Category: unhealthy churches | Page 146

Distorted Vision

Have you ever put on another person’s glasses and everything you looked at was distorted? What once was clear and sharp is blurred and hard to define.

When I was involved in the United Pentecostal Church, I sometimes looked into the beliefs of groups considered cult-like and/or unhealthy, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses. I could see the wrong in other groups, but had not yet realized all the unhealthy aspects of what I was heavily involved in myself. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Many who leave unhealthy churches often better see the abuse and twisting of scriptures after they have been out for awhile. While immersed in their former churches, they were seeing more through the group’s glasses, so to speak. When those glasses start to be removed, many are amazed they didn’t see things for what they were earlier.

If you are going through this stage, don’t beat yourself up. It is hard to see clearly when you are looking at the Bible and church events through the group’s glasses.

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Fallen from grace (spiritual competition in the church)

Maybe this is right. Maybe its a little off base. But I think there is more to it than a lot of people in my ex-church would like to admit. I really feel sorry for them. I remember what grace was like. I can find it again. Many of them never knew grace to start with, and don’t know what they are missing.

Falling from Grace
(spiritual competition)

On the way home tonight I was thinking…

The church I’m in is very conservative. They weren’t always this way. Several years after the church started, when it had started to grow fairly large, some people felt convicted over sleeve length. They went to the pastor and informed him of how they felt. He accepted this as their conviction. There was some stir after this about whether or not they should wear long sleeves at work if the dress code required otherwise (several of them worked for the same entity). The pastor was careful to say that they had the Holy Ghost, and as they walked closer to God they might develop stronger convictions. This, I’m sure, made them feel good about their convictions. Others began to follow suit, both to support those who were “fighting for their convictions” against their employer, and to show they were spiritual too. The employees won their case after a long fight. Several had lost their jobs though, and were seen as “persecuted for righteousness sake” because they lost their jobs “fighting for their (presumably God given) convictions.”

Over time, other “convictions” became established norms in this church. The pastor felt a conviction against hair bows. Weren’t they decoration, after all? Some saints came close to (or did fall into) fornication. Wouldn’t they have been safer had they had a chaperone, or if someone had told the pastor that they were in trouble? The people loved the pastor, and the pastor loved them. He was hard on them, but they were used to that. He pushed them to the limit spiritually. This was challenging and “worth the fight”. Competition grew, and gossip became more rampant.

A few people in the church became very spiritual as a result. They later backslid, but before they did, they were respected for a time. People emulated their “good” character. But it wasn’t good. Then they fell. The church lost about 30-40% of its members in a short time due to economic and political changes and people backsliding. This again increased the competition.

A Christian school was started, a new sanctuary built, and the church became better known. In the school, the same children saw each other six days a week for 14 years. The sanctuary was one of the best in the city, and was a source of pride. They were often told the building would be filled to capacity someday. It was considered great faith to believe this and visualize it and reach others to help fill it. There was also a pride in the fact that the church and pastor were well known. The saints traveled to some of the meetings the pastor preached, and noticed that not everyone carried the convictions they had been taught. They began to think that they were especially blessed people who had something many other places didn’t have. Spiritual competition had just been taken to a new level.

By the time I arrived, spiritual competition had become common place and was not thought of as abnormal. Third generation Pentecostals were now competing, much as their parents and grandparents had. There was a form of sibling rivalry amongst the saints, of who was most loved by the pastor and who spent the most time with him. Family member competed against family member, and group against group. People bragged about who was closest to the pastor and who had done what for him. This was considered normal, but was it? What happened to grace? Where did “love your neighbor” go? These were virtually absent. People were disappointed if the message was on love or grace, and preferred the messages on hell and damnation! These were the tapes they bought, the messages they shouted to, the ones they rehashed later over coffee.

What happened to grace? Many of them traded it for spiritual competition. But spiritual competition can’t save. Only grace can do that, and they had forgotten where to find it.

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Exorcism

*WARNING: This contains material which may be triggering to some*

There was one side affect to being “possessed” that I liked. When my Mom was addressing me (and not the demon) she was more kind than she’d been in a long time. Also, she paid more attention to me than she had in a long time. Watching over me took priority over her best friend’s daughter for the first time since they came into our lives. Of course, she was watching me and spending time with me to “make sure the demon in me didn’t hurt anyone”, but it was still nice to have my Mother back. Because of this, I started lying. They would ask me if the demon was speaking to me or if I was feeling rage, confusion, etc. and I lied and said yes because I wanted to keep receiving attention from my Mom and preference over the her friend’s daughter. As I kept saying yes to everything they asked me about what was going on with me, they decided they were going to have to cast it out as soon as possible. I don’t remember what the reason was for ever waiting.

So one weekend we go to Mom’s best friend’s house for the specific purpose of getting the demon cast out of me. My parents, Mom’s best friend and her husband, and their teenage daughter all participated. Their son wasn’t considered “spiritually stable” enough to help since the demon in me had come from him. They took me into a back room of their house, the farthest away from neighbors. They said that we might get loud and they didn’t want anyone calling the cops thinking that someone was getting hurt.

When we got in the room, they put me in the middle of the floor and gathered around in a circle. I can’t remember a lot of what was said, but there was a lot more describing of what the demon looked like, what it was “saying” to them about me, etc. At one point, they made me lay down and they each took an arm and a leg and held it tight to the floor. They said that if the demon got mad, it might give me extra strength. Sometimes I pushed my arms and legs against them to see if I did have super-human strength, but I was never stronger than my 9 year old self. Ha.

This went on for hours, my Dad got disgusted pretty quick and left the room. He was still pretty emotionally disturbed over his brother dying recently (which I wrote about here) and didn’t like what he was seeing them do to me. They also had just asked me if I’d had thoughts of suicide, and like I had been doing lately, I answered yes even though it wasn’t true. There was a lot of screaming at the demon to come out, and sometimes all the people holding me down and yelling in my face these awful descriptions got so scary that I screamed. They then said that “it was close”, so I started screaming more to try and bring this awful episode to an end. I don’t remember what was the deciding factor, but eventually someone yelled “It’s out!!!” and then my Mom grabbed me and hugged me.

I was so happy, I thought that I wouldn’t be scared at night anymore in my bedroom. I thought the demon talk and visions would be over. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

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Don’t be the great somebody

I love reading the Message Bible! I know the KJV is supposedly the most accurate but I can’t find any disagreement and face it King James didn’t speak my language. 😀

ROMANS 15:1 Strength is for service not status.

If we are blessed by God to be able to be strong, it isn’t so we can have something to boast about, it is so we may help others. I know we really know this, but sometimes, especially in unhealthy church situations, the stronger among us become a bit like Saul – a legend in their own minds. 🙂

We hear touch not mine anointed taught as if only the preacher is in that category – not true. Search this out!

There is so much in Romans, whether the Message or KJV. Reading with an open heart and mind is blessing me tremendously.

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Finding God in Spite of Men

My dad became the co-pastor of the church my grandfather pastored, and it was here that I spent the rest of my childhood. It is my understanding that they had the agreement all along that this would be the way that my dad would take over the church when my grandfather wanted to retire. This was to make sure there was no opening for the district to try to put in a pastor or influence the members.

It was during this time that I received the Holy Ghost, speaking in other tongues. I was eight years old, and had been “seeking” for a couple of years. The weekend before this happened, another little girl in the church had received the Holy Ghost, speaking in other tongues at a youth rally. I figured if she could do that, I could probably get it too. For me, there was nothing negative about this experience. It was wonderful in every way!

A few months before I had asked to be baptized, but my parents talked me out of it because they felt like I was just doing it because my friends were doing it. However, after that experience, I was allowed to be baptized. My grandfather baptized me in the name of Jesus. I know that I felt wonderful after being baptized!

However, even though we were little children, we were expected to pray for people in the altar, pray a full 30 minutes before church each service, and live “good holy lives.” It seems that before this point, I was not aware of the stipulations and rules about performance. After I received the Holy Ghost and was baptized, that burden begin to get heavier and heavier, as I slowly became aware of all the things “God expected” of me.

I remember one night during a very emotional service, my friend and I were falling out in the floor and rolling back-and-forth, because we had heard about the “old days” where people were “holy rollers.” Everyone was always “wanting to go back to the old paths in the old days.” I guess in our little minds we felt this was very spiritual. I remember one night during this time my dad “shouted”, which he rarely did, but when he was dancing, he turned over one of the pews on which a little boy was asleep. The child was not hurt, but did get dumped unceremoniously into the floor.

I remember one lady had difficulty giving up her cigarettes, even after being baptized and speaking in tongues. Several members of the church, including my parents, (which meant I was there too) stayed and prayed with her for hours, trying to help her “get the victory” over those cigarettes.

During those days, it was more common to have someone come to church who was “demon possessed“. When this would happen, and they would be trying to rebuke the devil out of this person, all of us children were sent into another room, presumably so the devil wouldn’t come out on us.

Very loud worship was encouraged, and if it was a really good service with a “real move of God,” people were usually dancing, having a “victory march”, “shouting”, or someone got the Holy Ghost. It happened a lot during that time.

I recall my dad getting frustrated with my grandmother, because during the long preaching, she would draw pictures for us on a tablet of paper and let us copy them. Once, my dad called her name out from the pulpit to rebuke her for drawing for us. It was not uncommon for him to call out certain children or teenagers who were not behaving during his preaching. Embarrassment seemed to be something he felt was effective for dealing with these kinds of problems.

As a shy child, I lived in fear of being called out in this way. It was very mortifying for me to have attention drawn to me negatively. I was very sensitive as a child, and a simple rebuke in private could bring me to tears. These public humiliations were a nightmare for me, and I did my best to avoid them at all costs.

Eventually my grandfather handed the church over to my father. He and my grandmother moved to another city to retire, and attended the church of my uncle, who was not United Pentecostal, but independent Oneness Pentecostal.

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