Category: United Pentecostal Church | Page 59

Leaving

A year ago yesterday I turned in my formal resignation to my former church. It’s been an interesting and wonderful year, full of growth, laughter, and a few tears, but well worth it.

I didn’t want to leave my former church. Although there were a lot of bad things that happened, there were also people who’d been kind to me and who I didn’t want to hurt… People who would be hurt by my leaving, no matter how the leaving was done. I was also scared. I believed that the basic doctrine taught was THE truth, but the situation at that church had become untenable. If I left, I would face the strong possibility that no other Oneness church would accept me, yet if I stayed, I knew that there was a strong possibility that I would be pressured to lie. The fallout from speaking the truth would be heavy, yet I had to speak. I’d been named in a lawsuit by a member who’d told me something entirely different than what he told in court.

Before the court case, I thought that I would simply, gracefully, disappear. I’d get a job and move, get married into another church, or simply move home to take care of my aging parents. Then I could go to a more liberal church and get away from what I considered the hurtful side of Pentecost–I thought that if I went to another church or into another part of the movement I’d be fine. I couldn’t grasp that problems might exist in other parts of Pentecost- I thought they were limited to my church. When the court papers were served, I knew I had to get out before responding to the papers. I kept some pending commitments, turned in my resignation, and promptly submitted my documentation to the court.

I wasn’t sure what would happen when the pastor got the resignation… as it turned out he never even acknowledged it, at least not to me. A few members continued to contact me for a few weeks. Finally, I told one that I’d resigned. They were shocked, hurt, and probably scared for themselves at that point. I explained that I’d deliberately refrained from telling them to ensure the pastor had received notice first, in order to protect them. Though I still wish I could have told a handful of people goodbye personally, that would have hurt them more. It surprised me and hurt me though, to realize that once they knew about my resignation, most never attempted to bring me back. It was as though either I or the church had suddenly disappeared from the city!

When I joined the support group board, I didn’t think I’d be leaving Pentecost forever. I assumed that I would leave for a short while, or leave the very strict group I was in, but I never thought I would leave completely. I was terrified of registering on the forum, but desperately needed some sort of interaction and a place to put my thoughts and work through everything that was happening.

Grace, faith, love… a different kind of prayer, faith filled and simple… the prayer drew me. Before leaving I’d talked to a chaplain about leaving. He was extremely kind. He listened rather than telling me what to do, and he listened completely and compassionately. I wasn’t used to that. After we visited, he asked if it would be alright to pray with me. The kind of prayer he prayed still brings tears to my eyes.

Still, it was only a few months later, after visiting another Oneness church a few times, that I knew I would probably never go back. The services seemed shallow and then I discovered there were connections between a member and members at my former church that would have led to more gossip. I was tired of the gossip and the struggle to prove myself. I’d also begun to realize that there were good churches outside the Oneness movement… and that I needed to learn some of the things they taught.

Once I realized and admitted to myself that I wouldn’t be going back to a Pentecostal church, I could move ahead. There were a lot of questions to answer, a lot of exploring to do. What did I believe? What didn’t I believe? What did I just do because I’d been told to, and what did I believe was actually in the Bible? What did the Bible teach about topics like grace that my former church had always avoided?

It’s been an interesting journey. It doesn’t seem like a year has gone by, yet if someone had asked me last December if I could have come to where I am today in such a short time, I would have been stunned.

I still struggle with some things. It’s hard to read my Bible (because of sermons I’m reminded of), but it’s becoming easier to pray. And not just to mumble a half thought prayer as I did in Pentecost or to push for a certain feeling or experience, but to truly talk to God about things, accepting that He’s there and He hears. I still respond strongly to some things, too. But I’m not afraid anymore. I don’t worry as much about what others think or what they might say. If something goes wrong, I don’t immediately think I must have sinned and God’s punishing me. And I don’t feel the pressure to pretend to be something I’m not, and never have been. It’s nice to be free to be real, to be myself. It’s nice to do things just for the enjoyment of doing them, without examining every minute to see if it could be judged wrong in some way.

Someone stopped me the other day and asked what was different about me. It isn’t the first time I’ve been asked. It’s not a change of dress or hairstyle. Apparently even to others I seem happier, more relaxed… something. And I am. Yesterday, I think the woman had decided I had a new guy in my life. No, I don’t. But I am finally really getting to know Him.

Merry Christmas, all.

Book Giveaway #9 – Christianity Without The Cross

We have given away books for years as part of the spiritualabuse.org ministry and this will be our ninth one via this new blog area. This is your chance to receive a used copy of Christianity Without the Cross by Thomas Fudge. This book covers Oneness Pentecostal history, and highlights the United Pentecostal Church, of which Mr. Fudge was once a member. You will discover things that most ministers in the group do not openly share and some do not know. The link will take you to Amazon where you may read more information about it.

This is only open to those with a USA mailing address. (Unfortunately, it is cost prohibitive to mail books outside of the USA. Canadians with a USA mailing address are welcome to enter.) This one is a little different as it is a drawing and not a first come, first served giveaway. To enter, just leave a comment on this post to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on December 15 at noon (eastern time), after which I will draw one winner. You will then need to email me your mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as comments require approval when you are commenting for the first time.

Watch for a future giveaway for a new copy of In Jesus’ Name: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals by David A. Reed. (Don’t let the current prices on Amazon startle you- a new copy sells for around $35, not almost $500.)

Leaving An Unhealthy Church #10: Sorting Through The Teachings

For those still trying to sort through the doctrines you were taught in an unhealthy church, here are some things to consider that should be helpful.

1) Keep the passage in its context. One can make it appear to seem like a passage is teaching something different when it is taken out of context or partially quoted. You need to read the surrounding verses, and sometimes chapters, and not just the proof-text given.

2) Beware of assigning a word an incorrect definition. Many in unhealthy churches assign words meanings which do not reflect their biblical meaning. If one doesn’t look further into this, they can be led to believe the Bible teaches something totally different than it does. Some words that readily come to mind from my old church organization are long, peculiar, shamefacedness and hallelujah (the latter probably only pertains to my former church). Nowadays it is very easy to look up the basics of the original Greek or Hebrew words used in the Bible. Your modern day dictionary is not what you should use.

3) Look at the overall picture. Discover what the ‘whole,’ or all, of the Bible teaches on a subject and not just a few passages. Unhealthy churches piece together passages to support some teachings. Yet if you study what the entire Bible says on the subject, you will find what they say really isn’t taught in scripture. You won’t find the doctrine being stated by the apostles or Jesus and you won’t find any examples of them doing (whatever) it is. Complete concordances are found in abundance to help you find every instance of a word in the Bible.

4) Interpret a difficult passage in light of those that are clearly understood. When one passage seems to not fit in with the rest of scripture on a subject, we need to interpret that passage in light of what is clear. The teachings aren’t going to contradict themselves. For instance, if there is one verse that on the surface could appear to say something is a matter of salvation, and yet that is never explicitly stated anywhere in the Bible, then you are probably understanding it incorrectly. It needs to be interpreted by the passages that are clearly understood.

5) Set aside preconceived ideas and take care to not read things into a text which are not stated. When we read the Bible, we should approach it in a way that God can speak to us through it. That’s hard to do if we are dead set in our minds that we know it all and that our interpretation must be 100% accurate. This is what causes many in Pentecostal churches, when they read in the Bible about the Holy Spirit, to automatically think ‘speaking in tongues‘ even if it is not in the text. Thus we read into scripture our thoughts or what we have heard taught in church and we aren’t going to learn that way. Don’t set about to prove what you believe is correct or to prove a doctrine to be false. Instead, approach your studies with wanting to know what the Bible teaches, regardless of what you think it does or doesn’t teach.

The Trial

It’s the Bible, right? It’s a church, how wrong can it be?

I think the most insidious thing about beginning my Christian life in a United Pentecostal Church is all the things I missed out on – the pure joy of knowing Jesus Christ as my Savior and the goal of the Christian life, which is to grow up in Christ, go on to maturity. I missed out on knowing all the treasures that I have in my new identity in Christ – I am deeply loved (John 3:16), completely forgiven (Ephesians 1:7), totally accepted (Ephesians 1:6), and complete in Him (II Peter 1:3, Colossians 2:10).

So when the trial came fourteen years later, I wasn’t equipped. I was still an infant. I remember saying to members of my family, “I thought trials were supposed to make you better.” I felt I was growing worse by the day. I was crying out for help but there wasn’t any. All those black dots on the map, I was one of them.

All I knew was, I must have done something wrong, I was bad. God was getting back at me; I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting (one of the pastor’s favorite sermons). This was the kind of God I learned. Why had God zeroed in on me like one of those dots to be pinpointed like a destination on a map? I had no truth to cough up, no words of wisdom to hang on to; it was just me, singled out for the trial of my life. And I failed. I didn’t draw closer to my faith.

Wait, Faith? Faith, they didn’t even call it faith; faith was just a word to describe what you needed more of to see miracles, it was one church service to the next, one emotional high to the next. It was faith in – faith, an outer garb, and in a man and his church. Faith was not the very word used to describe this marvelous salvation in which we stand. There was no substance, no solid ground to stand on. Instead of standing, persevering, I just wanted to run, to do whatever it took to get out of the trial.

It would be two more years before I would leave the UPC and twenty more before I would leave the last vestiges of the scars that its false doctrine would leave on my heart and mind.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:3-4

Three Steps Part 4: Feminism and Fellowship

Original post here. This is continued from Three Steps Part 3: The First Step. This was about 1975.

So what do you do when it seems like your birth parents, your adoptive family and your church tell you that you, the individual person, are worthless? You start looking for other ways to make progress. In the 1970s there was another way that had made astounding progress in recent years, and that was through collective action and identification with a movement. Perhaps that could work for me. If I was not allowed to help myself as an individual, perhaps I could work for the advancement of a group that would benefit me in the long run, such as feminism.

By the mid-1970s my family was settling in to a new life in Birmingham and it seemed like my country was settling in to a new life as well, one that seemed sincerely interested in using reason and compassion to fix the errors of the past. Progress had been made on ending racial and gender discrimination, and more progress was coming. These developments were hailed as Good Things by our leaders and in the press. There were a few people grumbling about the changes in private conversations and letters to the editor, but never in public. It didn’t seem important.

School started to become interesting when they decided to start one of those newfangled “gifted” programs. I was ostracized by my peers for reasons I did not understand (high IQ and trauma), classes were deadly dull, and I had stopped paying attention and just sat there reading whatever I had checked out of the library. My reading teacher fought to get me tested for the program even though my grades were poor because I was reading a different book every day. The tests revealed that I was gifted, and I was put into the new class on probation over the strenuous objections of the principal, who apparently thought being bored in his classrooms was somehow inherently immoral.

I learned the two most important things I would learn in elementary school about that time, and oddly enough both of them were taught to me by male military veterans. The first lesson was taught to me by my new gifted-ed teacher, a 50s-era Army veteran who had used his benefits to earn a Master’s in Psychology. He taught me that the things which made me look at the world so differently than everyone else and isolated me from my classmates were matters of psychology, not moral failings on my part. They were in the process of being named, studied, and understood. I took a great deal of comfort from this fact. In the lifetimes of my adoptive parents and grandparents these same types of researchers had worked diligently to eradicate so many of the great plagues that had swept over mankind, like smallpox and polio. Surely they would be no less diligent in finding productive ways to deal with depression and anxiety.

The second lesson came from my new P.E. coach, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran who had been stationed in San Francisco and learned about yoga and meditation while he was there. I don’t think the school approved of such things, but he would mix in as much yoga and meditation as he could with the soccer and gym hockey. He taught us meditative breathing, and practicing that form of stress relief helped keep me from cracking under the stress.

Meanwhile I was noticing some discrepancies at church. People talked about gender equality in church, but like the Queen’s jam in Alice in Wonderland, it was always equality tomorrow, never equality today. Women would be allowed to preach any day now, but somehow never today or any other day on the schedule calendar.

By now I had noticed that most people didn’t come to hear the preacher speak in the first place, they came to take part in the activities going on in the Fellowship Hall. These activities were organized by the church ladies. Therefore the big draw at the church was the work of the women, not the work of the all-male clergy. Yet, when the preacher called out the names of the notable members who had helped the church at the beginning of the service and asked them to stand and be recognized he only called on men. After they were honored there would be a general platitude about the “wonderful work done by the ladies of the church”, but no women would be named and recognized, and no individual woman’s work would be held up for commendation.

There were also definite differences between “women’s work” and “men’s work”. Women in the church cooked, cleaned, decorated, organized events, and took care of children. Men in the church wrote and administrated. Even at that age I knew that my God-given gift was writing. There was no place for a women writer at my church, even with a gift coming from God. God had not seen fit to gift me with any talent at all for cleaning, decorating, organizing or anything else which women were allowed to do. In fifty years I have picked up some very slight skills along those lines, but nothing that will ever approach my ability to string words together. So if God truly meant for men and women to occupy different spheres, why had He given me a gift that did not fit in with my gender? It didn’t make any sense. Either God had made a mistake, or the church had. The latter seemed far more likely.

Meanwhile our preacher was getting ready to retire. A new minister had been found by the steering committee, and exciting new things were being planned by the church organizers. Maybe it would finally be the day for that equality jam.

I had a lot to learn.

Three Steps Out the Church Door: Leaving the Southern Baptist Church – Introduction

Three Steps Part 1: Recollection, Remembrance, and Discovery

Three Steps Part 2: That Old Time Liberal Religion

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