Episode Forty-Four: The Interview-Pastor Melanie Tubbs

Pastor Melanie Tubbs inadvertently became the Pissed Off Southern Pastor-and all because her plans for her life weren't exactly what God had planned for her. In this longer episode, hear how what she thought her plans should be was not what God had planned for her.

Transcript

And some local pastors had put something in the local newspaper and asked me to sign it that was like,

The church says one man,

One woman,

And you know,

All this kind of stuff.

And I was like,

That doesn't,

I don't believe that in any way.

I don't believe that's what the Bible says.

Well,

I knew that they can actually put that in the paper and they would never get called on that.

They wouldn't get in trouble for that.

You can say that from your pulpit and nobody's going to call you on it.

But if I actually spoke out about what I believed,

I can get in trouble for it.

And that really pissed me off.

And so I wrote it and hit send.

The editors of the news magazine gave it the title,

Pissed off Southern pastor tells it like it is.

And within seconds of them posting it,

It went viral,

I guess,

First and foremost,

I'm a human being.

One of my favorite historical periods to study is native America.

And I love the fact that in most native American cultures,

There weren't two genders.

There were like nine.

That was just the way it was,

You know,

People,

People manifest themselves in all kinds of ways.

And so there,

There came a point for me that I was like,

You know,

I just,

I just want to be a human being.

And I just want to know that we're all human beings and all that other stuff doesn't matter.

For myself,

I'm a disciple of Christ.

I believe that my purpose in life is to try to spread the story that Jesus Christ really did come to teach us love and mercy.

And when asked what was most important,

He said to love God and love each other and,

And all the rest of it is just.

Legality.

I'm a mother.

I have two children,

Two grown children.

I'm a grandmother.

Actually don't call me that I'm a Mimi.

I'm a friend.

A lot of people assume that I'm a part of the LGBTQ community because I advocate for them so loudly.

And I suppose,

And I've,

I've actually been reminded that in the technical sense,

I could fall into one of those alphabet categories.

Um,

I've chosen to be single.

I've chosen to not date in any kind of way.

Um,

I'm not open to the idea at all.

I was approached because we,

We are in a state here in Arkansas where leadership in the Methodist church,

Uh,

Tends toward the Christian church.

Uh,

Tends toward the conservatives and as somebody who was a provisional asked who was going to be asking to be ordained.

There's some idea that there's something wrong with me because I've chosen to be,

I've chosen to be single and,

And to not date.

And I've even told some people,

You know,

Part of it is because I'm not a hundred percent over my ex husband.

Yes,

It's been 10 years,

But that does,

You know,

It's different for different people.

I just don't have a place in my life right now.

And I'm not sure I ever will.

So my grandmother,

Uh,

Who was born in 1920,

No,

1919.

She was born in 1919.

She's passed away now.

She passed away in 2014,

But I was very close to my grandmother and actually to her mother,

My great grandmother.

And as a child,

I would stay with them anytime my parents would let me.

But here in Arkansas,

You know,

There were still people in the fifties and sixties who didn't have indoor plumbing and that wasn't seen as weird.

There's some rural areas in Arkansas and,

And my family background is from those really poor rural areas.

And so my great grandmother still made her biscuits home,

You know,

Handmade and had big cans of flour in the kitchen and you know,

All that stuff.

And my grandmother loved to tell me stories.

And so she would tell me stories of when she was a young girl and she was always,

She loved to tell me about when she was a teenager.

And at that time it would have been well with her being born in 1919,

She was a child during the great depression,

You know,

Just coming of age during the great depression.

And so she would tell me that,

And she would tell me stories about play parties.

And I know this is a podcast.

And so I'm air quoting that play parties.

What I came to find out is I got older is they were based like they played spin the bottle and you know,

Walk,

Went in the closet and all kinds of stuff.

But my grandmother didn't do that.

Say it like that.

She would tell me that boys would give her clippers and it was literally like this.

We think of like fingernail clippers,

But for them,

It would be more like maybe a Swiss army knife might be more of what it was.

And so instead of giving their class ring,

Boys would give a girl their clippers,

This Swiss army knife thing.

Well,

Kind of find out my grandmother wouldn't have several clippers from several different boys at the same time.

And so when she was telling me these stories and I was little,

I didn't put three and three together,

You know,

But later on as,

As I became a teenager and I began to see these things,

I started looking back and going,

What in the world?

My grandmother.

But anyway,

So I would listen to these stories and she would talk about the CCC,

The Civilian Conservation Corps,

You know,

FDR's CCC.

Which basically they built rural Arkansas,

You know?

And so all these boys,

My grandmother dated were from there.

So then when I got older,

I liked to read historical romances.

And I realized one day as I was standing in the bookstore,

Picking out my next historical romance,

That I was picking it out based on the time period I wanted to study.

And I just had this wild idea.

And I thought,

Huh,

I bet I could get history books that I don't have to read the historical,

The romance part.

And I could just find history books on stuff I want to read about.

And so I left the romance section and went over to the history section.

I was like,

Oh my God,

What is this treasure trove of stuff?

I don't think you probably know this,

But I was a high school dropout.

Yeah.

I only finished the 10th grade.

And so it was four years later that I went and got a GED.

And then it was like nine years later before I got the nerve to tell anybody I wanted to go to college because I thought everybody would laugh at me.

Just a high school dropout.

I can't go to college.

And so the idea that I could go pick out a history book and read a history book was just so novel,

You know?

So I started reading history books.

And what I found is that now as a pastor,

That's an amazing thing to be able to tack on to your study of the Bible.

Because I just naturally want to know,

Well,

What was the culture of the time period and what were,

You know,

What was the political scene of the time period?

And what,

So what about this geography?

When you read the Bible in those kinds of contexts,

It's so much more alive.

My immediate family,

My mom and dad and my sister and I,

We went to church in spurts.

So when I was about five or six years old,

There was a time period that we went to church and we attended a Pentecostal church.

And it was a very conservative Pentecostal church.

The older women there,

The older women there,

The older women there,

The older women there,

The older women there.

We attended a Pentecostal church and it was a very conservative Pentecostal church.

The older women there wore only dresses and didn't cut their hair,

You know,

That kind of thing.

The younger women would do that away from church.

But I mean,

I would have,

I grew up thinking if you wore pants to church,

That was just like,

You just didn't do that.

Then we didn't go to church for a while.

And then when I hit my teenage years,

We started going back to that same church.

And then my immediate family stopped going to church at all.

And I started walking to an Assembly of God church,

Which was near us.

And so it was just,

You know,

That was the church that was two blocks away.

And so that's where I went by myself when I was like,

I don't know,

15,

16,

17 in that age range.

So I would go and attend their youth things and stuff like that.

I went through phases then as I moved out on my own.

I attended Baptist churches for a while in and out of Baptist churches.

My grandmother was the most formative person as far as my personal relationship with God.

And,

You know,

Always in her stories,

She intertwined God,

Where God was and all that.

You know,

A lot of what I know about the Bible came from her and to some extent from my mother,

But definitely more from my grandmother.

And I'll tell you what happened.

I had not gone to church for quite some time and had my son.

And my husband and I started talking about the fact that we really wanted to make sure that whatever it was that he grew up believing was something that we believed,

Something that,

You know,

We thought was important.

And so like a good historian,

I went online and I bought books and I started reading doctrines and statements and,

You know,

Different things from lots of different denominations.

And I was on their website one day on the United Methodist website and reading some of their,

You know,

Statements and things,

Their social creed.

And they actually have social principles that they go by.

They have an entire department devoted to that.

There was just this moment that I was like,

Oh,

My God,

Everything I believe has a name.

It's called Methodist.

And I've been Methodist my whole life and I didn't know it.

A friend of mine from high school that I hadn't talked to in forever had an online news magazine back in 2015,

And it was called Liberal America and blatantly liberal,

Completely all the way on the left.

And so she had seen a couple of things that I'd posted,

Like,

I don't know,

I'd posted some sermons I'd written or something like that.

And we started talking and she said,

You know,

I am way over on the left,

But I really she's very much a Christian.

And she said,

I would love to have a Christian left,

A liberal Christian voice on our news magazine to just write things reacting to current events from that viewpoint.

Because a lot of her writers,

Quite honestly,

Were agnostic or atheist,

You know,

Because it was so far left.

And so she said,

I know a lot of my readers are,

You know,

They don't trust religion and all that kind of stuff.

And so I'd really be interested in you do that.

So I said,

Sure.

I didn't have any editorial privileges or anything like that.

I would just write something up and send it to them.

And,

You know,

They would put a headline on it,

Do whatever.

I got mad about something that was happening in my community.

And so back then,

I mean,

I really I don't think I really understood the reach.

And that was when everybody was just starting to get into the blogging game and,

You know,

All that kind of stuff.

And I don't think I had any idea the reach that something like that could have.

And so I was really mad at something that was happening local.

And I sat down that night and just sort of spewed out this emotion that was burning inside of me and did it within that anger,

Fully embracing that anger.

Quite honestly,

It was about human sexuality and marriage.

And some local pastors had put something in the local newspaper and asked me to sign it.

That was like the church says one man,

One woman and,

You know,

All this kind of stuff.

And I was like,

That doesn't I don't believe that in any way.

I don't believe that's what the Bible says.

Well,

I knew that they can actually put that in the paper and they would never get called on that.

They wouldn't get in trouble for that.

You can say that from your pulpit and nobody's going to call you on it.

But if I actually spoke out about what I believed,

I can get in trouble for it.

And that really pissed me off.

And so I wrote it and hit send.

And while I was at it,

Like I got I was just I just was everything.

You know what else?

Not all Christians think that you ought to have 30,

000 guns in your house.

And so,

Yeah,

I just sort of spewed it all out there.

So the editors of the news magazine gave it the title Pissed Off Southern Pastor Tells It Like It Is.

And within seconds of them posting it,

It went viral.

And I'm talking I'm talking like thousands of hits a minute.

It was crazy stuff.

It was overwhelming.

And so people were looking me up on Facebook and trying to friend me.

And I didn't know who these people were.

I just shut down my Facebook page for a couple of days because I didn't have a Southern Pastor page at the time.

I won't go into the details of it,

But I actually did get in trouble.

The preacher version of getting called to the principal's office several times.

You know,

Lots of people,

Even my own friends,

Were mad that I posted that.

But here's what happened.

Here's the really cool thing that came from it.

I came to realize that there were a whole lot of people out there that needed somebody with a religious voice,

Somebody with the name pastor after their name,

To be mad on their behalf.

That they desperately needed someone speaking from the church's viewpoint to say,

You know what,

Not everybody believes that and it's not okay and it's harmful.

And we're pissed off on your behalf.

I started getting all these messages.

All these people were finding me and inboxing me and,

Oh my gosh,

For the first time in my life,

There's somebody from the church who doesn't make me feel like I'm bad or evil or broken or,

Thank you so much for speaking for me.

Thank you for being mad for me.

I'm talking hundreds.

Like,

I couldn't keep up with them.

After dealing with the getting called to the principal's office and,

You know,

Dealing with my own remorse with the fact that I could have been a little more pastoral about it,

You know,

Not been so flamingly angry,

I thought,

Okay,

What do I do with it?

So here are these people.

And one of the things that a lot of my clergy friends were saying,

You know,

You don't have to write for a page like that.

Like there are legitimate religious pages that are even progressive that you can write for.

And the more,

And I prayed about it a lot,

But the thing I kept thinking is,

You know what,

People who read that other stuff and go to those other pages,

They already are going to go there.

The people I'm speaking for and to don't go there.

Like that's not the people that are looking.

It's a different group of people.

And these are my people.

There are two different moments that I think sort of define how I ended up where I am today.

And so,

And they're connected.

I'll tell you how those happened.

So my husband was looking for a job out of state.

We had narrowed it down to two places.

He was either going to go to a place in Missouri or he was going to go to a place in Iowa.

You know,

Like a teacher and an OCD historian.

I had folders on my computer for both of these towns.

And I,

You know,

Put in there searches I'd done for jobs and churches and,

You know,

Just all kinds of things.

And I had found jobs.

Like I knew where I would be working if we went to the place in Missouri.

But it was looking more and more like we were going to go to Iowa and I didn't have a job there.

You know,

I was really stressed out.

And so it's during the summer and I'm sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop open.

And I'm really getting anxious about what if we end up there and I'm not going to have a job.

You know,

I had prayed about it.

God,

If there's something out there I'm missing,

You know,

Let me know.

So I'm sitting at my laptop one day,

One afternoon and I'm searching and whatever.

And very clearly I heard from somewhere behind me,

Check the church.

And I thought for a second,

Maybe my husband had walked into the room.

No,

There wasn't anybody there.

And so I thought I'm tired and I'm having an anxiety attack,

You know,

Or whatever.

And I just kept doing my thing and I heard it again.

Check the church.

I thought,

Okay,

Well,

That's ridiculous because we've already decided where we would go to church if we moved there,

But whatever.

So I had the link in my folder.

So I went to my folder,

Clicked on the link.

And in these bright scrolling marquee kinds of things across the top of their website,

Which had not been there when I was on their website the day before,

It was scrolling,

Seeking Christian education coordinator for our youth program,

Click here to apply.

I just slammed the laptop shut.

You know,

You like push yourself away from the table and you're like,

What in the hell just happened?

What in the hell just happened here?

And so I thought this cannot be right.

I've never,

I've never considered working in the church.

It was not even on my radar.

You know,

I was an educator.

That's what I did.

I'm a licensed educator.

Like I'd already looked into getting my teaching certificate approved in those other states and all that kind of stuff.

And I thought,

This is crazy,

But you know,

Out of curiosity,

I opened my laptop back up,

Click on the link.

And wouldn't you know that the list of stuff they were looking for was like curriculum developer,

You know,

All this stuff.

And they were literally things that I had had certifications or workshops or backgrounds in doing.

And because they were starting from scratch,

Trying to build a youth program,

They needed somebody that had all this background.

And I was like,

I don't know what's going on here.

And this is really freaking me out,

But okay,

Whatever.

To make the long story short,

From the time I clicked on that link until I was sitting in an interview in Iowa was less than a week.

And by the time I got in my car that day,

We were going to drive home from Iowa that same day I interviewed.

And so we're driving home that afternoon and they called and offered me the job.

So in less than a week I went from,

I would never have applied for a job at a church to,

I'd been offered this job.

My husband ended up taking the job in Missouri and I didn't get to go to Iowa and take that job.

And I was devastated,

Absolutely devastated.

And it was in that,

In that whole exchange and that entire thing that happened,

That I had that first notion that whatever it was that I was supposed to do next in my life was supposed to be at the church.

So we went to Missouri and that's a whole nother story.

Before it was all over with,

My husband ended up staying in Missouri and Lucas and I came back to Arkansas.

And within a year he had a girlfriend and we were on the road to divorce.

But no matter what happened,

Lucas and I were very active in our home church.

You know,

We came back home and we're back in our home church.

They ended up asking me to take on confirmation classes and teach confirmation classes.

And I became the confirmation director.

And this entire time I was dealing with the fact that God was calling me to something new.

I began,

As far as a job goes,

When we came back to Arkansas,

I started teaching at the local college at Arkansas Tech University.

So I was teaching history,

But at the college level.

But I would leave the church in tears almost every Sunday because I was feeling that so deeply.

And I was going to say it to anybody out loud.

That was 2009 when the incident happened with the laptop.

By the fall of 2012,

I had to tell somebody.

It was overwhelming.

And so I ended up telling somebody.

They referred me to who I needed to go.

And before you knew it,

I was in the candidate process.

Became a candidate for a licensed local pastor,

Which in the Methodist Church is,

You know,

That's what you do if you're not going to go to seminary.

So I did that first.

Yeah.

And I got licensed to be a local pastor.

And there's this week long intensive school that you go to.

So you pack up all your stuff and you go stay in these cabins,

You know,

At a retreat center for seven days straight.

Basically,

It's an intensive short version of seminary,

You know,

In seven days to prepare you to be a licensed local pastor.

Even at this at this seminary or at this licensing school,

I was still really struggling and had not really completely given myself over to the idea that this was going to become my life,

That this is what I was going to do forever.

It was several years in and there was a moment.

I don't even know what was happening,

But,

You know,

You just have these really deep moments,

You know,

When you're dealing with who am I and what's my purpose in life and what am I doing?

I was having one of those nights.

It was the kind of night where,

You know,

You're kind of angry at God and your prayer is really more like a yell.

And so there was this moment that I was I was just crying and I said,

God,

Why would you give me the gifts to be a teacher?

Put me in a position where I could do that.

Let me love it so much and then ask me to give it up.

Why would you do that?

Why would you make me love teaching and let me do that and then take it away from me?

And just it's the only other time very clearly I heard,

Melanie,

You'll teach for me now.

It felt like the clouds had rolled away and like a thousand pounds were lifted and it was like,

Oh,

Oh,

Okay.

Well,

I guess this is what I'm supposed to do.

But there was this moment where it was like,

Oh,

Okay,

I have to let go of all of these things that I think I meant to do and see what it is that that God is going to actually send me to do.

People ask me and when I was writing in the very beginning in 2015,

When I was writing for that online magazine,

They paid like however many cents per hit.

And so one month I made $36 and the biggest month I ever made,

I think I made $518.

But like there were months that it was,

They didn't pay you if it was less than $2.

So,

Yeah,

Nobody ever got rich off of it.

So I have people ask me that all the time.

Do you make money off of it?

No.

As of right now,

It's just,

I have a place that I can get pissed off and just be pissed off on behalf of people when I need to.

And it's not about trying to change anybody's mind.

I don't think anybody goes to my Facebook page and goes,

Oh my God,

I was wrong about homosexuality.

You know,

That probably doesn't happen.

On the other hand,

There are people who go there and go,

Oh my God,

I'm not alone.

And even though I'm surrounded by these people who think differently,

I'm not alone.

There are others.

And it's not just me because it's created a community of like-minded people who pray for each other and support.

I can't tell you how many times when somebody posts a comment and says,

This really spoke to me today,

I'm going through a divorce,

Or this really spoke to me today,

I recently lost my mother.

Before I find that comment and post on it,

There'll be five other people on my page who are saying,

Oh my gosh,

I feel you.

I've gone through that recently.

I'm praying for you.

I'm praying for you right now,

You know,

Or whatever,

Offering them that consolation.

And so a long time ago,

It stopped being just about what I post or what I say,

And it became a community.

Thank you so much for listening to Episode 44 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,

If only we open our eyes to it.

And whether you choose to listen to our Bite-Sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day,

Or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I'd like to thank Pastor Melanie Topps for sharing her story with me today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Lilo Sound,

Chilled Music,

Music L.

Files,

And Taiga Sound Production.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to books,

Music,

And change makers like Melanie,

Who will brighten and lighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Melanie.

Use your voice authentically and with integrity to make this world a better place.