Category: United Pentecostal Church | Page 31

How to spot Pastor/Leader Worship

Intriguingly, not a single person in the Bible was named Pastor, yet it was named in the 5-fold ministry and appears to be a spiritual gift, something that was enacted for the perfecting of God’s people. A position of leadership, to point towards the Christ and to inspire others toward Christ.

Yet, history and experience have also taught that pastors can become idolized, creating movements that follow the man and not the Christ. When the man fails, the movement fails. And when a human reveres another human, they are ripe to be taken advantage of by that human.

My inspiration for this writing is two-fold. First is that I left (after 15 years) what is a bonafide cult – a split off church from the Oneness Pentecostal church (United Pentecostal Church) that went independent and fanatical. In this cult, the pastor was everything, overriding any leading of the Spirit an individual may have. Secondly, I recently finished watching the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

First Things First

This is not to bash and bang on pastors. Only God knows the burden and labor someone who takes that office is placed under. If you believe in spiritual warfare, I would argue 75% of that warfare is aimed at spiritual leaders. They must take seriously their position of leading people to Christ, and simultaneously remember they are simply followers themselves. I think the latter part is the hardest.

In the documentary about Baghwan Rajneesh, a Hindu guru that amassed a great following and eventually created a 70,000 acre compound in Antelope, OR, (191 miles from where I live) it becomes evident immediately that this man is being worshiped. Every person hangs on his every word and to simply be in his presence evoked great emotions.

I can recall three times in the 15 years of my time in my cult that I was able to sit next to the pastor, and I would have given my right arm for each experience. I felt special to be that close to the man. His admiration and approval meant everything to me in the years that I was really bought into the lies. At a group function (one time) I sat next to my pastor and I probably gushed with arrogant pride that it was me and not someone else.

Worshiping Leadership

The first way to spot Pastor Worship is seeing someone completely enamored and devoted to the person. They hang on their every word. If the pastor stands up, they stand up. If the pastor wears blue, they wear blue.

One way I spotted it in my cult was noticing people dressed and reflected the pastor. The way the young men in the church talked sounded like the pastor. Their facial expressions mimicked the pastor. The phrases and speech style of the pastor was mimicked in the young men. This was the same for the young women who would mimic the pastor’s wife.

There certainly is nothing wrong with admiring a person for their labor in the church, but when you begin cloning the person, you have idolized them and they have absolute control over you.

These people will often repeat phrases the pastor has shrouded in his messages like, ‘This man has given his life for me!’ or ‘He has given everything to this church, the least we can do is give him our everything…’ (Please note that one man giving his wealth, to having 100, 200, 1000 or more people return their wealth is a pretty good ROI!)

This also ends with followers becoming militant in their defense of the pastor or leader. In the Rajneesh cult, they literally took up weapons. In my cult, I heard men say, while pumping their fist in the air or punching one palm with the other fist, ‘Don’t you come against my man of God or you’ll get the five folded ministry.’

The Pastor Overrides God

One of the most striking examples of this came when I felt the Lord lead me into some type of ministry. At the time I felt God called me to take the Gospel to a third-world country. We always think of that as an evangelist or preacher.

After three or four days of turmoil, I went to the pastor and told him about it. His response was a little shocking to me now – but then I accepted it as right. The pastor said,

“If that was God leading you, he would have confirmed it in me, and he hasn’t.”

Another example of this is a man I know who felt it was right to take his family to another town and another church. Instead of the pastor asking, “Is this what you think the Lord wants you to do, and if so, then listen to Him.” the pastor said, “I don’t think this is the right move and if you move without my blessings, you’ll do it without God’s blessings too.”

That family is basically exiled from the church because they moved without the pastors blessing.

The Bible tells Christians to be led by the Spirit, not by a man. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Not the pastor’s commandments. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t seek counsel from our pastor, and listen, but if he (pastor) thinks he is wiser and overrides the Spirit, he is out of his place.

No Demand Seems Too High, No Crime is Too Much

Outsiders, often family, will say things like, “Why do you let them control you like that?” and the most common response is, “They don’t control me! I want to do this.”

People who idolize their pastor never feel like the demands are too high. No amount of time, money, energy or sacrifice is enough to pay back all that the pastor has put in to the church. And they normally remind you of this, roundabouts time to preach about tithing.

Furthermore, people who idolize their pastor look right over the top of controversy and criminal behavior and call it ‘persecution of the devil.’ A classic example is my old pastor, who was found guilty of violating child labor laws and was subsequently sued for defaming a former member and settled for nearly $1,000,000 to shut up the former member with a gag order. To the people still in the church, it was ‘made up charges’ and ‘worldly persecution.’

Conclusion

This is the reality of pastor worship. If you are a pastor and reading this, please know that I am not coming against you – just those who abuse the position.

1 Peter 2:9 tells us that we are a peculiar people belonging to God. Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against HIS church. Jesus prayed to the father and called us HIS sheep.

We do not belong to a pastor – we follow a pastor if he is walking and leading us to Christ. Paul said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1. This leaves the door open that if Paul stops imitating Christ, they (disciples) were to stop imitating Paul.

If you see someone idolizing their pastor, share this article with them. We need a revolution of people willing to follow Christ and not the man with the shiniest suit, the finest car, the best programs, the trophy wife…Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Feed my sheep,’ not ‘Fleece my sheep.’

Please view my original content at https://www.dividetheword.blog

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Safe and Sound

We live in a dangerous world. A world that seems to have gone off the deep end. Crime, murder and mayhem are everywhere and statistics tell us the number has increased. I live in St. Louis, Missouri, which is supposed to be one of the most dangerous places to live! But since I live here I don’t see it that way. I just know it is my city and it is in trouble.

But God did not intend for us to live in fear or our cities to be dangerous, he intended for peace to be our way of life. Scripture says, “For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.” John 3:17 AMPC

It is God’s intention that the world be made safe and sound through him! My city was not supposed to be the most dangerous city to live in…but safe and sound. So what has happened?

I believe it’s the lack of positive teaching in our churches. We’ve been guilted into service of our Lord but only for our own church. We never venture outside the church. We never reach out to the lost masses of humanity with words of grace because of our own fears and guilt.

In studying the Word more closely, I find one of the biggest tools the enemy will use against us is condemnation (guilt), which will cause discouragement, fear and depression. How many of us have sat through a legalistic church service and been condemned so much you just wanted to get up and leave? All that consuming guilt because you did not attend some special service or show up for church picnic or church work day, that you felt beaten down and not lifted up. Actually I would feel worse after church was over than before.

I don’t know if this happened to anybody else, but my husband and I were so moody when we got home we would begin arguing….because of the negativity. Trying to remember my past experiences right now, and I can’t remember one upbeat message or encouraging word.

But God did not intend for this to be a way of life. Scripture says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” ‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬. God intended us to be witnesses for him to go out among the people and compel them to come to God. We are to go to their homes for dinner, we are to make friends with them, and to gently woo them to Jesus through the gospel. We are not to condemn and pass judgement on them. We are to lovingly share the good news of the gospel.

Of course we were never taught to do that and if we did make friends outside the church we were condemned about it. Then God opened up his word to me since I left the United Pentecostal Church and gave me a brand new world that is free from guilt. I have finally forgiven myself of my past and stopped beating myself up.

God has kept me going in the right direction. I have been able to witness to a lady at Walmart among the Christmas lights and pray with her, I’ve invited total strangers to come to church or bible studies, and God still has new things on the horizon for me to enjoy but I will never see them if I continuously live in the past. It is time to move forward, to forgive and forget and God “…will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.” ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭26:3‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

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Signs of Religious Abuse, Part 2

It seems that the list of signs of religious abuse build on each other to a degree, or at least they did for me. They did throughout my 19 years in Pentecost, but most could be seen to some degree in the first months I was there, beginning with the first visit. One of the first things I heard was how they had The Truth, how they had something that other churches didn’t have, and that I could have too. This appealed to my 18 year old self. I could be something special and could have something special, and if I would just pull away from my family and friends and focus on the church, they would see my light and my good witness by being separate from them and would start coming to church too. This, I was told, was being a good witness. In fact, it was isolationist.

Ensnarement
Instead of guiding their flock to Christian maturity, abusive leaders strengthen their grip on believers by promoting:
Self doubt
Guilt
Interior conflict
Identity confusion
Ambivalence

Leaders encourage followers to “earn” favor, but set the mark for achieving this so high and make it so ambiguous that it’s impossible to obtain.

Followers are confused by contradictions between conscience/reasoning and teachings.
Believers fear of condemnation, loss of direction, loss of fellowship.
It is difficult and painful for believers to leave abusive churches.

Authoritarianism
Leaders are convinced they exercise God’s authority.
They expect believers to obey them rather than God.
They expect others to support their intentions.
They discourage input and accountability.
They frequently repeat Heb 13:17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief…”

Manipulation
Instead of interpreting the Bible with the Bible, according to long-held Christian beliefs, and in context, abusive leaders manipulate scriptures so that they appear to endorse the leaders’ personal opinions.

I think there’s another type of manipulation, too… that of manipulating people’s thoughts and conscience–for instance, if you say you’re concerned about something a leader does, the leader might question your love for God or point out that you are supposed to obey/submit to him, or say, “Do you think you’re smarter than me? Don’t you think I have the Holy Ghost? If you don’t like it here [AKA don’t agree with him on everything] you can leave right now!”

Irrationality
Interpretations of scripture may contradict other interpretations, reason, and/or reality.
Leaders (or others) may claim to receive messages from God about church or individual members.
There may be self-proclaimed “healing ministries.”
Members may be pressured into dramatic confessions of sin.
There may be exaggerated professions of deliverance.
There may be little lasting effect.
Members must suspend critical thinking.

During this time, just 2-4 months in, I began noticing more and more that there were all the members of the church and then there was the ‘inner circle,’ those closest to the pastor and pastor’s wife, who were most often called on and most ‘used’ in services — they were the ones who sang solos, led parts of the service, and were given as examples of how to live and praised during the preaching or in smaller group settings. My goal was to somehow join the ‘inner circle,’ to be one of the pastor’s favorites. I’m not sure who was coercing me at this point, the church or me. I craved praise and recognition and was hopeful that I could be deserving of it and would obtain it. I developed a long list of what I could and should do in order to do so. And yet I began having more and more fears that I couldn’t be ‘good enough,’ that I’d somehow miss an opportunity and never have that chance again. My pastor at that time taught (or at least I thought) that if we felt God wanted to do something through us and we resisted, God would withdraw that offer and we would never have that gift.

In all of this I was conforming to the group and developing a legalistic mindset. I didn’t see this as fear of being ostracized or shamed, but simply as a desperation to belong fully; yet the very fact that I knew I wouldn’t belong if I didn’t do certain things shows that the fear of ostracism was there. It was strongly linked to the elitism that was still being fed to me, so I saw it as a positive at the time. In fact, though, I was losing my own identity. I stopped swimming and biking. I changed my hair style and clothes dramatically. I became very self conscious about my body and became convinced that I was not (and should not be) physically attractive, and I started doubting the decisions that I’d spent 18 years wishing I could make (while I grew up). At the same time I began more and more to feel condemned for the strangest things — Was wearing yoga pants under my skirt so that I could bike modesty wrong? No one else was wearing their sleeves so short. Did the pastor just look at me oddly for wearing that barrette? What might I be missing? What should I be doing better?

I left my first church after seven years there. I had hoped to go to Bible College. The pastor had said no. I wanted to do more with missions and was finally given permission (yes, permission) to go on a missions trip. The church barely acknowledged I was going. I’d been pressured to testify how great the women’s retreat was or the youth conference, but suddenly I wasn’t asked to say a thing… instead I was actually asked to stop talking about it. I’d wanted to go on a missions trip since I was 13 or 14 years old, and finally after more than ten years, my dream was coming true, but no one asked me about it and instead I was asked to stop ‘bragging’ about it, since no one else was going. Still, through all of that, I didn’t recognize that there might be anything wrong with The Church. I’d been groomed well. I thought there was something wrong with me. Still, I hoped by moving and going to a different church, with the pastor’s approval, of course, that things would get better. And so I moved and started this exact same story again in a more conservative group.

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What’s Love Got To Do With It?

I was married for 27 years and really thought I loved my husband and he loved me. We had been pastoring a small but growing United Pentecostal Church church for eight years and then the unthinkable happened. He left me for another woman while I was out of town helping our son get settled in college.

When I came home he was gone, he left me a letter telling me all about his girlfriend and etc. He also closed out our bank account and took $5,000 from the church account. I had $12 in my purse and a grieving church to deal with and it felt like my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. I was also the section ladies leader and I had speaking obligations to attend to.

It was a lot to deal with but I put on my best facade and mustered through all the pain of obligations, board meetings, closing the books of the church and trying to stay afloat financially. I had 30 days to get my act together and move our mobile home and try to find a job. But I managed it. With a lot of help from my parents.

I filed for divorce about four weeks after he left me and I had secured a good job and was feeling more confident that I was going to be OK on my own. My life has never been the same.

I was free from somebody else’s control and could make my own decisions about everything. I felt free, very free. I had my own money and I was living life on my own for the first time ever.

Although there were times my heart hurt so bad that I was almost sick with grief and that’s when the phone calls started….first call came from a friend in Alabama and she knew a pastor who just lost his wife to cancer a few months ago and was looking for a new wife. She had told him about me and he thought we would be a perfect match. So she gave him my number….which aggravated me!

A few days later Mr. Widower Pastor called me and I was polite and kindly told him I was not interested in a relationship. He wouldn’t let it go telling me how big the church was and how nice his house had been decorated by his wife and that I could move right in.

I couldn’t believe my ears…I’ve never met this man before and here he was offering me marriage, another woman’s decorated home and being a pastor’s wife again. I asked him about love and commitment. He said that would come later. He wanted to fly me down there to check everything out and seal the deal.

I was shocked by the calculating coldness that a marriage proposal was being treated like a business contract. Needless to say I declined and he found someone else to “move right in.”

There were a few more calls but I turned them down I had no interest in marriage with a stranger but I now understand why some UPC marriages seem so fake…because they are. There is no love between pastor and wife so how much love could there be with the saints of the church?

What’s love got to do with it? Everything!

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One Victim’s Voice Brought Down a UPC Pedophile

Part twelve of a series of articles on the United Pentecostal Church and sex abuse.

In doing recent investigation on sexual abuse cases for this series of articles, I am reminded of an especially sick case involving a former United Pentecostal Church pastor in Alabama, Mack Charles Andrews. He was licensed from 1987 though 2000 and during that time was pastor of a UPC church in Thomasville. For some of this time he also held the position of Conqueror’s Secretary of the Alabama District. In 2013 he was arrested on multiple counts of rape, sodomy and sexual torture involving four children during the 1980s and 1990s at the church and its school, Faith Christian Academy. In addition, there were also victims whose cases were not included in the criminal counts against him, some who were willing to testify. On the day his trial was to start, he plead guilty and under the plea agreement was sentenced to only 15 years in prison.

At one point in 2015, an investigator had spoken to eleven victims and believed there were more. Some of the victims hired attorneys in an effort to keep him from speaking with them. There were church members who were still supportive of Andrews, some not even seeming to consider the possibility of his guilt. Investigator David Conner was quoted as saying, “I’ve had members of the church try to bail him out of jail. Some wouldn’t even entertain the thought that he might have done it. He is a master of manipulating people and, for lack of a better word, brain-washing them. …The hold he has on the community is still evident.”

This mindset sounds similar to what I have been hearing about a UPC church in Colorado, where there are allegations that the pastor failed to report several cases of sexual abuse. Many people there, both former and current members, have witnessed incidents that were not right and have knowledge that things were not reported to police which should have been. Many yet have a fear of this pastor and his family and it has been alleged they have threatened to sue people with whom they are unhappy or have tossed out of the church. While such a fear remains and people do not speak out and come forward, it leaves the door open for similar to continue.

The people of his old church congregation have all turned against me. In there blindness of the Truth they blame it on me because I came forth finally and told the truth. I haven’t been a member of his church in 20 years. But, until the point of me telling the police my story I still considered some of them friends. I know better now. It’s funny to me how people who so radically claim their salvation have shown no love of Christ to me or any other victims in this case. The really wild thing is some of those congregants are actually victims themselves. Yet, their rage against me is strong and venomous. – Donna ‘Shay’ Smith, survivor of childhood sexual abuse

In the Andrews case, it took just one woman coming forward who was victimized from age seven through twelve. Because she went to police and shared the names of others she knew who had been abused, it enabled the police to dig into his history and find many of the victims, some of whom had kept it all inside. It put a pedophile in jail where there is no chance of him hurting other children while he serves his sentence. When he gets released, he will have to register as a sex offender, alerting the community that children are not safe around him. It brought some sense of justice to the survivors.

Had Donna ‘Shay’ Smith remained silent, this would not have happened and he would be at liberty to continue to bring untold devastation to the lives of others. Often times all it takes is for one person to be willing to come forward and tell their story. We have seen that recently with Debbie in Wisconsin, where once she started openly writing about her childhood sexual abuse by Steven J. Dahl, several other women from the very same church contacted her. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, you do have a voice and you can make a difference. Your voice could be the one that helps prevent another child or adult from becoming a victim.

UPDATE May 20-26, 2021: Unfortunately in May 2021 Mack Charles Andrews was released from prison early. Shay shares her thoughts on this in the following video. See also this May 21, 2021 article from AL.com about his release as well as Newsweek’s May 21 article. On May 24 the NY Post released an article and on May 25, WFLA covered the story. His name also now shows in the sex offender registry.

Investigator David Connor shares his thoughts on Mack Charles Andrews in the following video.

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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