Category: Oneness Pentecostal | Page 64

Evangelism in the United Pentecostal Church

I was five or maybe six when we first started evangelizing in a small trailer. I remember how tense things would get when it was time to get ready for church. We would have to climb up on the bed and be very quiet and still while dad would get ready for church. We often got in trouble for not being quiet enough or still enough. Once dad was out of the trailer, mom would get me ready and send me to him, then get my sister and herself ready. I later discovered the reason for this was because the trailer was too small for more than one person to move around at once. This is the same reason we were allowed only two or three toys each.

Evangelizing meant lots and lots of church, everywhere, all the time. I heard my parents stressing over offerings that were not big enough to take care of our family. I heard conversations where dad got reprimanded for something he preached at a church. Once my bike was stolen when we were parked outside of the church. I never got it back.

Homeschooling while living that lifestyle was the worst ever! I can recall mom being so frustrated trying to teach me that she would send me inside the church, where my dad would be studying, in some area that the pastor had allowed him to use. He would try to teach me, but without fail, it would end up with him yelling at me, and then I would be too anxious to think straight. Although I later found out that I was fairly intelligent, I sure didn’t feel it during those times.

Eventually we ended up parked for several months outside a family member’s church in a different state. This family member pastored what, at the time, seem like a fairly large United Pentecostal church. I remember being babysat by a couple of teenage girls in the church. It was funny because the girls would spell things to each other, thinking that they were talking above our heads, not realizing that I very well knew how to spell those words. They were often talking about the pastor’s sons and their romantic involvement with them. It was not a very positive conversation.

At one point, this church ran a huge campaign on a college campus in that city. The campaign was to advertise a series of services they were planning to have, to expose the rock music agenda. I remember being terrified during those services as rock songs were played backwards to reveal secret messages, and fearful language was used to “bring conviction”. The place was packed out, but I don’t remember what the results of the services were. I do remember being terrified, and standing with my mom in the back, and then my mother taking us out, because the content was too scary for us. I appreciate her doing that.

There were a lot of private adult conversations that went on during that time, and I was vaguely aware of unrest. I never figured out the gist of those conversations. Abruptly, we left, and my dad took the pastorate of another small church.

At this new church they had a tradition of singing happy birthday every Sunday morning to all the people who had birthdays, and singing to all the people who were having anniversaries. Oddly enough, the anniversary song was “When the Battle’s Over, We Shall Wear a Crown”. I remember thinking that marriage must be really difficult.

We did not stay at this location very long. Again, I was too small to know all the details, but apparently my dad “butted heads ” with some of the older people in the church and was either asked to leave, or realized it was best to leave. We were again evangelizing, homeschooling, and experiencing family stress. We were in church services constantly.

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Oneness In The Year 220

Just found this interesting tidbit of information. I always thought the Oneness doctrine was fairly new – late 19th century at least. But then I read about Sabellius.

The New World Encyclopedia says:

Sabellius, a Christian priest, theologian, and teacher, was active during the first decades of the third century, propounding a Christological doctrine that was later deemed heretical. Specifically, he advocated a modalistic view of divinity that described God possessing a single unified substance, albeit one that took particular forms (Father, Son, Spirit) in relation to human beings. As this doctrine denied full, discrete reality of each “Person” of the Trinity, it was anathematized, leading to Sabellius’ excommunication from the church in 220 C.E.

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UPC from a Child’s Perspective

My earliest memories were of my mom, dad, and maternal grandparents, who were apparently helping my father build a church in a town that did not have a United Pentecostal church. I can remember my preacher Grandpa working on the building and my grandmother taking me out to see him on the scaffolding. I recall my mother reading me Bible stories, and some visiting preacher teasing me about my imaginary friends. I often played in my dad’s workplace, as he could not provide for the family without working a secular job.

When I look back at the pictures of that time, I see a happy little girl with curly blond hair and the prettiest dresses. The pictures nor the memories of that time reveal anything to me other than being loved and cared for. I wonder if my parents were perhaps different then. I heard them tell stories of “winning a family to God” only to find out that the man was beating his wife, so my dad addressed that with him and he eventually stopped. These are the stories I was told.

Eventually, we left there and went to another town where my dad took the pastorate of a church. I was preschool age, but I do remember him telling my mother about going to the home of one of the parishioners uninvited, at an unexpected moment because he felt the man was being deceptive about his lifestyle. He “caught” the man watching TV, which was strictly prohibited by the UPC at that time, and he confronted the man about it. The man made up lie after lie as an excuse to hide this “sin”.

There was a woman in that church who suffered from bulimia. I remember the judgement and disgust with which she was discussed, with never any hint that this could be a serious illness. As a mental health provider, I now cringe at what she must have suffered in addition to the bulimia and its root causes. Religion without compassion can be very hard on people with mental health issues.

By that time I had an infant sibling. I remember church people getting mad at my parents for taking my sister out to spank her during church for things like fussing during church or other such age appropriate things. I remember being spanked with a “skinny belt” for asking one parent if I could go home with a friend and when that parent said no, asking the other parent.

My friends in the church had me over to their house one day in December and their mother said, in front of me, that there was no difference in a Christmas tree and the Christmas lights my mother had in our home. I was about five and I can still feel how sad I was when I told mom what these people had said, only to watch in horror as she took down all of the Christmas decorations in order not to “confuse and offend” church people who were being taught it was a “sin” to put up their Christmas trees.

My dad was often joking and fun during that time with us, and with his preacher friends. I often heard them sit around the table and argue about scriptures, and then in the next breath tell racial jokes that are appalling to me now.

During that time, I first became aware that I was “lost” because I didn’t have the Holy Ghost. I went down to the altar and cried, not understanding everything yet. I told my family I was now a Christian and had the Holy Ghost because I went to the altar and prayed. They explained to me that I had to “speak in another language” in order to get the Holy Ghost. My sister by this time was getting old enough to play church with me. We were strictly forbidden to ever play like we were “getting the Holy Ghost” by jabbering nonsense. Instead, we would close our mouths tight and jump around to show that we were “getting the Holy Ghost” in order to not play with sacred things. I have a distinct memory of a teen who was “seeking” the Holy Ghost and fell out on the floor with people all around her. I was fascinated by watching her mouth upside down as she was speaking in tongues.

I was constantly watching my baby sister with a stuffed animal in church and feeling so jealous because I wasn’t allowed to play. I would secretly pretend my Bible was a baby and I was it’s mother, but if I moved it around too much I’d get in trouble so I had to be careful.

Eventually there was some kind of church problems of which I’m still not clear on all the details, but my dad resigned that church and bought a trailer to evangelize. They were already homeschooling me, so they would continue to do so as we traveled around the United States. I’ve heard my parents recount often the story of how they “dusted their shoes off” out the window of the vehicle as they left that town. My dad says God showed him there would never be a thriving church in that town because of the rebellion in the hearts of those people.

I was just a little girl. I don’t know the ins and outs, or if the people were truly rebellious. I can only share what I remember and have heard from that time.

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Earliest Spiritual Abuse

Everything has a beginning. My beginning happened in a small town where my dad was pastoring, (or rather attempting to pastor) a church that had never really existed, but in the mind of those who wished to start it. There were no constituents, and it is my understanding that my parents lived on what my dad could make working in a grocery store. It was there I was born, and where I lived for nine days, before they packed up everything and left to evangelize.

According to my baby book, written in my mother’s handwriting, I received my first spanking at the hands of my father when I was only a little over two months old. She followed this revelation with a little smiley face that she wrote, before explaining that they later found out that I wasn’t getting enough milk and that’s why I was screaming so much. It seemed not to bother her or my father particularly that they had “spanked” a tiny infant for being hungry. They just knew that they did not want to raise a child who would “throw fits”, and they were starting early to make sure I behaved as the child of a minister should.

I was the oldest child, and perhaps these mistakes could be chalked up to inexperienced ignorance, but it nonetheless sheds light on the mindset of two young people starting out a family, when both of them had been raised in Oneness Pentecostalism their entire lives. They both had been raised to expect perfection of themselves and others, because after all, God expected perfection, didn’t he?

My parents still brag about how well they trained me to act in church. I am that shining example that they hold up in front of every other young parent who crosses their paths. They had me trained on how to act in church from the age of nine months old, so they know it can be done!

I have no recollection of that time, of course, but I am told that I would sit on the front seat all alone at nine months old. I am told that I was expected to sit there looking forward, and not get up or turn around. On those occasions where I did get up and turn around, my parents said that one of them would leave the platform and take me out for a spanking. My mother played the piano and sang, while my dad led the services and preached. It was my job to sit down and be quiet. Apparently I learned the lesson they were trying to teach me fairly well, because they used that experience to teach other parents how to train their kids to act in church.

Years later, when I allowed my two year old to bring a quiet toy to church and to play between the pews quietly, I received major lectures and severe criticism, because “We know children can be trained to sit on the pew quietly. We trained you when you were only nine months old.”

Dad never allowed for a church nursery at any church he pastored, because he felt like babies need to be trained from infant-hood how to behave in church. If a parent was struggling to accomplish this, he would go back to that example of me at nine months old.

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A New School

*WARNING: This contains material which may be triggering to some*

After much discussion with her new best friend, Mom decides that the conditions in our church can no longer be tolerated. We still go there ‘officially’, but start visiting other churches who have services on nights that our church doesn’t. One that we visited was an ultra-conservative Apostolic church that’s not affiliated with the UPC (United Pentecostal Church). The rules at this church are much stricter than the UPC rules even though their basic theology is the same. They viewed the UPC as too liberal.

At this point, we’re going to church at our ‘home church’ on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. We’re going to the Apostolic church on Saturday nights, and a nearby UPC on Thursday nights. (The nearby UPC church is the one that Mom’s best friend went to before they started coming to our church.)

Mom and this family decide that it’s time for them to start taking action against the demons infiltrating their churches. They “cast out a demon” from the preacher’s daughter’s boyfriend at the nearby UPC church when he comes up to pray during an alter call. The teenage guy shakes all over like a leaf and this is touted as evidence of the ‘demon coming out’. About 60% of the church members stand back in disbelief and disapproval of what is happening. Mom and her friend do another “casting out” in our home church to a visitor.

They receive some sort of ministerial censure for this, but I do not know the details. It resulted in the other family breaking away and starting their own Apostolic church. It begins as a tent revival in their back yard. Also during this time, Mom decides to stop homeschooling me, and to send me to the Christian school at the ultra-con Apostolic church that I mentioned previously.

The Apostolic church disapproves of Mom’s best friend and her family (believes they are demon possessed and still Satanists), and also of women preachers in general. Mom goes there and keeps quiet in order to be able to send us to the school, and goes to the other family’s church and preaches as a guest speaker the rest of the time. The result of this is that we go to church six times per week.

At this school, I remember getting in trouble several times. Once, because I went to school in a shirt with sleeves above my elbows. Another time, because I wore a hair barrette (jewelry). Another time, I didn’t want to testify during chapel when called on. When we got in trouble for things like this, we had to be prayed for at the altar until we were ready to confess our sin. If that took all day and no schoolwork got done, so be it. Another thing that we were punished for was “not working at our full potential”. I once got an 80% on a math test that the principal believed I was capable of making 100% on. He informed me that he was giving it to me again and if I didn’t get 100%, was was getting 10 swats. I got 85%. Fortunately, he was called out on an emergency while it was still being graded, and didn’t mention this again the next day.

During my time in this school, the ‘tent revival’ continued. One night, Mom and her best friend came to me and informed me that I needed to take all the children out of the tent and into the house and babysit them. I asked why and was told not to question, just do as I was told. So I did. I didn’t mind getting out of there. I had no idea that the events I was removed from that night would soon affect me in a devastating way.

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