1:29

All

Speaker 2: 1:29

right starting in 1972, I read my Bible every day and prayed every day. And the only philosophy I started with was, Because people didn't teach me to understand the Bible, they just told me to read it. So, on a particular day, uh, I went to school, um, I walked into Spanish three class and there were two girls in a study carol talking and one girl was weeping. Um, and the other girl was telling her she was going to go to hell because she had committed fornication because she had sex with a guy, went all the way with a guy without being married. And I listened for a minute thinking I wouldn't interrupt. And then. I decided I needed to. So I said, that's not true. And she said, my dad's a preacher. He says it is. And that's what the Bible says. And I said, well, your dad's wrong. Nothing can keep you out of the love of God that, um, the only thing that keeps you out of the love of God is for you to choose not to enter the love of God. And she said, is that true? And the other girl said, it is not. And she walked out, man, And I was left there with the girl crying. And so I went around and I took the chair where the girl left in the study, Carol, and we started talking and she was saying, tell me what you're talking about. So I won't take the time to do the whole conversation, but she calmed down and I looked at her and I said, so are you okay? And then I looked up and Mr. Hazleton was sitting in his desk at the front of the class. And everybody had walked in for class, so they were overhearing the explanation. And so Ms. Chastenson said, are you done? And I said, yeah, I'm done. He said, okay, can we start class now? I said, yeah. And then I realized, oh no, I'm not going to get invited to parties. I am now the religious fanatic. Oh crud. I mean, I was, oh no. And I went and sat down and then after class Mr. Hazelton said, can I talk to you, George? And I thought he was gonna tell me not to.

Speaker: 3:17

Proselytize

Speaker 2: 3:17

not to. Yeah. And he said, George, that was a wonderful thing you did for Carol. And I just, are you gonna be a preacher or something? And I said, no, no. So then I went to psychology class and I walked into lunch. I walked to our table. We had a table. My click, I walked to the table and they looked at me and went, here comes the preacher. You better watch what you're saying. We heard what happened with Carol. And so then when I got in the car with Ken, I said, Ken, several people said I ought to be a preacher. So I didn't think he would think me a preacher. He said, I think it'd be cool to have a preacher like you. I went to my after school job at the A& W restaurant. And then I made extra money by being the janitor after closing hour. So then I got home late and walked into my mom and dad were in their bed reading. And I walked by the, by their door. And I said, what do you guys think I'm going to do when I get out of high school? My dad says, not any of our business is your choice. And I said, Oh, okay. So I went in, opened my Bible up. And, and that night, the next thing I was to read was first Timothy chapter three. My, my son, Timothy, if you aspire to the office of pastor, you aspire to a good work. And I just got chills all over me. And I thought, Oh no, God's asking me to be a preacher. And so I walked back into my parents. I said, what do you guys think I'm going to be when I grow up when I get out of high school? They said, it's not our decision. It's yours. And I started crying. And they said, what's going on? I said, I just think, I think I know what I'm going to do, but I need your opinion. I'm not going to do what you tell me. Dad said, we think you're going to be a minister. It just seemed like the thing you're going to do. Just resigned to. And so I went back into my room and prayed to God and said, yes.

Speaker: 5:00

Tell us, you eventually started a church. Tell us what that was like.

Speaker 2: 5:05

I was at Woodland Baptist Church in Wake Forest and things were going well. We were growing and we had bought land and paid for it, built a building, paid for it in 18 months. Everything was like flowing along really well. And then, um, I coached baseball, basketball, and soccer with my sons. And I noticed that, The only people that joined my church had a church background that there were a lot of people, especially in the trailer park in places. I went that weren't connecting to church and it dawned on me that they were having to have 3 conversions before you can access the grace of God fully. You had to learn the vocabulary of the culture as well as have a spiritual hunger that seems to be satisfied by Christ. And so I was reading through the Bible and came to Paul's. Man from Macedonia passage in my morning prayer life and thought God was telling me to start a new church where you don't have to translate the gospel. And so I shared it with my wife, ended up starting a church in Raleigh, North Carolina. And the church was built on small groups, so we didn't own any property. We had small groups. And so I did my doctorate in small groups, so I formed planned a small group system and we built small groups. And so they were basically like little home churches. And then we all got together in the movie theater once a week and worshiped. And we had a rock and roll band, because if you don't, my view at that point was, if you don't. Have someone's music. You don't, they don't feel fully welcome. And so you have a variety of music because you want people to recognize themselves in worship and not just the other conversion agendas.

Speaker: 6:41

I remember going to all those worship services. And people identified how long they had been part of new community based on if they started at this movie theater or the old movie,

Speaker 2: 6:53

the old movie, exactly

Speaker: 6:54

before there were

Speaker 2: 6:55

stadium seating. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. And so we had, you know, we had contemporary music and, um. And they were visual, so we started doing slides, but back then you had to actually turn in your slides to the developer and they developed real movie slides, real slides and a slide projector. Anyway, so we did all that and then, um, I, I became connected with the recovery community. And so our church became probably two thirds people who had mental illness or gay or, um, addiction issues. I helped start a AIDS ministry where we minister to people with AIDS and their caregivers and started making all of my evangelical, um, core group nervous.

Speaker: 7:41

Yeah, I remember when I did my chaplaincy and, uh, you know, I, I brought up your name once and all of the chaplains who did, you know, alcoholism ministry or drug addiction ministry. They're like, oh, yeah, I know George. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yeah. I remember a guy coming to my office and he said, I was in jail and somebody said, if you want to get a new life, go talk to George Fuller. And they said, but it's weird. They said, don't go talk to him unless you want a plan. Yeah. He doesn't help you unless you're willing to make a plan. But anyway. Um, and so we had a crisis of, um, relationship with my leadership as I changed my mind a lot, because I kept meeting people, became good friends with the rabbi. And

Speaker: 8:29

you eventually built a building.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Oh yeah. 2001 when 9 11 happened, all of a sudden all my leadership wanted permanence and legitimacy. And so they all wanted a building.

Speaker: 8:41

So the thing that started out as we don't have a building and that's our niche, Started to say we want a building.

Speaker 2: 8:48

So we, let's see, we started 92 in 2001. We started looking for a place to have a building. And in 2003 or four, we moved into the building. And, um, then we had a big note. To pay to pay back the bonds, and I remember in a leadership meeting saying to the leadership, this sure smells like Egypt and because now we were having instead of meetings around what's going on in people's lives and all of our small groups and what we need to do to help that we began to talk about paying for making the making the payments and. We had to reach people who could give because now we, our overhead was up 4, 000, 14, 000 a month. And so, and then I did a same sex marriage and I told the leadership I was going to do it. And I told him, I'm not asking for anything else. For you to agree with it or have give me permission. I just want you to know and make sure you tell the church They don't have to agree with it But if two disciples of jesus christ want to make a covenant, I will be with them to make that covenant. So Turns out that was causing lots of anxiety. And so in 2011 uh, there's a leadership meeting and This group of people was asking me to resign and I wasn't going to fight And so I just kept asking for a church meeting and the leadership didn't want a church meeting, so I left.

Speaker: 10:09

They had signed a petition or something,

Speaker 2: 10:12

right? Yeah, there was a document with a bunch of people's signatures on them. And anyway, I was very hurt and angry and confused. Did you feel blindsided? I was blindsided. Oh, it was blindsided. No one told me. Well, I had a, I had a, when somebody got a word of it that wasn't supportive of it and called me and like at 11 o'clock the night before the meeting and said, I think they're going to ask you to resign. And I was like, really? But I didn't know who was on the list. So, I could have stayed. Because I would have won a confidence vote, but the whole, my whole, paradigm of church did not exist once that happened, because the whole paradigm was the grace we're in is big enough. We just decide how to work through differences. We don't let them separate us. So anyway, so I was kind of a mess for a little while.

Speaker: 11:06

We were all so angry. We were looking at your church thinking, this is where church is going. We're really excited. We'd love the contemporary. You're arguably the best preacher that I know, maybe rivaling Stephen, your son. Um, and, uh, I was, we were all so upset that you did, in our minds, the right thing. You did a civil ceremony before it was, before there were marriages. Yeah, I wasn't,

Speaker 2: 11:38

wasn't legally an author. It was 2011? Mm

Speaker: 11:41

hmm. Yeah. Or 2010, probably, when I did it. And in a church that you founded, you know, um, to be blindsided like that, uh, uh, you I'm still angry. I can't even imagine, you know, how you feel.

Speaker 2: 11:57

I think I now understand how I contributed to it happening. Um and so I think I was just as much the cause as the victim, uh, because I just, I was not paying attention to the anxiety rising within the church. Um, and I wasn't bluntly honest. In my public messaging, but I was authentic and transparent in my private conversations. And so I never did a sermon on being open and affirming. I just did a, did sermons on, we don't reject anybody and yeah. And so I didn't get, I didn't give the church the option of deciding as a whole what to do. Yeah. And I put people in leadership who were. A long time conservative people and very faithful and, you know, good, good folks. And so I was just naive about the anxieties that were rising among the leadership and among the people. So when I look back, I wish I had been more thoroughly clear and kept asking the church to decide to go with me instead of just. Going to watch me go where I was going because I was changing my mind on things. I had a leadership meeting where I said to the leadership, we don't need to work on conversion anymore. There's no need to convert anybody. You don't enter the love of God. You can't exit the love of God. And so what we want to do is just invite people into a Christ way of being together. And Christ teaches us and enables us to love in that way. And so we're inviting people into our church, but we're not saving them from a hell because I don't have a literal hell anymore. You know, an eternal punishment of people you love. I just don't see God eternally punishing people. He loves

Speaker: 13:42

as somebody who looks up to you and was sort of following you. You are a rising star in the Baptist tradition, and we thought destined for great things. And then all of a sudden you're. You're thrown out and

Speaker 2: 13:56

Yeah, that's what it was.

Speaker: 13:58

I know you had other offers. Yeah,

Speaker 2: 14:01

I kept getting, uh, calls, you know, and visits from progressive churches that wanted to expand my reach kind of thing. And they were very confused when I stayed. My two motivations were the kind of community I'm part of and building was lifelong, not, not career oriented. And the second thing was I wanted my sons to grow up in one place and have a solid base community for life. And I moved 19 times before I got out of high school. So I thought the best thing for my kids. was for them to stay in the same place and have solid roots. And yeah, so I kept, I would just say

Speaker: 14:43

no. Whenever somebody asks you to interview somewhere else, you, yeah,

Speaker 2: 14:46

I would just, yeah, that was,

Speaker: 14:47

uh, and then after you got out of new community, you didn't enter the church again for quite some time.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Well, I was in church every week and I was, I was, community pastor at a church within a few months, part time. So I'm never not Christian and never not in the church, but I just, I went to a friend's church that I knew. Yeah. I was welcome in and just stayed there for eight years.

Speaker: 15:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:17

And, I didn't know what clergy meant because I didn't, I didn't fit in my people, if that makes sense. I left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2001 when you had to sign a confession of faith, and I just wasn't going to do that. So I became Cooperative Baptist, and then, then I'm,, now I'm discovering that Cooperative Baptists aren't Even where I am. So, um, there's certainly, I'm certainly in fellowship with lots of people across the spectrum of Christian faith, but, uh, to be a leader in the perspective I have from the perspective I have now is not really good for careers. That's just the way it is.

Speaker: 15:53

Yeah. Same

Speaker 2: 15:54

more. Um, I think the message of crisis, I understand it now is radically counter cultural. And so if. As long as church is friendly to culture, it's hard to have loyalty to power structures and economic hierarchies and anyway, follow the guy who died with nothing, giving people everything.

Speaker: 16:15

Yeah, right. And that paradox between, you know, it's hard to, It's hard to be a minister under call and get paid by the institution. And also the reason that those are hard is the reason why you would be good at it.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Well, yeah, I like the relationships I'm in. I don't have much, I don't have hardly any instinct not to be honest. Yeah. And yeah, there's. And there's also the journey of bringing people along as people brought me along because I can look back now and see how people were being kind to me when I was holding on to things I believe that proved to be untrue.

Speaker: 16:53

Well, let's shift gears there because that's a perfect segue into our relationship. Um, just briefly. My parents moved out of state before my senior year of high school. I lived with my Senecal teachers for the school year. And, um, as soon as I graduated, I moved in with you. I, that was fun. I joked with you that y'all built this house. Out in Wake Forest that, um, had your wife's sewing room. She, she always wanted this sewing room. And basically, as soon as you built the house, I moved in and she still didn't get her sewing room. If that isn't a story of like what parenting is like,

Speaker 2: 17:34

it was great though. Um, I mean, you're, you're so important to our sons and so, so much a part of, you know, who we are as a family that it was, I didn't even, I don't even remember thinking about it.

Speaker: 17:49

One of my, I have so many great memories, but one of my favorite memories, and I was just thinking about this again, because Easter's coming up next week was I was at your house and it was Easter. And I came downstairs and Tammy had bought me a new outfit to wear. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2: 18:06

That's the tradition. Yeah.

Speaker: 18:07

There was Stevens and then there was my outfit and I just thought, Oh my gosh, you know, um, I don't deserve to belong in this way. And isn't that what love is?

Speaker 2: 18:19

Yeah. The Easter outfits. That was the tradition. Yeah. From onesies all the way through adult clothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. We had Easter smokes later. When we'd all do a resurrection cigar and talk about the implications of the gospel.

Speaker: 18:34

Well, I think that's kind of where I want to take this conversation is all of those conversations that we had of reading books together. And, you know, you talking about feeling like you needed to leave the church because you were changing. was the same reason that you were such a strong mentor for us, because you weren't set in your ways. And a lot of us obviously are Bible nerds, like you were at 17. Um, obviously we were, a lot of us became ministers. I mean, a lot of us, like 12, I think ministers that hung out at the house from that group. Um, and we asked questions of our institutions of our churches and got cold answers. Or static answers or answers from a book that didn't match our reality. And then talking with you on the back porch, um, I learned so much more. You mentioned, you know, that hell isn't in the Bible. Isn't real. I remember, you know, you putting Rob Bell's book, Love Wins in my hands and saying, read this and then we'll talk. Yeah. And I remember reading it and saying, oh my gosh, you know, this opens up. I remember. I remember sitting there and talking Gospels were different. And you showed me an interlinear, you know, with Matthew, Mark, and Luke telling the same story, but, but side by side and noticing the differences. I remember you telling me about Q source. Yeah, source material for Matthew and Luke that they share these stuff, a lot of, a lot of that stuff, but it gave me such an advantage and a leg up by the time I went to seminary, you know, I was not wrestling with inerrancy. Right. Well, George, it's been really great hearing your faith journey and your work in the church. Hope you'll come back and tell us a little bit about what you're doing now.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Oh, I'm always eager to engage with you about whatever happens. All right. I'm glad to talk about it. Amen. Thanks, George. Thank you.