Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on November 30, 2018.
CC image courtesy of Pixabay, karishea.
So last night I was closing up for the night at the coffee shop where I work, and there were these people sitting at a table who go to an evangelical-ish hipster church in my community.
I’ve seen some of their events advertised on Facebook and I talked to them when they were part of a protest this fall. Working two jobs means I encounter many people in different spaces and sometimes it overlaps because I live in a small community.
I had mostly good feelings about them. They’ve been very friendly with me and easy to talk to when they come into my store.
But I didn’t like the tone of this meeting. They told one of their worship team members that everyone is trying to make their lives less busy and more “intentional” and he needed to be off the worship team for a few weeks.
I have no idea what sin he allegedly committed. It’s probably not sexual, because usually the punishment would be longer than a few weeks. Maybe he didn’t read his Bible often enough.
The whole thing felt off and not good.
The leadership woman who’s about my age was confronting the guy with the pastor sitting beside her, and they got him to sign this paper about church discipline.
I thought I heard her tell him, “Now this doesn’t mean stop coming to church, because then you’ll never play on the band again.”
“For me to get on the platform and sing, there’s certain requirements I have to meet,” she said.
I just kept mopping around them, silently, slowly losing more and more trust for them. The words they used were harsh and I didn’t feel like they valued him. They kept making it seem like they were the spiritual ones and he was not.
I couldn’t hear the entire conversation, and I don’t know everything about the situation. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s a story I know all too well.
They told him over and over the pastor was there for him, and if he needed to talk to him during this period to please reach out, but that it was his job to seek help like he was this bad, lost person.
It felt like a total power trip. This poor guy was sitting there all shame-faced trying to survive this awkward situation, like he had no idea what they had planned to talk to him about. Like he’s just trying to not lose his community.
It’s disorienting to feel like your people are making you feel like you’re not a part of them for some perceived spiritual failing.
It hurt a lot to see people who are supposed to represent Christ treat another human this way. This is not what Jesus would do.
Note: After this happened, I asked two pastors that I trust if they would ever consider having a church discipline meeting with someone in a Starbucks. They both said they thought it was unethical and possibly humiliating to the person to have a meeting like that in a public place.
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It’s a moving letter, explaining how a lot of people in the LGBT community feel about the church, loving it and just wanting to be loved and embraced in return.
// // //
dear church,
there are millions of us. millions who just want you to understand.
millions who want to belong. millions who have been turned away where faith, hope, and love are said to abound.
we are LGBT+. we have many different struggles, pasts, and paths. but yet we are still human. we want to be a part of the things you are doing. we simultaneously feel the love of a savior and the condemnation of the saved— the latter is why many of us won’t be in your building on Sunday.
as we have grown and matured, we found our way through life, broken, alone, and silent. we didn’t talk to others about our struggles. we bottled them up so we could still be a part of the joy that comes from being around others who believe the same as us… but eventually, it’s not enough. we all come to a point where we cannot hide who we are any longer. we open up and tell the masses, while at the same time, your doors close.
your eyes no longer see the person you once saw, and without saying it, we know you see someone who is unworthy of your love, time, and affection. when we come out, there is such a relief and joy that overcomes us.
but you feel it is your responsibility to quench that. you stomp on our joy until it is no longer breathing. our newfound hope and happiness is quite literally put to death inside us.
so… many of us choose to follow Jesus on our own, without the community of believers we once had and still need. it’s lonely here, but we have a savior who still listens and wants us to live and gently teaches us how to breathe when we forget, shows us the love and compassion we need to spread, and gives us everything we don’t deserve to have.
but church… we still want to belong with you. we still want to be a part of what you’re doing. we want to be in your building on Sunday, worshiping our Creator, hand-in-hand with you.
open your doors, open your eyes, love with your hearts, and please, don’t let us stay in the cold any longer. we’re freezing.
too many of us are falling apart without you. our silent cries for help are slowly but surely tearing us apart until there’s nothing left.
so i have one question for you, church: will you love us?
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Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 7, 2015 as part of a series.
Content Note: religious manipulation, forced starvation
Eleanor and Racquel hiking the Incline near Colorado Springs in fall 2013. | Photo: Eleanor Skelton
Racquel grew up attending the First United Pentecostal Church of Colorado Springs, now known as Heritage Pentecostal Church. This is Racquel’s story, in her own words.
Somehow I never imagined that the inner peace and joy I felt as a 5-year-old girl after being filled with the Holy Ghost would later disgust and scare me.
I am writing this because I believe my voice should be heard. I hope that by telling my story it will help my healing and others with similar stories as well as prevent more stories like mine from happening.
The music was loud, and the atmosphere was pulsing with energy.
I wanted to show how much I loved God, so I went up to the front of the sanctuary and danced with all my might, letting my tears flow. I had been taught that I should dance before the Lord and not let anyone’s opinion stop me.
Often, I was the first one or the only one at the front of the church.
This was good. It meant I was a leader, and that I was fighting spiritual warfare. It would also show my pastor, who was God’s voice in my life, how my walk with God was and what a good apostolic young person I was.
I remember night after night where this was my mindset.
Racquel (far left, wearing an orange dress) speaks in tongues on the front row during Heritage Youth Conference, fall 2011. | Photo: First United Pentecostal Church of Colorado Springs
I was isolated from other members of the youth group because I would refuse to do things that the pastor had commanded us not to, like riding in a car with a guy unless it was approved or unless a married approved chaperone was in the car.
However, there were also the many, many times where I sat or knelt at the altar, weeping and feeling the guilt of my many sins when I simply failed to uphold the standards because I had listened to unchristian music, watched a TV show, or could not stick to a daily prayer life.
For years, I went through a cycle of getting in trouble with my best friend, Ashley, for questioning the pastoral authority and why we held to some of our standards, sometimes completely disregarding the rules, and then being told that my best friend and I should not talk or hang out because our personalities did not complement each other.
Meanwhile, I stood by as she was abused in so many ways by both the pastoral authority and her parents. The only thing I could do was be there for her.
In January 2013, my best friend and I had come to the conclusion that we did not and could not agree with the church. However, we were discovered yet again and ripped apart.
This time, the pastor lied to both of us, trying to turn us against each other by saying that the other one had ratted us out.
At the direction and guidance of the pastor, Ashley’s parents were punishing her for not losing weight because it was said that God could not use her unless she lost the weight. Because of her inability to meet their demands, she had begun starving herself.
I texted her one night in compassion and frustration that she should “F*** (written politely as $@##) what they think” to drive home to Ashley that starving herself was not the answer, and that her parents and pastor were wrong.
During one of the long sessions in the pastor’s office after getting caught, I discovered the pastor had hacked into my best friend’s phone and found my text.
I was questioned about my lack of respect for authority.
My hands were tied as I seethed in anger not able to tell the pastor the context of the text, lest the abuse she suffered would increase, because the pastor was part the abuse.
Back then, Ashley was too scared of losing her parents and being kicked out to do anything other than play along with them. When she was 19 years old, her parents and the pastor stripped every form of communication, transportation and even her ability to go to college from her.
She was not even allowed to be alone in her own home at any time.
Racquel (far right) singing in the choir. Apostolic churches consider leading worship to be a privilege called being “on the platform.” Anyone who questions authority or church beliefs may be removed from the platform as form of social shaming. |Photo: First United Pentecostal Church of Colorado Springs
In March, the deception worked, and the pressure finally broke me to the point that I gave in and did exactly as the church and the pastor wanted me to do. I felt helpless and that the reason for these crazy feelings must be because I was not submitted to them.
I continued to not talk to my best friend and tried to force myself into the mold they had created for me with my approved Christian friends and guilt-ridden prayer life.
I still had all of the same questions.
Why must a man my pastor dictate to me what God wants and God not talk to me directly? Why must I not be allowed to talk to my best friend who was still the most important person in my life?
How could so many injustices and abuse be what a loving god wanted?
So when my little sister decided to leave suddenly and move in with a guy I had never met, and I had no idea were she was or if she was safe, when my approved friends failed, I reached out to the one person I knew who would be there: Ashley.
Within two weeks of resuming secret communication, we had both discussed in detail what we saw wrong with the church, and had stated that no matter what we were going to keep communicating, even if it had to be hidden.
Ashley, Eleanor and Racquel in August 2013 | Photo: Eleanor Skelton
Almost immediately, she started to date a coworker.
On December 15, 2013, her dad followed her to her boyfriend’s house, and that night he kicked her out.
I received a text that said: “They know everything can you come and get me.” I immediately drove to her house and picked her up.
After that, we stayed in Eleanor’s apartment. She had also recently escaped an abusive fundamentalist home.
There has been a lot of healing and learning since then and now. Learning to live outside of the box has not been easy, nor do I think it ever will.
I now have the wonderful freedom of choice, and with that comes what I would describe as both the beauty of a rainbow and the burden of the rain cloud.
Making these choices is the scariest and most exhilarating thing that I have ever done. I have learned and accepted more of who I am.
I can only hope that healing will come in time, and the scars will become less painful.
Racquel graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in May 2014. She struggled with undereducation from inadequate homeschooling and Christian private education in her church throughout her time in college. Racquel hopes to pursue a graduate degree in counseling and mental health, and her current job involves assisting troubled teens.
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How do you make people feel genuinely welcome in a church, without inadvertently pushing them away because your efforts make you come on too strong? This is an issue of concern especially with a lot of smaller congregations struggling to hold on to their membership, such as it is.
Here are a few things that have come up at various times when I’ve had this discussion with others:
Err on the side of assuming an unfamiliar person is a newcomer rather than not speaking with them at all
Don’t require newcomers to come forward if they are uncomfortable doing so
Consider having an information table available, since everyone doesn’t always stay around for a coffee hour or other fellowship events
Don’t assume that visitors will know who they need to speak to if they’re interested in further information. Consider pointing out the contact person or have them make the necessary announcement themselves
Never pressure anyone into activities or groups they’re not interested in, even in the context of joking about how they “need to be there”
Consider the fact that some people have past negative experiences with certain types of activities from previous congregations and this is a major reason to avoid putting pressure on
These are just a few things worth keeping in mind. Ideally, attending a church shouldn’t be emotionally harmful, but this is something that’s too much of a problem in some peoples’ lives that we all need to think about.
Feeling like you don’t just fit in affects us all sometimes. Sometimes that feeling of not fitting in involves church activities. One size fits all isn’t usually a good solution, especially for things that involve ministries.
Take a look at 1 Corinthians 12, for example. We all have different gifts, but it is the same Spirit at work in all of them. I think there’s sometimes too much of an emphasis on certain supernatural gifts associated with the apostolic area that it’s easy to overlook other gifts and talents that are with the Church today.
Another passage that comes to mind is Job 39:13-28, where creatures are given different abilities according to their place in nature. Obviously, both wild and domestic animals fulfill different types of functions from humans. Yet, this is a beautiful example of how different parts of God’s creation are given different abilities according to who they are and what they do.
A blogger recently shared about not fitting in during some social settings at her church, although she thrived in settings where she visited with the sick or in Bible studies. She just felt that she couldn’t fit in with a social group where the only thing she had in common was that they were all women and attended the same congregation. I think many of us might relate to that.
In prayer, she realized that the social setting was for some other group members, but not for her, freeing her from feelings of not belonging. We who are members of Christ’s one Body do belong. It’s just that we might have different ways of expressing how we belong.
May we always continue to go in peace to love and serve God.
