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Leaving An Unhealthy Church #12: Can I Go To A Church Where I Don’t Agree With Everything?

In searching for a new church after leaving an unhealthy one, people often have questions such as these: Do you think it is OK to attend a church where you don’t agree with everything they believe in? Do you think God will fault us if we go to a church where we disagree with some interpretations of the Bible?

Even in the New Testament, we find that everyone didn’t always see things the very same way. The Bible speaks to the matter in Ephesians 3:

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ….It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (verses 2, 3, & 12, 13- NIV)

One thing you will find, if you haven’t already, is that as you go forward in your walk with God, some beliefs are going to change or become more defined. This is because we are ever learning and growing. In addition, when one leaves an unhealthy church, there are often numerous faulty teachings that will be shed as you start looking into what was taught. So even if you found a new church soon after leaving, you may find that a few months down the road you are no longer in agreement in some areas.

Is it possible to find a church where you are in agreement on every single issue? My guess is probably not. Even while I was in the United Pentecostal Church, I didn’t always agree with the pastor on some issues. The ministers within this group do not see eye to eye on everything, thus there are numerous variations of some teachings.

As believers, we are to grow together in the Lord. To me, as long as a church teaches the essentials and isn’t into some blatant false teaching, then there isn’t anything wrong or potentially harmful with attending, even though you may not be in complete agreement.

Look at it this way. Are you married? Do you and your spouse see eye to eye on every matter? My guess would be no couple does. Should this mean the two of you should not remain together? Certainly not! The same applies to friendships.

There are areas where I personally feel a need to draw a line and this is probably true with most believers. Let me share an example from my own experience. When I moved to another state, I started attending a church that seemed OK. They were tolerant of the beliefs of others. But then there came a time when they began promoting an author who was scheduled to speak at their church. The main pastor proclaimed that he felt this author was a prophet for our time. I believe this author to be in error with things he teaches and believe he is far from a prophet. Making a proclamation that someone is a prophet was no small matter in my eyes after exiting my former church group. In this instance, I felt I had to leave. For someone else, it might not be a problem and they may be able to overlook it.

If you are looking for the perfect church, there is none and never will be. Even the very early Christians had difficulties, disagreements and problems.

For me, what matters are the basics. I wouldn’t have to be in agreement with everything in order to attend a church unless it was in a major area. Look for a church which fulfills the passage I quoted above- that prepares God’s people for works of service and is helping people to grow and mature and come to unity. A church like that will probably be a healthy one and differences in opinions and beliefs will be allowed.

Kicked Out

I had the strangest dream-memory last night. The dream was very clear flashbacks of my time in the United Pentecostal Church in the late 90s, before Junction City. Oddly I could remember people’s faces and actions so very clearly. Most of the time I forget faces over time.

I realized during the dream-memory that all of this happened nearly 15 years ago. The children I remember are now grown. One is probably married and another probably engaged.

The dream-memory mainly revolved around the kids. I’ve never been much of a kid person. I prayed as a pre-teen that I would never be able to have kids. I really thought babies hated me. The first babies/toddlers I was ever around much that seemed to like me were the pastor’s kids at this church.

They had a boy and a girl. The boy was around 3-4 when I started attending, and the girl was no more than 18 months, I’d guess, and probably quite a bit younger. With the pastor up preaching and the wife with a nursing baby, there were many times when I would take care of the little boy during church. I’d take little things with me in my purse to entertain him, and later the little girl, too. I’d stay after church and entertain them while their parents counseled sometimes, too.

They were cute kids. It was hard on me when the pastor kicked me out. On top of all the regular reasons, it was hard because I knew my disappearance would hurt them. I’ve never been that close to any other kids, even my niece and nephew, because I saw them so often and spent so much time with them.

In the dream-memory one of the other things I remembered was how the pastor’s wife wanted the little boy to have a suit, but they couldn’t afford one. One of the other members and I found a suit at a yard sale that would fit him. I was hesitant because the pants didn’t have a zipper, just an elastic. But there was a tie and a vest and it was cute. I figured he could wear those with regular pants and look dressed up. We bought the outfit and took it to her. I told her that I knew the pants probably wouldn’t work but she insisted. The boy came to church the next Sunday in the outfit, embarrassed half to death about his pants with the baby elastic in them, and me embarrassed for him. I never saw him wear the vest or tie (or the outfit) again.

I also remembered clearly, once again, the night the pastor and his wife called me into the kitchen area after church where the pastor accused me of lusting after him and told me if I didn’t change, he’d throw me out. That they were leaving to evangelize and when they returned I’d better have changed or I’d be gone. It wasn’t his words I remembered, but that when he stopped accusing me and told me that he’d now pray, the pastor’s wife linked the tips of her fingers with mine. It was like she was shaking as hard as I was, like she was holding on. I always wondered about that. I wondered why she didn’t get in trouble. I wondered why she did it to start with.

For years I blamed myself for getting kicked out. I thought that because he was a ‘man of God’ he must have known something about me that I didn’t know. I fought leaving because he ‘prophesied’ that I would leave and cut my hair and put on pants. He ‘prophesied’ that it would happen immediately, but I still fought leaving just to prove him wrong. And then I felt guilty for doing that, for wanting to make a ‘man of God’ a false prophet. I felt when he kicked me out that I would be sinning to ‘backslide‘ and sinning, as well, not to, because it would be proving him a liar.

I know, that’s messed up. But it’s how I felt at the time.

I just needed to remember, and then to write it down.

Years later, looking back, I realize that she was abused. I remember specific things he’d do, things she said had happened even from the day after their wedding, that should have clued me in that he was abusive. I remember seeing him abuse his kids, especially his daughter. Of slapping her legs again and again while she screamed and he yelled he was going to break ‘that woman spirit’ in her. A child still in diapers. I remember his refusal to stop long enough to let his little boy use the bathroom on road trips, the wife’s admission that she’d made her son pee into diapers because he had to go so bad and her husband wouldn’t stop, the child’s humiliation. I know the little boy wet his bed, probably at least until I left when he was 7-8. And I know there were reasons. I think one of the hardest things about leaving there was leaving those kids, knowing they were being abused but staying silent, afraid to say anything because they might be taken out of that home and ‘the Truth.’ And because we weren’t supposed to say anything. He was the ‘man of God.’

I struggled after leaving, have struggled for years, with prayer. God didn’t answer my prayers- my pleas- that he’d make a way that I could stay. My dream of finally being in the inner circle was shattered, and so was my confidence in prayer and in God in general, in much of what I was taught. I knew in my heart that I’d done pretty much everything I was supposed to, that I sacrificed, that I gave, that I obeyed unquestioningly even to the point of accepting a false accusation that I was lusting after that man. My hope that I would marry, my hope of having kids, recently awakened, all were gone. I doubted whether I could even eat with other believers without making them sin. There was no way I could be anything in any church. Not in my mind, not at that time. And not for a very long time after that.

I woke up this morning whispering a prayer for those kids. The son, now a man, the young girl, now around 18 or 19 probably, and quite possibly soon to be married off to who-knows-what in exchange for a good place for the dad or the brother to preach, and the youngest, born after I left.

Leaving an Unhealthy Church #11: Confusion & Not Knowing Who or What to Believe

At first, what had led me to seriously consider leaving my United Pentecostal church was not doctrine or standards, but a mess of problems stemming from the church owned daycare where I was employed. My best friend at the time was the head teacher and we’d been experiencing difficulties in our relationship. She was hardly there and didn’t teach (we ran under her teaching credentials). One thing led to another so in 1993 I turned in my resignation, which was effective at the end of the summer session. During this time I started to feel that it was no longer my church as the daycare events seeped over into church- a terrible feeling after almost 13 years as an actively involved member. I still recall speaking to one of the daughters of the pastor, who was no longer a member of the church but worked at the daycare, and saying that if things didn’t change I’d have to think about leaving the church as well as the daycare.

Needing to be able to think clearly, I took off and crashed at a friend’s home in West Virginia for about three weeks after I resigned and spoke to them about what had been happening. It was a couple I’d met in the late 80s who had spent time at the church and knew the people and how the pastor operated. They’d become like a second set of parents to me, arriving shortly after my mother had passed away and my father had moved out-of-state.

While I was in West Virginia, the pastor at my home church had taken an entire Thursday night service and played a tape of a Christian radio broadcast (read a transcript of it here) that a former couple from the church made on the topic of spiritual abuse. His reasoning was to show them what people were saying about us. The church members seemed very upset by this couple. One would not have known what church they were referring to unless they had known them since no names were mentioned. I didn’t like what I was seeing and was curious to hear this ‘horrid’ broadcast. I borrowed it from the pastor and listened to it in the privacy of my home.

My reaction was far from that of the many church members who heard it while I had been away. Though I disagreed in areas, I understood what they were saying. It caused me to start wondering about the validity of standards taught in the United Pentecostal Church.

From here I ventured to Pennsylvania for a couple days to stay with another couple who had previously left our church and whose present church had dropped out of the UPC. I took the tape with me, played it for them, and while they listened and agreed with all that was on the tape, I paced the floor. It was starting to really hit home about some actions made by the pastor and I was realizing he did some very wrong things. It was quite upsetting and hard to come to grips with it. Here I had been seeing first hand the other side of what had happened to others before me, due to my involvement with the daycare. None of it felt good.

Immediately upon returning home, I visited with the one pastor’s daughter and her husband and discussed some issues and spent a few hours at their home. Now I had even more to digest as PKs see and hear a lot.

I started seriously wondering about the standards taught by the UPC and ventured into the uncut women’s hair doctrine. I wanted to know the truth! Though there were some issues I had studied more in depth while a member, though I was seeing through UPC glasses, this is one that had only been looked at on the surface. Their explanation of 1 Corinthians 11 seemed to make sense and I had long ago stopped cutting my hair and followed the teaching. I wanted to please God.

The confusion hit big time as I started to delve into the matter. I had writings from the UPC to read as well as a few other things which gave differing viewpoints. One day I’d feel the UPC was correct and the next felt they were in error. Talk about wavering. I recall getting together with a friend who is a lawyer and we’d bat things back and forth, coming back at each other with responses that the UPC would give to different points we made. How was one to know for sure? Was the UPC correct in their teaching? Were they in error? I did not have the answers.

Upon further study, I decided to jump head first into the Bible, looking for any and all mentions of hair in both the Old and New Testaments. Surely if this were a principle important to God, it would have been taught in the Old Testament. Yet nothing was found there to support the doctrine. The confusion started to ease as I studied more and dissected 1 Corinthians 11. What had once been clear to me as a UPC member, now was not. My findings showed that the Bible did not teach that a woman could never cut her hair.

Having finally laid that matter to rest, an uneasiness came over me and a thought came: “Now just what else is wrong that you’ve been taught?” Oh, yuck! I didn’t enjoy that thought at all. Talk about feeling like the rug has just been pulled out from under your feet and you were wobbling, trying to catch your balance. Where did it end? How was I going to know? Was any of what I’d sworn was true really true?

These were some of my thoughts. I now had a leeriness toward pastors and would forever be changed in this area. No more would I simply accept what a minister told me without finding out for myself. No more would I blindly defend any Christian denomination as if they could not be wrong in doctrine.

Did all of the confusion magically disappear? Were all my questions and thoughts suddenly answered? No. It was a process…a process which varies from person to person. A lot depends on whether or not one is willing to tackle the areas with which they find themselves confronted. Confusion will diminish and go away as one comes to terms with any teachings/incidents they find themselves questioning. But I thoroughly believe, that as it was with me, that this confusion may not fully leave until one studies the Bible for themselves and rests their conclusions solely upon what it says.

This was part of my experience. Confusion, not knowing who or what to believe, is surely part of the exiting process of any abusive group. But there is hope and there are answers to your questions. Regardless of the turmoil one may feel as they go through this stage, trust that God will lead and guide you and open your understanding to what the Scriptures truly teach.

Concerned About Fellowshipping ‘Backsliders’

When people leave an unhealthy church, they are often concerned about fellowshipping ‘backsliders.’ They’ve been told we are bitter and want to strike out or pull them out. That may be true of a few, but many of us went to great lengths not to strike out. What we have said has not been said in anger, but to reach out to others who were hurt.

I was United Pentecostal for 19 years. I was thrown out of a church in 2000 on false accusations based on only the pastor’s word or decision. I moved to another state to join a different UPC to avoid saying anything to anyone about what had happened, under the pretense of going back to college. Only the new pastor and his wife were aware that anything had happened, and I refused to blame the former pastor. The new one knew I’d been thrown out, and knew the accusation. I wouldn’t defend myself. I thought that somehow he must have discerned sin in my heart that I wasn’t aware of.

At the new church, people questioned my move and didn’t accept me. I ‘held on.’ In 2003 my new pastor died. The man who took his place eventually started doing things that concerned me. In 2009, I left there after being named in a lawsuit by someone who had told me personally that the basis of their lawsuit was false, most probably as a supporting witness. I left rather than perjure myself or be thrown out for not backing the suit. I tried to find a different UPC. One pastor wanted to ‘swap stories’ about what this church had done to us. I refused. Several others wouldn’t take me without a full explanation of why I was leaving. And so I left UPC.

All that to say this: My story isn’t so different than others’ here. Many of us swore we’d never leave. We left behind friends and sometimes family. We loved God and church and the people there. We stayed as long as we could. But at some point something happened and we were forced to make a choice we didn’t want to make and didn’t plan to make. Most of us experience anger and confusion, but also a deep sense of loss. These boards can be a sounding board for those who are angry or confused, or disoriented by the culture shock of leaving, but more than that they are a place to sort through things, to discover, to learn, to grow… And when needed, to mourn together a loss that most of Christianity can’t comprehend, though the loss originates from some form of religion.

Blessings and peace to you all in the new year.

Blue Christmas

I went to a different kind of Christmas service tonight, a Blue Christmas service. The concept is to acknowledge that not everyone finds this to be a joyous season for a variety of reasons, and to give those people experiencing loneliness and loss the opportunity for a time of “remembrance and reflection.” And for this year, it was more meaningful than pretty much any other service I could probably have attended.

There were only two Christmas songs. The music was a man playing guitar and a woman singing along. Simple. Calm.

I’ve been dealing with a lot lately. Things at work, mainly. I thought. But there’s more to it. As the service progressed tonight, we were called to remember those we had lost. It wasn’t this job and the people who’ve sent messages there that I’m not a part of the team that I remembered.

Seven years ago in 2009 I lost my church, and every friend I had there, plus every friend I thought I had or wanted so badly to have. I lost hope that I would ever fit in there, that I would ever be accepted. I lost confidence in myself, and I lost faith to a degree as well. Not at first, but over time, year in and year out as I faced additional rejection in nearly every church I attended, through three moves and five job changes, and finally even from some of those friends I’d thought I made since leaving who called themselves Christian. And now at work, while a coworker who sits near me says the same things I heard in church: ‘You’ve got to trust God and just leave it in his hands. You can’t care what’s happening. Toughen up.’ Don’t feel. Don’t care. Don’t love? Wait, that’s not God. When did Christianity come to this place?

There is nothing wrong with hurting when people hurt us. And when people hurt us, it’s not because God wanted them to. That would mean God wanted them to sin, because that would mean God wanted them to do something unloving.

I’m not sure I ever allowed myself to completely grieve the loss of the friends I left behind in my former church. I miss them. I want to know what’s happening to them. I definitely haven’t given myself an opportunity to grieve the loss of the positive things I left behind in my former church. So perhaps the fact that I haven’t felt like celebrating this Christmas is a good thing, a way to move forward. And then maybe I can celebrate again.

Sure, the music was contemporary and that surprised me. But they sang my favorite (Mary Did You Know) and a few others. It was just all around fun, and everyone was very friendly.”