When did I know it was over?

Someone asked me recently “when did you know it was over for you in terms of the ministry and the fundamentalist/evangelical world?”
As I think over that two-fold question, I am reminded of a similar question that might be asked to someone who had been through a divorce. What broke the camel’s back? The answer many times it was not the fighting, the adulteries, the physical or mental abuse. Oftentimes it is something quite mundane that wouldn’t register a second look to anyone else.
For me, the end of my career in the ministry was not the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the fanaticism, the fighting, the emotional abuse me and my family took, the wacked-out ideas.
It came at a deacon meeting when one particular deacon, jealous of the attention another deacon was getting, made this bizarre statement to me (a grown man and grandfather):
“You shake hands with him differently than you shake hands with me”.
In that single moment, something inside of me, died. I could almost hear the death rattle of the camel.
I had spent years at a Bible college, studying theology and Scripture. Countless hours preparing sermons, visiting the shut-ins, and the sick. Yet none of that prepared me for that moment.
Encapsulated in that statement is everything that is wrong with fundamentalism: Intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dwarfism. To continue on would have been like chiseling away at Mt. Rushmore with a butter knife. Whatever happened after that, was simply awaiting the inevitable.
Stupid? Mundane? Perhaps, but for me it was a loud yell in my ear: “ITS NOT WORKING!!”
As to the second part of the question, this was after I quit the ministry. As the magnet toward Rome was getting stronger, I was still attending occasionally a Christian Missionary Alliance church. One Sunday, they had great, uplifting, hand clapping, hand-raising music. Very emotional. Everyone was having a great time.Except me.I was bored to tears and it all seemed so lifeless and artificial.What would have attracted me years before, had no more meaning to me. I knew then I was no longer evangelical. The CMA church in question is filled with a fine group of people who remain my friends, including the pastor. It wasn’t them so much. It’s just that I could no longer pretend to be something I was not.
Looking back on it now, neither incident amounted to much at the time. But for me, the Holy Spirit was shouting very loudly in my ears.
Some of us I guess, just need to be better listeners.