Author: Through Grace

I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12). I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ. 1 John 4:7-8 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

When the church betrays us, pt 5

After being expelled, I spent several weeks in a daze. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I visited or called several churches, and found each troubling. Several refused to have me when I told them I was looking for a church after my pastor asked me not to return. Another said I could come, that they had a visiting minister who would lay hands on me and ‘feel my spirit’ to see if my former pastor had been correct or if I had been wounded. Depending on what he felt, I could stay or not. I declined the offer; I believed that if my pastor said things about me and what I’d thought or had in my heart, he must be right, and I didn’t really want another person “feeling my spirit” when my spirit was raw with grief. I felt very vulnerable.

In the end, I began driving to a town 50 miles away for church. They already knew me and would not turn me away. The pastor and his wife were kind, but the people wanted to know why I was there, what had happened, and so forth. The gossip was outrageously direct and rampant. The pastor told me not to talk about it. People guessed enough. Another couple in town were attempting to start their own church and they also tried to get me to talk about my former church, as well as trying to get me to join them in starting a new church. The men in the church tried to lay hands on me, touching my shoulders and back. I panicked, not wanting to be touched since I’d been accused of what I was.

Then the pastor’s wife was badly injured. They encouraged people to come see her at home, where she was bedridden. They asked me to come alone. I would have had to go, be let in by the pastor, and be led through their large house (which I’d never been in) alone by the pastor. They knew I’d been accused of lusting after my former pastor, but they still insisted. I refused… and I started looking for a different church.

I found it in another state.

When the church betrays us, pt 7
When the church betrays us, pt 6
When the church betrays us, pt 5
When the church betrays us, pt 4
When the church betrays us, pt 3
When the church betrays us, pt 2
When the church betrays us, pt 1

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When the church betrays us, pt 4

I moved with hopes that the next church would be better. I would be an adult there, surely. I would have friends my age. Nope.

The new church wanted me involved, which was great. But the story was the same. There were few people my age. I didn’t fit in, though this time because I saw things so much differently than everyone else. When the pastor started telling me my former pastor was wrong and that the standards, which had been very much a part of being Pentecostal to me, were not in the Bible, I started looking for another church. And I found one just 20 miles away.

I was warned that this new church had issues, but I didn’t listen. They preached The Truth. They had high standards. They welcomed me and were friendly. The pastor and his wife weren’t much older than I was, though the church was very small. I saw this as my opportunity to be on the ground floor of a new church, to stay and become part of the inner circle, one of those who was closest to the pastor’s family and was seen as most faithful because I’d been there before nearly anyone else. I threw myself into it, giving about 30% of my income and hours a week to various ministries. I played the piano and the tambourine, taught Sunday School, prepared and served pre-Sunday School snacks for kids that missed breakfast, went to nursing home visitation weekly, watched the pastor’s kids while he and his wife met with various members after church, and helped with bus ministry.

After two years, the church started having problems. They lost the building they rented. New people weren’t coming (or staying if they did come). The pastor started believing someone was ‘hindering revival’ and calling special prayer meetings for people in the church he said had problems. I was pulled off the piano and out of Sunday School, even though there was no one to replace me, with no explanation. The pastor told the men that he would be leaving for a time, and I found out right before church one morning. I was told that there was no reason to tell the women, that they should ask their husbands at home. Since I didn’t have a husband, I was simply left out. And then he asked me to stay after church. He told me I was a hindrance to revival, he didn’t know if I could be saved, that I was lusting after him and that he wouldn’t let me destroy his ministry. He was preaching out of town, and I could “get right” before he and his family returned or leave permanently.

I spent the next week fasting, praying, and ‘repenting,’ begging God to forgive me for whatever my pastor knew was in my heart that I didn’t, and calling everyone in church, asking them to forgive me for whatever they might think I’d done too. When one man asked what I would do if I had to leave, I responded that I’d rather die than leave God… which was a typical Pentecostal response. Later I learned he called the pastor and said I was threatening suicide. I had thought I would fast until the pastor returned, but when he and his family didn’t come back after a week, I tried to call them. He hung up on me, telling me not to bother them or to call again.

While the pastor and his family were still away, his dad came to preach and invited everyone out to eat after church, and I was afraid to go, having been taught “with such an one not to eat” and believing that meant that if I was as bad as the pastor said (which surely I must be, because he was the pastor) that I’d be making people sin if I were to sit down to a meal with them.

I sat through their first service back having heard nothing about their thoughts on my status. He preached how someone would be leaving and would immediately cut her hair and wear pants, how we’d be surprised who it was who left. I never dreamed he was talking about me. I stayed after church in case he wanted to talk to me, but heard nothing. After I got home, I got a phone call: I was never to return to their church. I had been permanently expelled with a phone call.

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When the church betrays us, pt 3

I spent seven years in the first Pentecostal church I was in. The first was great. And then I went home for the summer. I didn’t like the Pentecostal churches in my parents’ area, but they were better than my parents’ church. Besides, I was committed and they believed closer to what I did, which was exactly the reason my Mom gave for us staying in a church I disliked and was alone at growing up. She didn’t argue, though she and Dad did argue about plenty.

After 18 years of church that taught nothing but the basic stories, my parents joined wholeheartedly in arguments about why I shouldn’t attend a Pentecostal church. They tried to force me to wear pants or shorts, which were against the rules for women at my new church. I had dreams that Mom would sneak in and cut my hair or insist that it be cut. She’d done that when I was younger. Their pressure made me more determined to stay Pentecostal. It gave me not one reason to leave.

I went to camp that summer excited that I would be seeing everyone from my church again, and found them totally disinterested in me. They were there to relax, shop, play, and to see their friends from other churches. And so for the first time since beginning to attend, I felt once more left out. I doubt I would have thought quite so much of it except that the pastor spent a lot of time with one young woman who was a newlywed. It was her first week apart from him, and he was very concerned about her well-being, having been separated from her new husband for a few days. I stood there watching, wondering “seriously? I’m away from my new church family for two months and no one cares, but she’s away from her husband for three days and you’re very concerned?” It was the first indication that something wasn’t right. It wouldn’t be the last.

I went back to college that fall and back to church. The first service I realized just how much had happened since I left. I felt like I was starting all over again. I wasn’t a part of them, and I wasn’t a new convert either. So this time no one cared. I looked forward to the day I’d graduate and be in one place. Three years later when I did, I moved to an apartment in town. And realized nothing had changed. I was still considered a youth. I wasn’t included in the women’s outings because I was younger than them and unmarried, but I didn’t relate to the high school youth group. After three more years of that and of struggling to make ends meet on a low paying job, I finally left, moving to a larger city, a different (hopefully better) job, and a church the pastor repeatedly invited me to join.

Things changed, but they didn’t.

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When church betrays, pt 2

As I grew up, I became more and more hopeful that I could go somewhere else to church. Friends would invite me to their youth meetings occasionally. I begged Mom to let me go more often, or to change churches completely, but I wasn’t allowed. I started riding my bike in the evenings, straight to various churches within riding distance. I’d ride around and around their parking lots if there were cars, hoping someone would invite me in. If I was invited, I reasoned, I could call home and Mom would surely say it was OK to stay. I would have been invited, after all. But no one ever invited me.

When I started driving I said with relief “Now I’ll be able to drive to a different church!” Mom responded with clenched teeth that we were committed to going where we were, and we would keep going, as a family. And so I did all I could: I started watching Christian TV and listening to Christian music and imagining that I would fit better with the people who liked those things, imagining a place of belonging for myself. The shows and the music tended to be more Charismatic, and since I’d never been taught how to study the Bible, I swallowed all of it in starving gulps.

And so I looked forward to college, when I’d finally be able to go to a church with people my age, where people actually wanted to go to church, where maybe I’d learn something beyond the Bible stories. Since my parents insisted on a limited selection of colleges for me to seriously consider I ended up in a small town with only a Catholic, Methodist, Disciples, Baptist, and Pentecostal church. I wasn’t interested in Catholic or Methodist, the Disciples church was much like my parents’, and I didn’t know much about Baptist. I ran straight to the Pentecostal church and within a month had embraced it all wholeheartedly.

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When church betrays us, pt 1

‘Jesus never fails,’ the old hymn goes. But his church definitely does. What happens when the church betrays us? How can this impact us?

I can’t speak for everyone. But here is my story.

I was raised in a nondenominational church. It was a tiny church. My sister and I were the only kids who were there every Sunday. Mom taught our Sunday School class. Many times it was just us and her. There were three other kids who came occasionally. Two were the pastor’s grandkids. They spent time during the week at the parsonage and several times stole the Sunday School materials (crayons, construction paper, and such I think) that mom had bought with her own money. We laughed at times if we left the car unlocked after church about what would happen if someone stole our Bibles. Mom would laughingly say “well, maybe they’ll read them!” But the pastor’s grandkids never stopped stealing the Sunday School supplies.

We didn’t learn much in that church. The pastor, at least to my memory, spent more time preaching against humanism than preaching about Jesus. Mom taught us basic Bible stories, but not what they might mean to us, and definitely not how to study the Bible. She only taught because no one else would. The previous teacher handed us each a scripture puzzle and told us to figure it out. It was too advanced for us, but he just kept giving it to us week after week. There had been no teaching, just that puzzle, all rectangles, a verse on one rectangle, the ‘address’ on another. My sister was probably in kindergarten or first grade. Even I, the older sister, didn’t know enough about the Bible to look the verses up.

We went to that church until I was 18. We went even when I begged Mom to let me go somewhere else. I needed friends my age, and there weren’t any people my age at that church to make friends with. Most people were 40-50 years older than me. Dad stopped going to church while I was still in elementary school, and we soon stopped going to anything but the first hour of Sunday School. So we went, had class with just me, my sister, and Mom, and came home. I’m not sure why we went, but Mom said we committed to go there and that, besides, they taught what she believed. This was probably the one thing that I learned very, very well. And I took that teaching straight into the churches I would attend after leaving home, unfortunately.

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