Category: United Pentecostal Church | Page 68

Leaving An Unhealthy Church #3: Why It May Be Important To Resign Your Membership

I promised to share why I believe there is good reason to formally resign your membership/ties with an unhealthy or abusive church. In doing some research six years ago on a slander lawsuit case involving a pastor in the United Pentecostal Church, it was discovered that it could be an important step in exiting. Please keep in mind while reading this, that I am not an attorney and am simply sharing some things I have learned through research.

I want to make very clear that I am NOT at all encouraging or saying that former members should sue their ex churches, especially not for frivolous things. However, some unhealthy churches can do serious harm to a person who left and there are times when a lawsuit may be appropriate, after much consideration, prayer and soul-searching.

Many do not realize there are legal issues involved with resigning your membership. For instance, if you are a member of an unincorporated church, you could be sued if leadership did something wrong. The church, as it is unincorporated, cannot be sued. This has been upheld in the court system. “Members of an unincorporated association are individually liable for tortious acts of agents or employees of the association if the tort is committed within the scope of their authority.” Golden v. Wilder, 4 S.W.2d 140, 143-44

In fact, this was affirmed in a case against a United Pentecostal Church in Tomball, Texas in 1991. Era L. Hutchins brought a class action lawsuit against Grace Tabernacle United Pentecostal Church, and an employee, Clifford Parker. (At the time, Danny Carpenter was the pastor.) It seems the church was using her property and stopped paying rent. The church had entered into a five-year lease with Hutchins and extended it verbally after five years. It appears for ten years afterward, the church continued payments and then refused starting in 1987. At some point Parker allegedly promised to help with two of the lots and instead took the property at a tax sale.

The church fought allowing Hutchins to file a class action suit, but a Court of Appeals in Texas stated, “In brief, the Church wants both the advantage of an unincorporated entity (no liability for the entity), and at the same time wants the advantage of a corporate entity (no liability for its members).”

I don’t know what happened to her lawsuit for back rent and the trustees allegedly defrauding her out of property. However, this case clearly shows that if you are a member of an unincorporated church, there is the possibility that you could personally be held liable for the wrongdoings of the church. It is definitely something to think about if you are part of an unhealthy church.

There is also a more important legal issue involved which protects you when you resign and has been upheld in various court cases across the USA.

Normally the courts do not become involved in matters between churches and their members, even over discipline. That is part of the separation of church and state in this country. Yet when a person resigns and thus formally cuts ties with a church, that church no longer has freedom to ‘discipline’ them. Things that an unhealthy church might get away with while you are officially a member, legally they no longer have a leg to stand on when you sever those ties. The legal system can and has become involved once one is no longer a member.

Should the former church slander you in such a way as to cause harm or do anything else harmful, you might only be able to combat that legally if you resigned your membership BEFORE those things happened. This came into play with the lawsuit previously mentioned. A former church has no right to deal with you, discipline you, etc. after you resign. If you do not resign membership, the courts view it as you being subject to the discipline of the church.

This link will take you to an article that will shed additional light on the subject, giving some background on legal cases. It is because of these things, that I now feel turning in a letter of resignation is a good idea when leaving an unhealthy or abusive church.

After Hardship Comes Ease

Verily, after hardship comes ease. ~ Quran 94:6.

What we are not told is that the “ease” after we leave an abusive church (or other situation) may be awhile coming. It does not (usually) happen the moment we walk out the door of that church.

I think the “ease” comes once we can start to forgive people for what they did to us and our families. That can take a long time sometimes. For me I am still working on it. Distance in time between me and the time I left (November 2012) is making things easier. Once I stepped away from that group of people and got my mind started thinking without the United Pentecostal Church glasses on, things seemed better.

One thing for me was that the last couple of years I was thinking “Where is Jesus in all of this?” I was losing sight of my Savior and was believing that the whole church had lost sight of him too. Preaching seemed to be all about hair, clothes, standards, tithing. Things that have nothing to do with salvation. I realized that I had bitten into the apple of a belief system that was not healthy. Gossip was rampant. People strived to be like the Pastor or his wife, not like Jesus. It was automatically thought that if you leave the building, The Church, you are leaving God. Because God can only live in a church where “All the Truth” is told. It isn’t so.

I left to reconnect with God. To see Him the way I did before I joined this cultish religion. Once out of the confines of a place I once thought of as a safe haven, a place to be with God, I discovered once again that He is everywhere all at once all the time.

Yes, things are getting easier day by day. But I still have more of my road to travel.

Leaving An Unhealthy Church #2: Anything You Say Can, And Will, Be Used Against You

You are planning to leave your church and are contemplating writing something, or talking to, the pastor. In a healthy church, this would be easy…but in an unhealthy one, it is best to be cautious.

We are familiar with people being read their rights upon arrest and part of what is said is that “Anything you say can, and will, be used against you.” Unfortunately, though an unhealthy church doesn’t warn you of this, the same holds true with them.

For years I have cautioned people against giving details in any email or letter they may write to a pastor when they leave. If you include anything perceived to be negative, it will most likely be used against you. That would include sharing any thoughts on doctrine being erroneous, how the church is run, problems, and so on. The letter itself, or portions thereof, may be shared with members and it might be featured in a sermon. In an unhealthy church, your observations and complaints may be shared in an effort to paint you in a negative light and to keep members from having contact with you. This, in turn, causes others pause who are having similar thoughts, by getting a glimpse of how they may be treated.

If you write a letter of resignation, and I would encourage it (more in a future post), keep it brief and simple. Avoid sharing your reasons for leaving. If you can do it sincerely, consider thanking the pastor or church for something that helped you during your time there or share that you leave with some good memories. I would not mention where you will be attending church, if you have decided that. (Some pastors will call the church to warn them about you.) By keeping it short and nice, you will save yourself some heartache and won’t be giving the leadership any ammunition to use against you. Keep a copy for yourself.

The pastor may push to meet with you, but understand that the purpose may be to persuade you to remain and perhaps tell you where you have gone wrong or attempt to scare you. While you may not have shared the reason for your exit, sometimes one can give off unspoken signals in the weeks or days before leaving. These may be interpreted as you being backslid, rebellious, unteachable, and anything else negative.

You have no obligation to speak to the pastor. If you know the pastor to be abusive, I would advise against it. Consider having someone go with you as a witness if you do meet. Be aware that sometimes they will take the opposite approach and perhaps even sympathize and promise things will change. This has worked in causing some to remain, leaving them trying to reach the proverbial carrot on a stick that will never be within reach.

For anyone interested, below is my resignation letter, with the church name removed. Today I would probably write it differently, omitting the part about changing churches. It was also written before I learned about spiritual abuse. Though he called fellow United Pentecostal Church pastors to warn them about me, I never heard of him sharing this letter with members of the church.

Dear Bro. Taylor:

Recently I have made the decision to leave the ___ Church and attend another church. I have not yet made the decision on which church this will be, but I am attending church services.

This has not been an easy decision to make, nor was it done hastily. It is not being done to hurt anyone. I feel that this is a move I need to make regardless of what anyone may think or say, be it good or bad. I myself have always felt that it was wrong to change churches unless you were moving, getting married, etc., but now feel that there are times when one may move on for other reasons than these.

I want to say that I have learned much from the many years I was a member of the church and have grown spiritually. There are things which you have taught that will always stay with me. I will always remember and love you and Sister Taylor.

Though I am still praying about which church to attend, I felt I needed to let you know about my decision to leave. I wish you and Sister Taylor the best. May God lead and bless you.

Again, guard your own heart in how you leave and maintain your integrity. And remember- anything you say can, and will, be used against you…..

Stress. Anxiety. Depression.

Stress, anxiety and depression are caused when we are living to please others. ~ Paulo Coelho.

While I don’t think I ever had anxiety or was depressed while I was in my former United Pentecostal church, I did suffer from some stress. Trying to please other people, mainly those in charge, was stressful. Because you could never do enough to please them. Never.

I was sick one Saturday morning and didn’t even wake up until 10. That was when everyone going on visitation left. No one bothered to call to see where I was and I did not call in either. But the next Saturday, in front of everyone, I sure got the filleted-drawn and quartered treatment about not being there EVERY Saturday (as I had for weeks and weeks and on time while others came if the notion struck them). This was the pastor’s wife who called me out. She, who hardly ever showed up on time for some of these functions. But I seriously think she liked making the belated appearance. If you came after she did you are not dedicated to God or the Church.

I always felt that God was so much easier to please than any human agent. Humans just have their own criteria they go by and you need to measure up OR ELSE!

Read Tired of Trying to Measure Up by Jeff VanVonderen if you have problems with those hard to please people.

Foundations

I was raised Disciples of Christ (Christian). When I was nine, I repented and asked Jesus into my heart, and my life changed radically, especially in one way. I had been an angry child, so I started praying that Jesus would teach me to love. When I prayed this way, God would “hug me big, inside out”- my heart would be filled with love and joy in those moments of prayer. I kept this time very private. To my knowledge no one knew what had prompted the changes in my life. (They were just very thankful something had changed!)

For the next few years there were times I was closer to God and times I wasn’t, but He was always there. At 15, I was baptized. (Mom didn’t believe in child baptism, so my request had been denied for several years.) At 18, I began attending a Pentecostal church. There, they taught that there was more for me. God has more for everyone, so this was an easy concept to grasp. Soon after starting to attend there, I was baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost. The pastor took us to ecumenical meetings, and I attended Baptist Bible studies and Disciples of Christ youth fellowships. We fellowshipped other churches and called their members Christians. I never heard anyone at church downplay their experiences.

A few years later, a new pastor came into my life. He taught that no one who had not repented, been baptized in Jesus’ name, and received the Holy Ghost was saved. Had the teaching been that a person isn’t saved if they were taught Jesus’ name baptism and rejected it, I could have almost accepted it. But this new teaching was difficult to swallow; my earlier experiences were too real and life changing to doubt. Even more difficult for me to grasp was his teaching that other Pentecostals with fewer standards were also hell bound. Was my former pastor unsaved because he wore a watch, didn’t follow some other standard, or fellowshipped Trinitarians? Was I unsaved because I had skirts with slits in them? I couldn’t accept that, but stayed anyway.

One night, an evangelist came. He preached that night that if a hand is cut off from the body, the hand would die, but the body wouldn’t. Maybe the hand was diseased or injured. Sometimes the body needed to cut a part off to survive. If it did, the part that was cut off would die. There was no way for a hand to live apart from the body- it couldn’t be grafted onto another body, and it couldn’t be grafted back into the body it had been cut off from for very long after the blood supply stopped. Therefore, if the pastor cut a person out of the church, that person would be condemned, cut off from the blood of Jesus.

Very shortly after that disturbing message, my pastor got up and preached that a person was going to leave soon, and would almost immediately cut their hair and wear pants. He said everyone would be surprised who it was, but that it would happen. After church that night, he called me at home and told me to never come back, that I was expelled.

These three events combined disturbed and grieved me deeply, especially in light of the first message about the severed hand. I didn’t backslide, but instead started attending a different church. And I continued to wrestle with the two messages and the expulsion. Though I finally explained my expulsion to my new pastor, I never told anyone about the severed hand sermon.

This summer, an evangelist preached the remedy. He preached about the foundation:

2 Timothy 2:19 Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure…

1 Corinthians 3
11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
13 Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
14 If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
15 If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God…

The evangelist continued by saying that the foundation of our salvation is Jesus. No one can shake our salvation (foundation) because our foundation was completed by Him, the master builder. We build on this foundation, and others build on it, poorly or well, and it is what we build that will be tried. But the foundation will remain sure. We cannot destroy the foundation by building on it. We cannot so easily lose salvation. The foundation is sure.

And the blood is sure. The blood can’t be stopped. At Calvary, the soldiers didn’t break Jesus’ legs like they did the thieves’. The prophecy was that not one bone of him should be broken. Why? Because the marrow in the bones produces the blood. If a bone is broken, the production of blood might be stopped or hindered in that area. But His bones were not broken. There is not one thing the devil or anyone else can do to stop the blood. We are saved by the blood, and it can’t be stopped. It can’t be hindered in our lives. Our foundation is sure in Him.

Romans 8
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We and others build what they will in our lives by our words and deeds. These things will be tried by fire. But the foundation will not be tried- it was built by the master builder. Our foundation, our salvation, is sure in Jesus. There is nothing anyone can do to cut us off from Him.