"Allen" tells his story of being drawn into CFC and then the process of coming back out again.
cfctoo.com/stories/allens-story
"I met with Rick. I explained to him how I felt about being told not to have a gay man teach Sunday School and how I was getting comments about my girlfriend being Catholic.
"He spent an hour over-explaining the one verse from the Bible that talks about how gay is bad. Fine. I was not going to take offense. That was his interpretation, not mine.
"Then, he switched topics. For ten minutes, with a smile on his face and a chuckle in his voice, he tore every other denomination to absolute shreds.
"He said that if you looked at what a Catholic gets on an average Sunday versus what he was teaching, you couldn’t even fill a thimble with it. I sat, without speaking, feeling the blood rush to my face.
"He finally stopped his tirade and asked me what I was thinking. I was somehow able to compose myself enough to tell him that he had given me a lot to think about and I needed time to digest. He suggested meeting again the following weekend, then I left.
"When I got back to my car and closed the door, I screamed until I had no more air in my lungs. I mailed all of my Sunday School materials back to CFC and never stepped foot in that building again. I wish my story ended there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
"One does not simply leave CFC. They have your number. They have your email. They have your address. They don’t just let you leave. I wasn’t left alone for nearly a month straight.
"I got daily phone calls (which I let go straight to voicemail) from Daniel Paladin. I got email after email from Rick himself. I was surprised that nobody ever showed up at my house. I was scared. I was emotional. I didn’t know if it would end.
"I finally got an email from Rick asking where the breakdown actually happened. That’s when I let him have it.
"I explained exactly what he said that offended me. He responded to that email by cutting, pasting, and refuting everything I had said. This caused me to have a panic attack at work. Finally, he said, at the bottom of the email, that he would try leaving me alone for a while.
"The silence that followed was more than welcome, but I was left an emotional, lifeless wreck."