“Goodbye, Jesus”–A Book Review/Analysis of Tim Sledge’s Book (Part 1: An Overview of the Book)

Tim Sledge is a former Baptist minister who, for about 40 years, had been a pastor and Christian writer. As the title of his book, suggests, he no longer is a Christian. He now describes himself as a humanist, and in his book, Goodbye Jesus, he essentially gives his life story in which he details his journey into Christian ministry, his entire career as a Christian minister, and his eventual journey out of Christianity altogether.

I have read a number of other books by the likes of Dan Barker and John Loftus, both former fundamentalist preachers turned atheist, in which they recounted their journey out of Christianity, and simply wasn’t too impressed by either one. I even wrote a lengthy book analysis of Barker’s book (starting here). Quite frankly, I wasn’t planning on reading another book like them. However, after reading some back and forth on Twitter by Tim Sledge and a few other people, I thought I’d pick it up on Kindle, give it a read, and write a few blog posts on it! In this first post, I want to simply provide my initial impressions of the book as a whole and then give a brief overview of Sledge’s life as he describes in his book. So, let’s jump in!

Initial Impressions
I had two initial impressions of Sledge’s book. First, in terms of basic writing and book layout, if I was Sledge’s editor, I would suggest cutting the book down about 50-100 pages. The fact is, it is unnecessarily long—420 pages, to be exact. I understand then when one is writing their life story, particularly to explain what led to abandoning one’s faith of over 40 years, one might feel it is necessary to including every single detail of the key events. Truth is, though, you really don’t have to do that. For that reason, in terms of content, Goodbye Jesus seemed to me to be a good first draft that just gets everything onto the page. But my goodness, there were fairly large chunks that were pretty tedious to read.

The second impression I got from the book was that Sledge is really fixated on attendance and church growth. As we’ll see in my brief overview, at every stop on his ministerial journey, when talking about every church he had pastored, Sledge goes out of his way to remind the reader just how successful the church was under his leadership and just how much church growth happened under his watch…every church, every passing year, every chance he gets, Sledge is sure to relate the booming attendance numbers. I found that rather odd.

Beyond that, though, there would be no point in talking about the specifics of Goodbye Jesus unless I first provide a “Reader’s Digest” version of Sledge’s account of his life as a Christian minister and his journey out of Christianity. So, without further ado…

An Overview of Goodbye Jesus (420 pages in 2,000 words)
Sledge grew up in Texas, in a dysfunctional household. His father was an alcoholic and throughout his childhood, his parents would occasionally separate. In 1957, at 9-years-old, Sledge read through the Bible and, soon after, accepted Jesus as his savior. By 16, he was convinced he was called to the ministry. In high school, he was the president of the Christian student union at his school and met his future wife Linda. By the time he graduated, he had preached 78 sermons in 11 different cities. At the end of his senior year, he spoke at commencement to a crowd of 4,000 people.

Instead of going to Baylor University, which he considered “too liberal,” Sledge went to smaller local junior college and was involved in various student minister groups. During that time, at one student-minister retreat, he was hit on by an attractive blonde, but he declined the advances because he was dating Linda. Another time, a pastor, under the auspices of privately praying with Sledge, awkwardly hit on him as well. Sledge later came to realize the man was a sexual predator.

Sledge eventually married Linda, and, in the fall of 1969, they moved to Wheaton, Illinois to attend Wheaton College, where Sledge dreamed about being the next Billy Graham. During his time there, he became friends with Steve Bell, who ended up being Executive Vice President of the Willow Creek Association, and Phillip Yancey, the famous Christian author. He also became acquainted with David Mains, pastor of Circle Church and founder of The Chapel of the Air—Mains replaced Billy Graham and Sledge’s new role model.

After graduating in 1971, Sledge then went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest evangelical seminary in the world. During his time there, the wife of a fellow seminary student hit on him, but he refused. During his seminary days, as well as his doctoral program, he worked in a few churches. It was also during this time that his dad died in 1974. He still had struggled with alcoholism, but he had, later in life, given his life to Christ, and Sledge was convinced his dad was now in a better place.

Sledge then moved to New York, where he was the pastor at Bergen Baptist Church for six years. Under his leadership, the church began to grow, but some of the original members weren’t “on board” with the direction he was taking the church. They wanted things to stay the same, but growth meant change. During his time there, despite the growth, there were a number of instances of converts who ended up going back to their sinful ways.

In the early 80’s, Sledge and his family moved to Arizona, where he became the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buckeye, Arizona. In May of 1984, Sledge took part in a career assessment seminar and realized that he wanted to continue being a pastor but needed to find a new place of ministry—one that had more potential for growth. And so, in 1985, he became the lead pastor at Kingsland Baptist Church. He just knew it was the perfect place for him.

At Kingsland, he started “Smart Church Software” to really streamline methods for outreach and ministry. He started a “Great Commission Task Force” and a Prayer Hotline, and he immediately got the church to agree to a new building plan to expand the worship center and a make a new parking lot. By his first Easter there, attendance had gone up 21% to 689 people. By 1988, they were committed to an entire new building altogether.

During that time, though, Sledge started having panic attacks. And so, he ended up spending time at a treatment center called The Meadows, where he finally started to come to grips with the unresolved issues of his being the child of an alcoholic. He then started preaching sermons more about personal healing, and by Easter of 1988, attendance at Kingsland had grown to 978 people. He then started “Face to Face” small groups that helped facilitate people healing from unresolved issues and pain in their lives. Sledge was convinced that this was what the early church had been like.

In 1989, they broke ground on a new building, he wrote his second book, and, by that Easter, attendance had grown to 1,091 people. During that year, though, his mother died. When he went back home for the funeral, he found out for the first time that his dad had been married to another woman for 20 years before he had married Sledge’s mother. Quite a shock.

Still, over the course of the next couple years, attendance increased another 45%. During that time, though, Sledge got emotionally involved with a woman in one of his support groups. They never kissed or had sex, but as he puts it, they had an “emotional affair.” He eventually broke it off and confessed it to his wife, and, though it was tough, they worked through it.

By Easter of 1990, church attendance was at 1,578. The new building was up and running, along with a new “Encouragement Center.” Kingsland was now bigger than 99% of all protestant churches in America. By Easter of 1991, church attendance was at 1,750. But, during that time, Sledge sensed there were “two congregations” at Kingsland: (A) The “old guard,” who, along with the deacons, just wanted the status quo, and (B) The new people who were coming because of Sledge’s support group ministry.

That Christmas, Kingsland started “Bethlehem Boulevard,” a sort of ministry-attraction serving as a Christmas outreach to help keep the church growing. Over three days, 7,000 people came to it, and it grew up to 10,000 within a few years.

The next year, though, in 1991, Ed Young’s church, Second Baptist Church, was looking to expand, and it was planning to essentially encroach on the “turf” of Kingsland. People started saying that Ed Young knew how to do church growth and Tim Sledge didn’t. Sledge clearly was offended by this, after all, as he writes, “Doesn’t know how to do church growth? Under my leadership, Kingsland’s growth rate was more than three times the growth rate of its expanding community” (168). As a result, people started comparing the two ministers and their ministries.

The Easter worship attendance at Kingsland in 1992 was 1,947, up from 1,750 from the year before. That, together with the success of his book, Sledge writes, “my name was about to become known across the largest protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention” (175), and “My emerging role—as a spokesman for emotional healing in my denomination—felt meaningful and significant” (180). That being said, at that same time, in the spring of 1992, two tragedies happened. Within the span of 5 months, two teenage boys involved in the student ministry had committed suicide.

The Easter services in 1993 totaled 2,084. And then in December of 1993, Bethlehem Boulevard set a record with 12,433 attending. Not only that, but Sledge was consistently getting an approval rating of over 90% from his congregation every year. As Sledge writes, “Our church was growing. My work was steadily continuing to gain recognition. I was making a difference in an amazing congregation and beyond. In so many ways, I was living my dream” (183).

In the next few years, there were two other Christian ministers who wrote Christian recovery books that didn’t embrace the same methods Sledge used, and that created some friction within the church, because some members liked the other books better.

Then, in April of 1994, a teacher/coach at the local high school who was a church member had committed suicide, and it later came out that he was about to be accused of sexually abusing a student while he was claiming to witness to her. Despite that tragedy, Kingsland’s congregation continued to grow. In fact, in May, the church voted on yet another building expansion project—a 16,000 square foot educational building. Worship attendance had increased by 30% over the previous three years. Still, Sledge was worn out—the constant church growth, coupled with those recent suicides and sexual abuse issue had taken a toll on him. On top of that, there was growing tension between him and the deacons.

Easter of 1995 set a record: 1,275 people in attendance. But Sledge was worn down, and during a meeting with the deacons later that year, he opened up about how he was worn down. But the deacons had never approved of his recovery groups, had never attended them, and therefore didn’t know how to handle the kind of raw honesty and emotion that people in recovery groups were used to dealing with. As a result, they lost complete confidence in Sledge. He realized he made the terrible mistake of being too open and honest with these men.

The result was that in January of 1996, everything came crashing down. Despite the fact that there was overwhelming support by the congregation, the deacons essentially conspired to force him to resign. One of their complaints was that Kingsland should be experiencing more growth. (That year, the average weekly attendance had dipped from 1,016 to 1,006). By the end of the month, Sledge was out, despite, the fact that, as he writes, “In the 12 months prior to my resignation, 5,490 different people had attended some event at the church. In my 10 ½ year tenure, I led the church to grow four times as rapidly as the exploding community in which it was located. Four building programs had been completed. We had become a leader in evangelism and a national model for recovery ministries” (267).

By 1997, almost 50, Sledge still continued to go on speaking venues for his book and recovery program and had started another job in software. It went very well at first. He was making good money, was still helping people grow, and even had a new Lexus. Yet, within a few years, the software company folded, and he was still dealing with the hurt he felt from being forced out of his ministry. He was a spiritually damaged person.

Around 2001, he and his wife started attending Atwood Church, and he began helping people there by conducting support groups. Soon, though, he became emotionally-involved with another woman, Kimberly. In 2003, he decided to leave Linda to be with Kimberly. Obviously, the pastor at Atwood told them to leave, so they started attending another church, Triumph Church, but that didn’t last long because in one of the small groups, Sledge was too open and honest about his questions involving church, and the group leader screamed at him to get out.

In 2005, he and Kimberly split up. Sledge then called up the pastor at Atwood to see if he would work with him and help him in his emotional recovery. The meeting was contentious, and the pastor told Sledge that he was “permanently damaged.” Sledge was hurt and offended that this pastor refused to help him. That being said, Sledge points out that his books were still helping many people.

In any case, after that, Sledge went back to Kimberly and asked her to marry him. They were married in 2005 and joined a small Baptist church that wasn’t judgmental. Sledge started working with an associate pastor, but in the third counselling session, the pastor mentioned that his wife had killed her former husband. Sledge thought that was weird to bring up in the third counselling session. If the associated pastor had told him that in the first session, that would have shown Sledge he was open about really sharing his own struggles as well, but since he waited until the third session, Sledge never went back, and they left the church.

After that, Sledge was through going to church. At it was at that time he began to re-evaluate everything he had ever believed. He came to believe homosexuality wasn’t wrong, that there was no such thing as hell, and that the Bible was just an error-filled book that reflected the evolving beliefs of the ancient Hebrews and Christians. Yes, good things happened within the church, but also bad things—there was nothing supernatural about it. That was just the way life was.

Kimberly, though, wanted to keep going to church. And so, by 2010, the marriage fell apart.

With his personal story done, the last 60 pages of the book consist of Sledge talking about how his reading of Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier helped shape his new understanding of the Bible in particular. I will address those specifics in a later post.

Conclusion Thus Far
There you have it: 420 pages in 2,000 words. I’m sure you have a few impressions, and, apart from a few brief initial comments, I’ve tried to refrain from “getting in the way” of Sledge’s story. In my next post (or two), I will share my thoughts and observations, not only of his life story, but also of his comments at the end regarding how he now views the Bible and Christianity.