Category: performance based | Page 13

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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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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The joy in being needed

Just thinking today how important it is to be needed. The older I get, the more I understand how it is more blessed to give than to receive. My spouse is disabled; many of his disabled buddies give up because they are a burden and no longer feel needed. Biff is always available to run an errand, chauffeur a child, take me to lunch, whatever is needed – we can’t imagine surviving without his being at our beck and call. He does everything cheerfully; he knows the joy of being needed. I work too many hours but drop everything when one of my kids or grandkids have a need; being needed by them is one of life’s greatest joys.

I have to believe God also finds joy in being needed by His children. Asking God for help is not something to be ashamed of or done in fear. Just as we wait anxiously for an opportunity to answer our children’s needs, so God must be pleased when we come to Him in faith believing, not as if we have earned anything but just secure in our knowledge that He loves us and will be there for us, providing our needs.

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Earliest Spiritual Abuse

Everything has a beginning. My beginning happened in a small town where my dad was pastoring, (or rather attempting to pastor) a church that had never really existed, but in the mind of those who wished to start it. There were no constituents, and it is my understanding that my parents lived on what my dad could make working in a grocery store. It was there I was born, and where I lived for nine days, before they packed up everything and left to evangelize.

According to my baby book, written in my mother’s handwriting, I received my first spanking at the hands of my father when I was only a little over two months old. She followed this revelation with a little smiley face that she wrote, before explaining that they later found out that I wasn’t getting enough milk and that’s why I was screaming so much. It seemed not to bother her or my father particularly that they had “spanked” a tiny infant for being hungry. They just knew that they did not want to raise a child who would “throw fits”, and they were starting early to make sure I behaved as the child of a minister should.

I was the oldest child, and perhaps these mistakes could be chalked up to inexperienced ignorance, but it nonetheless sheds light on the mindset of two young people starting out a family, when both of them had been raised in Oneness Pentecostalism their entire lives. They both had been raised to expect perfection of themselves and others, because after all, God expected perfection, didn’t he?

My parents still brag about how well they trained me to act in church. I am that shining example that they hold up in front of every other young parent who crosses their paths. They had me trained on how to act in church from the age of nine months old, so they know it can be done!

I have no recollection of that time, of course, but I am told that I would sit on the front seat all alone at nine months old. I am told that I was expected to sit there looking forward, and not get up or turn around. On those occasions where I did get up and turn around, my parents said that one of them would leave the platform and take me out for a spanking. My mother played the piano and sang, while my dad led the services and preached. It was my job to sit down and be quiet. Apparently I learned the lesson they were trying to teach me fairly well, because they used that experience to teach other parents how to train their kids to act in church.

Years later, when I allowed my two year old to bring a quiet toy to church and to play between the pews quietly, I received major lectures and severe criticism, because “We know children can be trained to sit on the pew quietly. We trained you when you were only nine months old.”

Dad never allowed for a church nursery at any church he pastored, because he felt like babies need to be trained from infant-hood how to behave in church. If a parent was struggling to accomplish this, he would go back to that example of me at nine months old.

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Works of faith

Faith without works is dead according to scripture so what are these works? Are they the clothing you put on (or don’t put on)? Are they the jewelry you do or do not wear? Are they your hair style?

Are they loving as Christ loved?
Are they praying without ceasing?
Are they sharing the Gospel of Christ’s redemption?
Are they having a spirit of forgiveness?
Are they believing in God’s love and plan for your life?

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen and without faith it is impossible to please Him.

The first list can certainly be performed without the need for faith in anything more substantial than our own human desires.

The second list requires faith in God, that He is and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him.

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