Finding the Balance in Welcoming Newcomers

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.

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Not the Right Fit? Don’t Worry

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.

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My Mask – IFB Related

The following article is written by a woman who wishes to remain anonymous. It is about Independent Fundamental Baptist churches, though others will also relate.

In my preteen years, I was taught to believe that expressing any negativity in any way was a way to show that I did not actually possess the Fruit of the Spirit (or evidence I was saved). Since the qualities included “joy” and “peace,” any sign of discouragement, depression, sadness, anxiety, was taken as a sign that I was under the devils influence. If I was under the influence of Satan, I was either “backslidden” or not truly saved.

Therefore, anytime I was in public, I was reminded by my mother, or people in my church, that in order to be a “good witness” for Christ (and not give God a bad name in the process), I had to put on my happy face.  And I did so.

Anyone who saw me in my teenage years would have imagined that I was living a life of pure bliss. I was smiling literally ALL of the time. I always acted cheerful, even though inside, I was deeply depressed (in fact, nowadays, when I see a girl who smiles too much, I worry for her). I radiated what appeared to be pure joy, “the joy of the Lord,” so to speak.

However, I  remember sitting in my room by myself, day by day, and being just so incredibly depressed. I would lie there, reading books or drawing pictures, and thinking to myself, “What is the purpose of living, if you’re just going to die anyway,” “Does anyone really care about me? Why do I actually exist at all,” and sometimes my thoughts would gravitate to how scary death would be. I would imagine my funeral and wonder how many people would show up if I died.  I truly believe the only reason I didn’t commit suicide was because of the intense fear I had of going through the torment of the fires of Hell.

I remember one time, passing a note to my friend at church, which said, “If I died tomorrow, would you go to my funeral?”  At the time, it seemed perfectly normal to ask such a question.

I sang a lot of “specials” (songs) at the church regarding joy. Here’s an example:

“Happiness is to know the Savior,
Living a life, within His favor,
Having a change in my behavior,
The Joy is mine,
Even when the teardrops start
I’ve found the secret
It’s Jesus in my heart!”

But what I couldn’t understand through the years was…why didn’t I feel this joy I sang of? I was living a lie,  but was not allowed to acknowledge this fact. It was forced to be a secret buried deep within myself, and I despised it.

My mother frequently read my diary, so I never felt quite like I was able to be honest in it. Yet, I felt a deep desire to write!  So sometimes I would begin a journal entry, and I would be honest about feeling bad…then I would consider whether the entry would be a “bad witness” for Christ. I worried that if I was to die that day and someone was to find it, they might think badly of God and therefore be denied the opportunity to be saved, so I would actually erase the entry and change it into something that looked “positive.”

For instance, I would think, “I feel so lonely. Why am I not happy? What is the purpose in life? There is no meaning in anything! The kids told me I was ugly today and it really hurt my feelings,” but I would write, “Today was such a BEAUTIFUL day!  The sun was shining and I got to go to church and see my friend. Someone got saved today, and I’m so happy for them! I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow!”

If you read my journal back then, it might have seemed that things were good, but they were actually tragically bad. And this actually was a problem for years into my marriage also. I was unable to allow myself to believe anything was ever bad. This denial caused me to not be able to confront issues as they arrived and I went through much unnecessary hardship as a result.

The Bible NEVER condemns feeling sad, or anger, or any other God given emotions. Our emotions were given to us by God to help us to see and address problems in our lives. They are tools to help us, and they are not sin in and of themselves.  Ephesians 4:26 says “Be angry, and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.”  It does not say not to be angry, but not to allow that anger to cause you to SIN.

David poured out many tears to God, and expressed deep sorrow multiple times, and yet he was considered “a man after God’s own heart.”  The Bible says that He knows our suffering intimately, and cares for us.  He has experienced the same types of pain we have, while existing in human form on earth, and He knows our suffering and carries our burdens on His own shoulders when we give them to Him.  Jesus – even though he was GOD HIMSELF and knew the final outcome of the situation- WEPT with Martha and Mary over Lazarus. He knows our emotions and does not hold them against us. He gave them for us, to help us heal. They are a GOOD thing.

If you have grown up with the idea that being true to who you are, and expressing emotions is a negative thing, or that God would be upset with you for expressing any sad, angry, or hurt feelings, please know that the God in scripture does not EVER express such an idea. Emotions are a gift from God. Being honest with who we are and what we feel is healthy. Being dishonest and wearing a mask is unhealthy and breeds resentment, and continues the cycles of depression. We must be honest with our emotions in order to find healing.

JOY does not necessarily mean that every moment you feel happy. True spiritual joy is in knowing that despite the trials we face here on earth, we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and that NOTHING can separate us from His love. We can pour out our hearts HONESTLY to Him, and do not have to hold back our anger, tears, pain, disillusionment, etc. He understands, is patient with us, and helps us to heal with the tools he has given us – our emotions.

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Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse IV

“Ginger” is a beautiful young lady, talented and poised. The story she shared with me was in drastic, shocking contrast to her appearance. It was unimaginable what she had gone through as a child, what she continues to experience as an adult.

In Ginger’s case, it wasn’t the church who administered the worst part of the spiritual abuse–yet spiritual abuse it undoubtedly was. She describes that “Everything in life was about trying to obtain a spiritual experience, (speaking in tongues).”

Ginger remembers watching as her mother made her older sister give up a beginning career in modelling to pray “for eight hours every night in order to “get saved.” Her sister still had to work eight hours a day at another job. After many months of sleep deprivation, the older sister finally decided to pretend to “be saved.” Is this not torture? Is this not the type of techniques used by the Gestapo, and by other groups who torture prisoners until they finally give up out of physical misery?

Ginger notes that she saw her sister lose the next 22 years of her life to constant prayer, going to church, no dating, and no hobbies. She was 42 when she finally left the home, then ended up lonely, never married, and too old to finish her modelling career.

For Ginger, it all began at just five years of age. She recalls “Sometimes, we had to sit in a cold, dark closet and pray for several hours. We could not ask to come out because she would say that we “were not interested in Jesus.” We were supposed to pray until we showed some sign of “being saved.” That must have been grueling and difficult for a five year old girl.

She recounts how she was in the closet with her other sister, closer to her age, and that eventually “one time my sister stumbled on a few words and my mother thought that she was speaking in tongues.” Ginger says mom then announced that the sister was “saved”. Not content with that small victory, Ginger’s mother then began to use this to torture the little five-year-old, by saying “everyone in this house is saved except you. You’re the only one who is going to Hell.” Ginger remembers that this was the constant narrative until finally, her mother realized that the sister was not really speaking in tongues.

What does that do to a five year old? Can you imagine her sensitive little heart and the threat of hell, just because she had not spoken in tongues?

She goes on to describe how, as they grew older, “things became more strict. During the summers, we’d have to pray from immediately after twelve noon into midnight with few or no breaks. Once, I had to use the restroom and my mother said “go to the restroom, but I hope that you don’t go to Hell while you are in there.”

What kind of anxiety inducing insanity is that? Using the restroom is a human physical need and here we see her being shamed for having physical needs. We see fear tactics being used without any regards to physical human needs.

Ginger tries to explain her mother’s actions by saying, “Breaks during prayer were frowned upon because the thought that it was the Devil’s excuse to stop a prayer. Therefore, any time that a child asked for a break, they thought that it was the Devil speaking through the child.” This line of thought is hardly rational, so where did this belief come from? There is nothing remotely biblical about this philosophy.

Also, attending games, concerts, etc. were not allowed unless it was required for school. Dating was prohibited. In fact, if Ginger or her sisters even mentioned that they wanted a husband, she took it to automatically mean that they didn’t want God. Interestingly, Ginger stated that her father was not in her life, nor was any father figure in the home. This brings her mother’s opinion about marriage into question, as far as motivation. Was her own past experience jading her view? Yet, as most who perpetuate spiritual abuse, she turned her opinions into a “spiritual” cause, in order to control others.

Ginger reflects that “Sometimes, my mother would play games to see if I was Christian enough. One time, she made a song about me going to Hell and decided to sing it over and over to see if I would react.” What kind of mother does that? She continues to describe these “games”…”Another time, she pretended to be dead to see the manner in which I would react.” These descriptions are reflections of the manipulative nature of spiritual abuse. Using fear and shame to shape someone’s decisions and life are not Christ-like techniques to win the lost. These are tactics used in manipulation. These are abusive tactics that took a “spiritual” twist.

Ginger says that “Studying for school was okay, but mom would sometimes try to stop me from reading textbooks because she believed that the Bible was the only book that should be read.” There are other cases where pastors preached against reading any fiction books. In some cases, the pastor would tell his congregation that it was not okay to read any books without his approval. Why is this so? Think about the history of books in Nazi Germany. Why were there book burnings? Books hold the power to expand the mind and affect one’s beliefs. In order to control Germany, there could be no freedom to read books that might disagree with Nazi philosophy. This is an age-old tool to controlling the minds of people. The Bible is important to read, undoubtedly. However, other books can be necessary as well. Jesus gives us freedom to choose. How can one have freedom if mind control is being used?

Ginger’s mother did not stop the abuse when her children reached adulthood. By then, she had a strong control over their minds. Her manipulation tactics were so powerful that, even then, she held them firmly under her thumb. “She kept changing the rules as to when someone was old enough to move out of her home. At first, she said it was after high school. When I graduated, it became the age of 21. When I was turning 21, my mother suddenly received a message from God that I should never marry because ‘God doesn’t like marriage.’ She also changed the age that I could move out to 25.” Here again, what was with the hatred towards marriage? Is it not possible that mother had some unresolved issues with marriage that tainted her view of the subject?

Ginger continues to describe her early adulthood in the home. “During those years, I also had a very strict curfew. Mom had to open and close all doors upon me entering or leaving the house. I could not talk to anyone on the phone without her knowledge, and I wasn’t allowed to do any hobbies for too long without her interrupting and telling me that I was putting the activity “before God.” During this time, I received interviews at the Peabody Conservatory and the Julliard School to study music, but my mother completely prohibited this, saying that I would “go to Hell” if she could not see me, to verify that I was reading the Bible and praying.” Do you hear the control in this? Is this really about spirituality? Is there truly anything righteous in this? What about the command to “save yourself from this untoward generation?” Mom felt she alone was in control of Ginger’s ability to be saved. What a terrible burden to take upon oneself!

Ginger describes how she finally broke free. “Finally, I figured out that she would never let me leave, and I moved out suddenly at the age of thirty without her expecting it. She had a lot of verbal tantrums over the phone, excluded me from a lot of family activities, and gave a lot of silent treatment before she accepted it. She still checks on me from time to time to make sure that I’m ‘still a virgin.'” That last sentence is beyond insane. This is an attractive, intelligent, and successful woman in her thirties, yet her mother still insists on trying to control her from afar. Instead of being proud of the fine young woman she has become, she continues to inquire about private parts of her life and to put her down for her choices to be independent and healthy.

Ginger says that her mother learned most of the rules from the United Pentecostal church they attended, but that they did not see how her mother acted in the home.

She does recall that, “some of our neighbors also attended the church and they didn’t think anything was wrong. I could sometimes hear their kids screaming while being brutally spanked.”

She shares that the church did have slightly different rules on dating. “They allowed it, but only in public and no touching. Also, the woman didn’t have to be attracted to the man but she was still encouraged to accept the date.”

When I asked Ginger how she is affected in her adult life, she shared that she has had to block her family on social media, and she just visits occasionally. She says “I can only have a normal life by keeping my life separate and only visiting on the holidays.” She says that one sister is still trapped, living at home with mom, and that her sister acts maliciously towards Ginger because Ginger has found freedom.

I was impressed with what Ginger has accomplished in her life, in spite of this traumatic upbringing. To be robbed of one’s childhood is a great tragedy. Children must be allowed to play and to explore as part of normal development. To deprive them of this in order to make them pray for so many hours a day under fear of hell fire is terrible child abuse.

Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse II
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse III
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse IV
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse V

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Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse III

In my career as a social worker, we have case studies that we use to examine a person’s life story in order to assess and evaluate how to best help the individual. When we are sharing with other professionals, we give the individual client a made up name in order to protect their privacy.

I have chosen this method to introduce to you some people I have known who have shared with me their stories of being raised in a spiritually abusive environment. Because of being raised in such a climate, many of these individuals still have parents or other family members who are in these groups, and therefore do not want to be identified in a public blog, due to the very difficult task of trying to maintain family relations with loved ones who are still in the group. I have honored their need for confidentiality.

Grace was born into the spiritually abusive environment she now believes to be a cult. Her father was a United Pentecostal Church ordained minister, and both grandfathers were also ordained in the same organization. Grace’s parents were evangelists, traveling around and preaching almost every night of the week for different churches in the United States. This was many years ago and Grace’s parents traveled by auto, staying in the homes of the pastors for which they preached.

During this time period, Grace was approximately two months old when her father decided one day that her screaming was “anger”, and that she was “throwing a tantrum.” He spanked her infant legs with his hand, a couple of swats to make it sting and begin teaching her early that “anger is a sin.” At her next doctor’s appointment, it was discovered that her mother, who’d been trying to breastfeed her, was not making enough milk, and the cries were cries of hunger and tummy discomfort. Grace is unclear about her parent’s feelings in this regard, simply stating that they recorded it in her baby book with a “ha, ha” beside the date of her “first spanking,” even after they knew about the hunger.

Grace says her parents did love her and did not intend to be cruel, but the toxic environment was one both of them had been raised in, and they were simply doing what they thought was right at the time, based on their intense devotion to the God they’d been taught to believe was a demanding God of judgement.

Grace describes how her parents bragged for many years to their saints and to her and her siblings that they knew how to “train a child” to “behave in the house of God,” because they had trained her at nine months of age to “sit on the front row” during song service, alone with no adult. “If you got up or turned around, one of us would come off the platform (her mom was playing an instrument and her dad was leading service) and spank you, then sit you back down. You learned quickly. We know even babies can be trained.” Grace says their reasoning for this was that they were “home missionaries” starting a church and did not have a trustworthy adult yet converted to help watch her during service.

Grace says that some of her earliest memories were related to church. She says she can strongly relate to a title of a pop song that recently became popular, called “Sit Still Look Pretty,” because that was what she was told to do often as a little girl. She remembers wearing ruffled dresses with itchy tulle slips under them, squirming because she was uncomfortable in those clothes as they irritated her skin, but she would often be reprimanded for moving or swatted on the leg if she could not sit still.

She remembers her grandmother being reprimanded from the pulpit by her father, during one of his sermons, because the grandmother was drawing pictures for her to keep her entertained during the long sermons that were completely beyond her ability to understand.

Grace remembers taking candy from a Sunday School room at about age five and then, when her mother found out, she told Grace that it was stealing, it was a sin, and she would be lost for taking candy like that. She was led in a prayer of repentance and sent to apologize to the Sunday School Teacher. She still remembers the heavy sense of guilt, though she really didn’t know it was stealing when she did it.

From age five, when her sense of sin was awakened by the “stealing” event, Grace describes how she would “seek the Holy Ghost” every service, going down to the altar and kneeling there as long as she could stand it to pray and ask for the experience of speaking in tongues. This went on every service for three years, until she finally received the experience at the age of eight. She remembers being baptized “in Jesus’ name” not long before that, and how “I really did feel very clean and light inside,” but wonders if it was the baptism itself or the belief in what it was doing (taking away her sins).

Grace recalls a time around nine years of age when “we were having a shouting service” and she and a friend around the same age fell out on the floor and rolled back and forth “because we had heard them preach about holy rollers being really spiritual”. Adults stopped them from continuing, but she remembers being confused about why they would lift up such a thing verbally, but yet stop the girls from actually doing it. She remembers a mixture of shame and confusion about the incident.

Out of 12 years of education, Grace says only two and a half years were in a public school. “Three years were our own church school, and the rest of the time I was home-schooled.” She says she did not learn some of the things that are normal for school aged young people to learn. “I never learned anything about Greek mythology, and even the philosophers were barely mentioned in the context of Paul’s visit there.” She relates that her education was very poor in mathematics, and that she distinctly remembers her father slapping her when she couldn’t figure out how to do a math problem. She remembers a lot of yelling at her as well, when it came to learning math.

Grace describes herself as a “very shy, timid teenager, easily brought to tears.” She says that, because of the environment, she was highly sensitive and full of shame and guilt that was largely misplaced.

“The church rules…you never questioned them”. She learned as a toddler that pants, cut hair, and makeup were sins for women and she would point out people she saw wearing these things and ask her mother “Is that lady Catholic?” She apparently equated sinfulness with the Catholic religion, as is so often done over UPC pulpits.

No jewelry of any kind was allowed, and strict rules governed the sleeve length and dress length of her clothing. “We stopped wearing short sleeves when I was about ten,” she remembers. No slits of any length were ever allowed in skirts, and sleeves were required to be below the elbow. Hems were below the knee “sitting, standing or kneeling.” She said her long uncut hair was at one time to her ankles, “but we were not allowed to wear our hair down if we were going to be on the platform. It was considered stringy and unkempt.” She remembers that, when going around family members who were not in the group, her parents would make sure she braided her hair or wore it in a bun so that “we will be a good testimony to the family.” Somehow, even though her hair was praised and glorified throughout her lifetime, Grace knew that it looked “like a hippy” when it was down and obviously untrimmed.

Grace calls herself a “girly-girl” because she always loved beautiful things, but says that she had to confine it to lace and flowers for most of her life because most pretty things were forbidden–such as jewelry, makeup, nail polish, etcetera.

Grace describes hearing many sermons about women staying in their place, but mostly from her father’s associates, not from him. She says this is probably likely to the fact that his mother was also a preacher when he was a child. However, submission was a topic that was preached in great doses, especially submission to one’s husband and primarily to the pastor.

Grace ends our interview by relating that she feels the most harmful part of being raised in this environment was the fact that the parents controlled the children to such a degree, and then her parents used the pastoral role to control her even further. “The pastor could tell you to do anything, even if the Bible didn’t say do it. You had to do it because the pastor said and if you didn’t you were going to hell, because the pastor was God’s man and you had to obey him as if he was God.” Grace says that, where parental boundaries fell short, her father was adept at “pulling the pastor card” in order to control her.

“I finally left his church when, as an adult in my thirties, I was told I had to have his permission to have people over to my house and he was in control of the guest list.” This was in his role as her pastor, not her father.

Grace’s story is only one of many that I hope to introduce you to over the next few posts. An entire life from babyhood into middle adulthood can hardly be summed up in this short article, but I have tried to include some of the most powerful stories that Grace shared about what it was like to grow up in this environment, virtually brainwashed by the isolation and involvement in such a group.

(To be continued)

Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse II
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse III
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse IV
Children Raised Under Spiritual Abuse V

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