Category: United Pentecostal Church | Page 32

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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Enabling Environments in UPC Youth Groups

Part eleven of a series of articles.

This addresses the co-mingling of those underage with ones in their twenties and thirties in some churches. Years back, the Youth Division of the UPCI was called Pentecostal Conquerors. (2024: The original linked to video was later made private and I have replaced it with a different one.) The national leader could be as old as 39, while district officers could be 35. Their churches allowed those from 12 to 35 to take part together in various activities.

I feel that encouraging those in their twenties and thirties to hang with pre-teens and young teenagers has opened the door for grooming and sexual assaults of minors to occur. Debbie has shared that the church in Madison didn’t seem to think there was anything inappropriate or potentially troublesome with people much older hanging around with those quite younger. Debbie was groomed and repeatedly assaulted from age eleven to twelve by a man who was old enough to be her father. The church didn’t blink, even when he took her on day long work trips.

The following article is what one person has observed in this environment and was written by a woman who wishes to remain anonymous.

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I came into the UPC at 26 years of age. I had been out of church for about ten years, living a very worldly life, even by most liberal church’s standards. I look back now and count this life experience as a blessing, as I could see warning flags where many of the young people in the United Pentecostal Church could not. I had grown up in pretty average churches, and I had adored youth group in high school. I was used to youth group being for kids grades 8-12, with possibly a handful of older “young people” volunteering as leaders. Usually these leaders were part of the C&C (College and Career), they weren’t any older than early 20s, and they were Godly examples, leading solid, mature spiritual lives.

I was delighted when I was “invited” to attend my new church’s Hyphen group! I do recall wondering why it took them several months to ask me to attend, and why it wasn’t just published on their website or ever announced. I would have thought they would want everyone even visiting to know about it. I remember also being flattered they thought I was so young, and then surprised when they said it was for ages 18-35. I had thought that was quite a spread of ages. I look back now and I guess they didn’t want to advertise it at that age spread as it might have not looked so good on paper, and it would have held them more responsible for some of the things that did go on in regards to Hyphen and youth.

The first evening I showed up for the group, we had planned to play basketball and then have a short Bible study. I was still quite new, so I couldn’t figure out why the only other two girls to show up both wore skirts to play basketball. The group was mainly guys, mostly in their mid 20s. The other two girls didn’t really play ball, largely because of their apparel. In the subsequent weeks, the other two girls didn’t attend often. They both had rotating shift work and they also said it wasn’t fun if all the girls weren’t able to attend. I soon learned the holiness standards and started to see a real issue with attending these athletic evenings, as if I dressed how they preached, I would struggle to play things like basketball or soccer while remaining modest and keeping my skirt from getting pulled, twisted or flipped up. If I didn’t play, chances are I would be sitting on the sidelines alone as the other two girls weren’t often there. If I dressed to play sports, then I would look backslidden. I settled into a routine with the church where I spent my time with the older women and skipped Hyphen. Hyphen became an all boys club for a time.

The church had a small youth group but it was growing. The youth pastor was one of the guys in the Hyphen group. He usually used a couple of the other guys from the group as leaders. Because Hyphen was a small group, he regularly would combine the Hyphen/Youth activity so he only had to lead one group that week. Hyphen was still all male at that point in time, while youth was primarily female, with girls ranging from 12-17. One of those girls ended up marrying the youth pastor, as soon as she graduated from high school at 18. He was about ten years her senior and had known her since she was ten or eleven. I was around his age at the time and remember finding it kind of gross to think he watched her grow up and married her as soon as it could sort of be considered socially acceptable. I wondered if he just suddenly found an interest in her, or if he had been perving on her when she was 14 or 16, while he was her youth pastor. Another girl, same age, and the same year, also married that summer out of high school to a man from another church who was also in his mid to late 20s. I thought they must be anomalies at the time. Later I realized this was the norm.

Around that point in time, there was a number of new people to the church and the pastor couldn’t keep up on all the Bible studies and discipleship classes he had on the go. He sent one of his more difficult students to the youth pastor to mentor. I knew this 53 year old man from outside of the church. He had been a member of our local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous for some time. He had been able to maintain sobriety from both drugs and alcohol, but he had a lot of mental health, and emotional issues.

He would argue with everything the pastor said, and he had a real hang up on what the Bible said about sex. He would argue with our pastor about God not actually expecting abstinence, he refusal to live chaste, and he had strong opinions on a myriad of other male topics in regards to sex. He had been my house mate at one point when I wasn’t attending the UPC church, and I had the misfortune of finding his adult magazines lying around the house, as well as literally walking in on him in the living room with his pants down. I knew he had a real problem in this area. In fact, all the women in AA knew he had a problem in this area. He was very friendly and overbearing with all ages of women in AA and he would harass and show up in the same places as the women he was interested in at the time. I was glad to hear he was so open with the pastor about his feelings in this area, as he really needed a Godly man to hash these things out with, and not the poor women in AA.

After the pastor passed along this man to the youth pastor to mentor, this man was nearly inseparable from the youth pastor. They hung out several nights a week. They hung out at church. Where one was, the other one was. I remember thinking it was odd that a 28 year old life time Christian man, and a virgin, would have much in common with this 53 year old man who wasn’t overly committed to a Christian walk and who had such an obsession with sex. I was uncomfortable when this man started attending Hyphen. It was one more reason I didn’t want to attend. I was horrified when I found how he was attending Hyphen/Youth. Why would a 53 year old man want to hang around with teens and twenty somethings? Why would he want to be around underage girls?!?! Why was anyone letting him be around under age girls!?!?

This guy had a reputation for being very pushy and not respecting boundaries with women his own age. He also had a bad temper. He got into a fight with one of my close friends because she turned him down. He told her all the reasons he was better than the men she had been dating and why she HAD to date him. He bullied her and yelled at her and wouldn’t leave her alone. She was a very strong woman, but I knew many women would have caved and gone out with him just to settle him down. And they were allowing him around very young, vulnerable women? What if he decided he was the best dating choice for one of the 18, 19, or even 22 year old women? I knew the pastor wouldn’t listen to me if I said anything though, so I fretted in silence.

A new, young girl, started attending the youth group. She was 15. She came from a pretty broken home. She had actually been invited to the youth group in the most ingenious of ways. She had developed a pretty serious crush on one of her classmates, who happened to be a young boy from our church. She was following him around school and giving him gifts and notes. He went to his mother, looking for advice as he wasn’t interested in this worldly girl with a reputation for partying.

The mom decided she found a witnessing opportunity. She started inviting the girl to their home for family dinner and then brought her to the youth group when she brought her three sons. The girl continued to crush on the boy, but she did it while hanging out with a group of Christian girls, learning about God. Eventually the girl became more independent of the boy’s mother and she started getting rides with other members of youth or Hyphen, and she also hung out with the group at non official gatherings at people’s homes or McDonalds.

I was so concerned to hear that the 53 year old man had become her regular ride. He didn’t work, and had no problem driving her from anywhere to anywhere as he appreciated the company and wasn’t doing anything anyways. She was starved for attention in life and she would go to anyone looking for attention, love, etc. She was so vulnerable as she told him about her drug experiments at parties. They could bond over their shared substance abuse stories. She confessed her confusion over an attraction to women to him and wanted to discuss what the Bible had to say. They could bond over their dislike for God’s plan for husband and wife. She discussed modesty as per how the UPC preached it. They could bond over their shared desire for women to wear what they wanted and the innocence in a little cleavage and leg. She had no curfew; he had no reason to be up early in the morning. They would end up in an after hours dinner having deep discussions late in to the night. The youth pastor knew, but if anything, I think he was just glad someone other than him was amusing this man on those nights.

Something I’ve learned in my own life. There are many male predators that don’t set out to be a predator. They just don’t have boundaries. A healthy, normal man of 53 years of age wouldn’t want to hang out with a bunch of young people because he doesn’t have anything in common with them. If he was a leader to them, he would maintain a certain distance as he is twice their age. A normal, healthy man of 53 years of age would not allow himself to get pulled into deep conversations with a 15 year old girl, because he would know its not appropriate and its not healthy for her. A man with boundaries, certainly wouldn’t start confiding in this 15 year old girl, while discussing the Bible and what it says about sex.

This man was one of those predators that didn’t set out to be a predator. I don’t know if anything ever happened with them, I would like to believe it didn’t. But they had both put themselves in a very precarious place. She was latching on to a daddy figure, but she was just a mixed up kid. He was allowing himself to get very emotionally involved with a minor. If she had made a pass at him, I truly believe he would have gone with it. The legal age of consent in our area is 14, and he would have deluded himself into believing it was ok since she was older than 14.

I look back at that group of kids now. The kids that came from church families have stayed in the church. The kids that were new have not stayed in the church. Facebook told me recently that a girl who had just entered youth when I was attending Hyphen, married one of those men from Hyphen as soon as she graduated at age 18. He was 30. He had known her since she was a preteen. She is now pregnant and will be giving birth at 19.
The church looks at the girls that left as backslidden and headed for hell.

Some of the girls are just wearing pants and make-up. One is living with her boyfriend. Another is in a lesbian relationship. Instagram has gotten at least one of those girls in trouble with her mom after photos of underage drinking came out. None of these girls have made terrible, life ending decisions. They are just going through some of the stages or rebellions of growing up. I look at the girl who is pregnant at 18. She is the only one of the group with a teenage pregnancy, even if she is married. She is still just a kid herself. These other girls living outside of the church haven’t made any decisions that will alter their lives in big ways. This girl soon will be responsible for another little life, while shackled to someone who has 12 years of adulting experience over her. I find it so sad.

These girls aren’t protected from being exploited and they aren’t allowed to be kids with other kids. They are put together with men twice their age, and are expected to be mature and pure, and would be held responsible if anything were to occur. In a church culture where the older men marry the young women after watching them grow up, no one is concerned in protecting these girls.

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

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