Introduction, Preface, Index, End

Welcome to my blog, TH in SoC. This, my introduction, is actually the last post I will write for this particular blog. Why put a blog introduction at the end? Because this is most likely the first page a first-time visitor will see.

The beginning of this blog is about my experience in an abusive, aberrant “Bible-based” church over a period of several years, and about my experiences in trying to find a “healthy church” after I left my old abusive group. As a result of these experiences, I formed certain conclusions, which I state in the main body of this blog. My conclusions can be summed up here thus: I am an orthodox, Biblical, evangelical Christian. The Faith of Christ is not to blame for the difficulties I encountered. But there are certain leaders within American evangelicalism who have spread an unsafe culture throughout the American evangelical church by preying on its members. This preying is manifested in the craving for money, power and the indulgence of fleshly lust. The latter pages of this blog state possible solutions to the unhealthy culture of the American evangelical church.

A rough “table of contents” for this blog would look thus:

Part 1: Where I Came From – Posts written from 2005 to March 2007

Part 2: Who Broke My Church? - Posts written from April 2007 to July 2008

Under this second category are sub-categories as follows:

A. The Church and Money – December 2007 to February 2008

B. The Church and Political Power – February 2008 to March 2008

C. The Church and Ecclesiastical Power – April 2008 to June 2008

D. The Church and Lust – June 2008 to July 2008

E. Summation – July 2008

Part 3: Who Can Fix This Mess? - Posts written from August 2008 to September 2008

The tone of this blog is forensic, because it is very much an indictment of certain trends, people and practices in the modern American church. One might say that TH in SoC is my handful of theses nailed up in a fit of pathos on the Church doors. In this, I am hardly original, since both Martin Luther and much more recently, Steve Camp, were pushed by circumstances to draft theses condemning the excesses of those who claimed to be servants of the Church, and to nail them up for reading by any who had eyes to see.

If you are a survivor of an abusive church experience, or if you are a Biblical Christian who sees the excesses of the present American church culture, hopefully my blog has some helpful insights. If after reading these posts, you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please feel free to post them, since I will continue to monitor this blog for comments.

And now it is time to move on. I am shifting my focus from an indictment of dangers in the American church to the process of recovery from church abuse. Therefore I have started another blog, From SoC to Points North. (It's at http://soctopointsnorth.blogspot.com. There is also a link under the “Links” heading.) It will be my personal “recovery journal.” I am posting it on the Web because I think it's helpful to read the experiences of people who are seeking to recover a Biblical Christianity from the ashes of an abusive church experience. Hopefully, my experiences will be a help to someone. I'd also like to recommend two other very good “recovery journals,” Gale Warnings (http://galewarnings.blogspot.com/) and The Blog of Lema Nal (http://lemanal.blogspot.com/).

For those of you who followed TH in SoC from its beginning to its end, thanks for your readership. I greatly appreciate it. See you at Points North!

Finding Turangawaewae

Several years ago Alan Jamieson, a New Zealand pastor and sociology Ph.D., wrote A Churchless Faith, a book which studied the phenomenon of increasing numbers of New Zealanders and Australians leaving the institutional church which he called the EPC (Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic) church. In 2004 or 2005 I encountered an article on the Assembly Reflections website, titled “In Search of Turangawaewae.” That article was an excerpt from Jamieson's book.

I found the article to be fascinating, especially as I had somewhat recently left an abusive church and was now more or less “churchless,” not having found another church in which I felt comfortable. While Jamieson's article acknowledged that people were leaving church for very legitimate reasons, his main point was that everyone needs a place to stand, a community in which he or she can say, “I belong,” and that it was important for church leavers to find such communities or to make their own. He then explored characteristics of some of the communities and associations springing up among church leavers, and how these communities functioned for mutual support and encouragement of the participants.

Within the last few weeks I found the article again on the Web and re-read it. (If anyone else wants to check it out, it can be found at http://www.reality.org.nz/articles/34/34-jamieson.php.) Now I must say that there are certain overtones and assumptions of the article with which I disagree. For one thing, there are those who characterize themselves as “emergent,” who say that church attendance is falling in the First World because society is shifting to a “post-modern” mindset in which there is no absolute truth, and the Church is unwilling to change its message to allow for the questioning of objective truth. To that I must say that according to the Bible, Jesus Christ is the absolute Truth, and the Church is to be the pillar and support of the truth (John 14:6; 1 Timothy 3:15). There may be those who leave church because they no longer believe this to be true, but I cannot in good conscience become a fellow traveler with them.

There are also those who say that people are now quitting the Church because in some mystical sense the Church is out of step with the times, and God is mystically raising up a new manifestation of church suited to the times. These people point to the way the Church is perceived by the modern (or post-modern) world, its failure to market itself effectively, and its failure to be “relevant” (as in, trendy). Though I haven't read his writings deeply, I must say that George Barna seems to fall into this category (but if anyone knows better, please feel free to correct me).

To me the reasons why many people are leaving church are neither mysterious nor mystical, but plain as a two-by-four. I believe that much of the Church has become unsafe, run and/or exploited by leaders who crave money, power – whether political or ecclesiastical – and opportunities to indulge their lusts. These leaders are decimating their congregations, wounding and defrauding many and ultimately driving many away from church altogether.

But there are many aspects of Jamieson's article with which I still agree, and overall I find it just as fascinating now as I did when I first read it. (I also intend to find a copy of his book, by the way, even though it's out of print.) All people, Christians and others, need companionship in this earthly life. After all, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) I agree with him that Christians who become church leavers, yet wish to live as Christians, need companionship and mutual support on their pilgrimage from earth to Heaven. And community done right is the highest earthly expression of the love of God in Christ (Psalm 133; John 17).

But for those who are just coming out of an abusive church experience, or who are still hurting from an abusive church experience, the thought of Christian community can be frightening. After all, we survivors experienced an environment in which our church leaders deliberately screwed up the experience of community and distorted its Christian character to serve their own ends. Now we have escaped, and the places to which we are told to look for community are themselves frightening as these places increasingly take on the same abusive character that was found in our abusive churches. After an abusive experience, who wants to start attending churches whose pastors believe that they are to be unquestioningly obeyed like Moses? Or churches who don't tell their members how church finances are handled, because that's “the pastor's concern?” After attending a church where subtle racism was practiced, what Christians from minority backgrounds want to get involved in a new church which rabidly supports the Religious Right?

Of course, there are those who exit an abusive church environment only to jump as fast as they can into another such environment in a different church. But there are those of us who upon leaving have said, “Whoa! Not so fast – I've got to take some time out for myself to sort myself out, to decide what my values and beliefs are. I need to take my time and check things out before moving back into any sort of church involvement. I don't want to rush into another situation where my beliefs are being spoon-fed to me.” Those of us who think thus are evangelical expatriates – by force more than by choice, but expatriates nonetheless. Yet while we are separated from the institutional church, we still need the experience of companionship, camaraderie, fellowship and mutual support. We need to find our own “turangawaewae.”

But to find it, we must usually make it ourselves, since there is no institutional church to provide it for us. And while the Internet is a great way to hook up with people of similar interests, I believe this “turangawaewae”, this place of belonging, is best experienced in face-to-face encounters with other people. Therefore, we need to begin reaching out to each other in a personal way.

I propose that we survivors of church abuse start our own “Turangawaewae” groups, if you will. The groups would be a first step for survivors in re-integrating themselves into community. The groups would not be large, nor highly structured, and might consist of nothing more than friends who agree to meet in a certain place on a regular basis to talk, to hang out or to do something fun together. Whatever group activity there was would be decided by democratic vote. Such groups would not even need a leader. But as the members of such groups got together regularly, they would hopefully learn to trust each other, to lean on each other to an appropriate extent, and to pray for each other. And as they swapped life stories, they would see powerfully that they are not alone.

Whether such groups evolved into something more would depend entirely on what each of the members was comfortable with – there would be no pressure to start a “ministry” or new “church plant” unless everyone agreed over time that such a thing was what they believed they should do. On the other hand, all the members might agree that this “first step” was the best, and that there was no need to take it any further. Moreover, such groups would be free to dissolve if the members all felt the need to move on to other things. Above all, such groups would be non-threatening, non-demanding and non-constraining (no ax-grinders allowed, no pushy arguments over nonessential doctrines, for instance).

If anyone is interested in starting such a group, feel free to leave a comment on this post. You can tell your name and where you live (generally – don't give a street address), and where you'd like to meet. A coffee shop seems like a good location for a first meeting. And if anyone reading this lives in the Portland Metro area of Oregon and wants to hook up, feel free to leave a comment.

Confessions on a Friday evening

Normally, this is the day that I update my other blog, The Well Run Dry. And I do have a post in the works that will deal with the importance of the timing of the global peak in world oil production. But while working on that post, I got a little distracted, which is easy to do on a Friday evening, since I am usually a bit worn out after a full work week. What distracted me was listening to a few old rock songs, namely, "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan and "Running on Empty" by Jackson Browne.

Listening to those songs got me thinking about how young these two artists were when they recorded these works, and how they earned a living in their young adulthood by sharing their observations and questions about life. In doing so, they created a body of work that forced many of the rest of us to think - at least those of us who listened to their songs. I started listening to Jackson Browne while I was in the Army, and I had just begun to discover Springsteen by the time I got out. I tend to think about how lucky they were to get the chance to do what they did, and I remember how I used to want to be a rock musician (among other things) when I was a teen - partly because it's a common characteristic of male teenagers that they enjoy making lots of noise, but partly for a deeper reason, namely, that I too had questions and observations that I wanted to share. I think now about the unregimented pace of the young adult lives of these artists, and the freedom with which they questioned, pondered, wrote and experienced life.

Then I think about how I spent my young adulthood: regimented not only by my Army experience, but by my involvement in a cultic, abusive church which was created solely to exploit its members. I think about how many years of the lives of talented, insightful people were wasted by their regimentation in this group, how many valuable observations of these people were forcibly stuffed so that these people would not be a threat to the egos of the leaders of this group. I think about how the talents of so many of these people might have blossomed into expression, and how it might have blessed us all, had their energies not been hijacked to serve a narcissistic leader. I'm not as old as Jackson Browne, but I wish that instead of looking back on endless days of frenzied "Assembly service," I could say something like this:

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields
In sixty-five I was seventeen and running up One-O-One
I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on

My household was always short on cash while I was in high school, so I don't think I ever developed the courage to try to make a living as an artist. I am an engineer now, not because I am terribly fascinated by gadgetry, but because it's a stable way to pay the bills. But whatever artistry I possess is finding expression, one way or another. I can play fingerstyle guitar tolerably. I took a college creative writing class a couple of years after my escape from my old church (It took the place of the midweek “Chapter Summary” Bible study). And I’m a blogger. I don’t hear religious bigwigs anymore telling me to shut up. I’m no longer regimented. I just wish I could say that this had been the character of my life from the time I was seventeen until now. Oh, well. I’m using a lot of words to try to hit a target that I keep missing. Anyway, thanks for reading.

My next post will begin the discussion I promised in my last post concerning solutions to the present evangelical mess. But it will have to wait until Monday, since my company is having a picnic on Sunday and I find myself roped into helping with organizing and setting it up. See you then. One other thing: I have added some new blogs to my "Links" list. These are blogs written by other survivors of abusive churces. These writers have some valuable insights regarding the process of recovery, since they themselves are working out that recovery in their own lives.

Leaving, Part 4 - Not-so-Good Samaritans

Our meetings as a support group all took place at Wilt's house. During our first meeting, we went through introductions again, since a married couple from my old abusive church had recently joined us. When it was my turn to speak, I told about my experience in my former abusive church and some of the things I encountered after I left. I spoke about some of the conclusions I had recently come to regarding churches, and that they were not doing a very good job of winning my trust. “In fact,” I said, “I feel more comfortable giving canned goods to soup kitchens and homeless shelters than I feel about giving money to some pastors, since at least it's harder to embezzle a can of beans!”

This did not sit well with Wilt. He proceeded to lecture me about my bad attitude, beginning by saying, “Young man, I think you have a TRUST problem.” He went on about how so many men in ministry and church leadership were godly and good examples to the flock, speaking in a voice that grew ever louder and more disapproving of what I had said, until finally I stopped him in mid-sentence and told him that I did not appreciate his tone, since I had not come to his house to be lectured.

Now during this same time, the sexual abuses of many Catholic priests was being exposed for the world to see, and a prominent newspaper was running articles about financial abuses committed by the pastors at Melodyland Christian Center, a large church in Southern California. I left Wilt's house scratching my head and thinking, “He doesn't get it. I just don't think he gets it!” Nevertheless, I decided to give our support group another try.

Before our next meeting, I contacted a single woman who had also attended my former abusive church during the same time I was attending. I asked her if she wanted to join us, and she liked the idea. So she came to our next meeting. That meeting was not remarkable in itself, as we simply described more of what it was like to be in our former church, and the similarities between our former church and some of the more radical splinter groups of the Plymouth Brethren (There! I said it!) But after that meeting, I hung out for a while with this single woman in the street outside Wilt's house, since we had not talked to each other for a long time and wanted to catch up on what was happening with each other. As we walked out of Wilt's house, talking together, I noticed a look of disapproval on the faces of Wilt and his wife. I thought nothing of it, however, until our third meeting together.

That third meeting went very much like the second meeting, except that Wilt tried to lecture the single woman who had joined us, and she told him in no uncertain terms that she had been an adult for a while and did not need the lecture. But things got really interesting afterward, when it was time to leave. As I was going out the door, Wilt's wife pulled me aside and privately asked, “You know, you're a good looking man. Why don't you go to a nice Black church and find a nice Black girl to marry? I'm sure it would be easy for you.” Then I understood the disapproving looks on Wilt's face and his wife's face the week before, because I was black and this single woman was white! (By the way, I had no marital designs on her.)

I said, “Since when is race the basis for choosing a church? The Bible says that in Christ, there is not Jew or Greek, barbarian, Scythian, and so on. Moreover, the basis on which I choose a church is agreement with its doctrine and mission – not the color of peoples' skin. Why are you telling me to go to a Black church?” She did not know when to shut up, much less when to apologize, so she kept on about how she had Black friends who disapproved of interracial marriage, and that she was just trying to look out for me. I left that meeting with great displeasure.

Before our next meeting, I wrote a letter to Wilt and to his wife rebuking them for trying to segregate people in the Church, since in Christ God had made one new people. (It's in Colossians, by the way.) I also asked them what they thought would happen if the world at large knew they were trying to prevent interracial marriages in their church. Then I called Wilt on the phone and asked him casually if he had gotten around to reading the books on church abuse that had been suggested by the counseling ministry leader of his church. He admitted that he had not. After I called the ministry leader and told him of some of my frustrations, Wilt finally broke down and read “Churches that Abuse.” Also, I got a written letter of apology from his wife. I thought to myself that perhaps now our church abuse recovery group might at last become helpful. But I was wrong.

We had two more meetings after that. Wilt assigned us topics which each of us could present to the group. I chose to talk about the process of re-entry into church life, suggesting that people with our background should not jump immediately into a full commitment to a church, but instead, that we should take it slow, and find pursuits that we could share in common with others in a church so that trust could be built up in its own time and not rushed. Then I asked the group, “So, what are some pursuits or hobbies or interests that we have?”

Wilt jumped right in and rebuked me severely, saying that the talk I had presented was selfish and self-centered, and that Christ demands an unconditional commitment from us, holding nothing back. There was fire in his voice, I'll tell you! I told him that he was making no sense, and that we were all meeting in his house because we had made a wholehearted unconditional commitment to a cultic, abusive church that had taken us for everything we had. He told me, “Well, Christ accepts your sacrifice.”
I just looked at him. That meeting was the full proof to me that this guy didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about, or how to help victims of church abuse. That was the last meeting I went to with him.

Now, I've described some of the churches I tried after I left my former abusive church, and I've described some of the problems I found in each of them. And believe me, these were not the only churches I tried. My experiences with these churches have led me to certain conclusions regarding churches in the United States, and especially those churches associated with modern evangelicalism in the USA. My goal in all my posts up to now has been to get to this point, namely, a discussion and diagnosis of some of the problems I see with modern evangelicalism in America. Because, you see, the Bible commands us who are Christians that we should not “forsake the assembling of ourselves together,” but that we should meet together regularly as a church. And yet, I haven't been to any church for a couple of months now. Why? Because the Church in the USA is not a safe place in my eyes. Instead, a rather large number of opportunists, power-mongers and just plain jerks have taken over and trashed the place.

And I'm not happy about this.

Not-so-good Samaritans

My next forays into new churches took me to some rather interesting places. One of these places was another large mega-church of the same denomination as the one I mentioned in my last post. This church has a main pastor who does most of the preaching, as well as a large and varied pastoral staff. One of the staff members is a licensed mental health professional who picked up quite a bit of experience in dealing with toxic churches as a result of talking to a number of people who left the cult I was in when it was beginning to break up. Eventually, I got around to talking to him also, after reading “Recovering from Churches that Abuse” by Enroth.

I was really impressed by this man's understanding and willingness to listen (in fact, I still think he's a really great guy). But there was a problem, namely, that as a main staff member at that church, he didn't have a lot of time to do one-on-one counseling. So he suggested starting a support group for survivors of church abuse. And as the group was coming together, he suggested that one of his unpaid volunteer ministry assistants be the leader and facilitator.

The fun started with the man he chose to lead the group, a man whom I'll call Wilt (not his real name, of course). When the staff ministry leader and Wilt hosted a meeting one Sunday afternoon for those interested in starting this support group, Wilt showed up in a three-piece suit, wearing a grave expression on his face, as if to say, “I'm the authority around here.” We all introduced ourselves and told a little of what we wanted from such a group, and the staff ministry leader suggested that we all start our first few meetings by reading “Churches that Abuse.” Then he let Wilt say a few words.

Wilt began by lecturing us on the need to understand sound teaching and proper methods of Bible study. He made it clear that he believed that most people did not know how to study the Bible properly as he believed it should be studied. He believed that we had gotten into a cult because of a lack of sound Bible understanding, and that his instruction and teaching would set us right again. I'm sure that such a view made him feel good, but it completely ignored the following points about abusive religious groups:

1. Many of these abusive groups are fundamental churches whose doctrine seems on the outside to be quite orthodox. It is only as a person begins to invest time and commitment to these churches that they begin to show their more twisted sides. Indoctrination takes time and is often quite smooth and subtle.
2. Many of these abusive groups preach the Bible day in and day out, but with a twist: Scripture is interpreted in such a way that it serves the aim of the group and of its leaders, and not the will of God. Ask a Jehovah's Witness, for instance, how much he's supposed to study during the week.
3. The damage done by cults and abusive churches is not just doctrinal! Picture a family who joins such a church and which has one member – say the husband or wife – who falls out of favor with the leaders of the group. There are numerous cases where the leaders have alienated the entire family against that one member. Marriages are broken, money is extorted from people, members lose their health, some are driven to suicide, and all suffer from surrendering their wills and power to make decisions for themselves, and letting co-dependent “shepherds” run their lives.
4. Recovering from an abusive church/cult experience therefore involves a lot more than just “learning the right way to study the Bible.” It involves things like developing your own social life, learning to make your own decisions, dealing with anger, recovering from financial losses, being reconciled to your family, and in some cases, recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This list is by no means exhaustive.
   

Wilt did not understand any of this, however. In my next post I'll tell about how supportive our “support group” actually was.

Leaving, Part 2 - "Ger Sham"

The memory of where I am from
fades like a page from a Thomas guide
left to soak in the rain and bake in the sun
of this wilderness.
A stranger here, I am twice removed. – Th in SoC, 2003.

My first stop after leaving my abusive church was a group of people who structured their meetings in a manner very similar to the church I had left. In fact, there are many such groups, and they can trace their roots, more or less, to a movement which began in Ireland and England during the late 1800’s. They all believed that because they met according to a certain pattern, they were a true and pure expression of God’s church on earth. But many of these groups had the same problems of being run by overbearing, domineering leaders.

But as for the group I joined next, they were very nice on the whole, and consisted chiefly of two sub-groups: the very young and the very old. The elderly people were actually quite gracious and easy on the nerves, though they tended to think that their church was a truer expression of God’s true pattern than other churches. While most of the young people (college age and slightly younger) were also nice and laid back, there was at least one young man who was ambitious for a position of prominence. He seemed to me to be playing a few rather manipulative games to bring others under his oversight, so that he could be the leader of the “young people’s ministry.” And I had rather a lot of interaction with him, since singles (no matter their age) were also considered to fit in best in the young people’s ministry. This, combined with the fact that the group as a whole was very ingrown, was rather depressing for me, since I didn’t really find anyone I could connect with. I only lasted a few months in that group.

I decided next that I had had it with small, cutting-edge, “faithful remnant” churches, and instead tried out a large church belonging to one of the newer evangelical denominations. This church prided itself also on recognizing the priesthood of all believers and on being led by a board of elders instead of a single pastor. Their worship was certainly lively, since they had a “kickin’” praise band and a few dynamic speakers on their elder board. Their elders, moreover, knew about the abusive church I had come from, since many ex-members were now attending my new church.

I told my story to some of their elders, expecting that I would find a supportive group of people who would help me in setting myself straight. But some of their responses to me were rather surprising. For instance, in a conversation with one of their elders, I said that I thought my former church had been too authoritarian, and that we all needed to learn the concept of boundaries. “Boundaries!?” he replied. “That sounds like a psychological concept to me!” he continued, in an obvious note of disapproval. I was talking with another elder about how in my old church we had been pressured to perform, to climb the organizational ladder, to strive for a position of prominence. I said that from now on, I might just decide that my role in the church is to be a church attender and a good example of a Christian, and no more. His response: “Oh, well, that’s all right. After all, the Lord did say that he who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.” Now, what kind of response was that? It seemed obvious to me that he was trying to use Scripture to make me feel guilty for not wanting to do more in his church.

I noticed a few other things at this church. First, that the elders took several occasions to commend certain individuals and married couples for giving themselves fully to the Lord’s work, because “our church had a workday this last weekend, and the Smiths were right there – pulling weeds, painting walls, cleaning Sunday school classrooms, the works! They were the first to come and the last to leave. They are fully on board, in full agreement with the mission of this church. The Scripture says that we are to commend and recognize such people as these, and to imitate their faith.”

I met a younger married man whose obvious aspiration for his family was to be one of these recognized couples. Our first interaction with each other consisted of him coming up to me with a look of extremely earnest care and concern on his face, putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, “We’re so glad to have you with us! How long have you been attending Church X?” His whole intent was to “minister” to me, since I was obviously a “needy soul” in his eyes. I laughed to myself. He probably thought I was his age or younger. It’s amazing how you can fool people if you work out regularly and keep your hair cut short so the gray doesn’t show! But rather than allow myself to be ministered to, I turned the tables on him and started asking him questions about himself. I found out that he and his wife had recently both graduated from a small, prestigious seminary, and that though they had only recently been married, they were ambitious to start a small group to help married couples with any struggles they might have. A commendable ambition, perhaps, though in my opinion, he might have wanted to wait a while so that others could see whether he himself was able to walk the walk before he started talking the talk.

One thing about the small group ministry at this church: the elders frequently encouraged and exhorted people to get involved in the small groups, since “growth only happens when you are in relationship with each other.” Being a newbie, a newbie who had been recently been burned by an abusive church, I wanted to hang back and check things out before I jumped into a small group. I thought, “Why don’t I get to know these people first, and see what they are like.” So I befriended another young couple and we went out to coffee after a Sunday service. The young wife began to lecture me about how I needed to get into a small group “because that’s the only way to grow in your Christian walk,” etc., and that that was how we all got to know each other so that we could help each other. I thought, “Aren’t we getting to know each other right now?” When I asked one of the elders about their small groups, he said, “We don’t leave each other alone. You see, we’re serious about holiness. We get in each other’s lives. We hold each other accountable.” But it seemed strange to me that joining a small group meant letting perfect strangers poke around in my life as a condition of joining the group, and not waiting for a level of trust to be built up first.

Another thing about the small groups was that the members did not set the agenda for the groups, but rather, the elders did. And the elders had decided that in each small group, the only topic for discussion was to be the notes from the Sunday sermons given by the elders. Members of a small group could not decide, for instance, that they wanted to study a book of the Bible on their own. It was the elders, not the members, who also chose who would be small group leaders.

I think you can tell where I’m going with this. I lasted perhaps six months in this church. To summarize my impression of them, I thought that while there were many earnest and sincere saints in that church, their leaders were rather pushy, and that there were practices and dynamics in place in the group which could lead to abuse if not very closely watched. There’s more that I could say about this church, but I have more ground to cover, because there were more churches I visited. But more on that next time…

Leaving, Part 1

The church I left advertised itself as being “a faithful expression of God's New Testament pattern” and that their leaders did everything “exactly in accordance with the Scriptures.” They advertised themselves as being a place for “serious Christians who really want to advance in their walk with the Lord.” Yet, unknown to most of us, the following things were going on behind closed doors:

- The head honcho was an adulterer who had forced himself on several women over a period of at least twenty, and more likely, thirty years.

- The money given by the rank-and-file every week was actually spent supporting the head honcho and his two sons, so that they could live in relative luxury while doing almost nothing.

- One of this man's sons was a wife beater and an abuser of his own children. The head honcho and his deputies knew about this for over a decade, yet consistently covered it up, spending thousands of dollars in the process. This man was put in charge of one of the churches in the group, where he practiced his abusive ways even on church members, though not to the same extent as he did with his family. His wife and one of his daughters eventually left him, and the daughter obtained a restraining order against him.

- People in the group were pressured into giving thousands of dollars and countless hours of personal time to the “work” of the head honcho. In many cases, the individuals who gave so much were ruined in the process. People who had resources but were not fully committed to the group were made into targets for gossip and character assassination.

- A subtle form of racism was practiced in all the churches of this group. Black and Hispanic people bore the brunt of it, with the severest racism being reserved for Black members of the group. In a number of cases, Black members were hindered from marrying. Also, members who were single parents were persecuted by the leadership.

- Married couples with children were told not to vaccinate their children, with the result that a number of children got serious diseases such as whooping cough.

- At least two members committed suicide because of the group.

These and many other things were occurring behind closed doors, a collection of misdeeds piling up like so much raw sewage behind closed doors, misdeeds committed both by the head honcho and by his lieutenants, until the doors couldn't be kept closed any longer and burst open. The dam-bursting event was that many people at one time became aware of the wife- and child-abusing ways of the head honcho's family, and those who knew or had witnessed the abuse and cover-up became willing to speak out. Much of that speaking-out took place on the Internet, for all the world to see. It became impossible to keep things quiet any longer.

The result for many of us was that we began to see our own experiences in the group in a new light. I, for one, began to realize the true meaning of the treatment I had received from the head honcho and his deputies, and I didn't like what I was realizing. Many others came to the same realization concerning their treatment. We began to share our experiences with each other, especially those things we had been instructed to “keep to ourselves.” The anger and pain so many of us had stuffed down for a long time came at last to the surface.

Some of us elected to stay and try to fix the system. However, I had a moment where I looked into the mirror and said to myself, “Face the facts. You know, you've been in a cult all these years.” Many others I knew had similar moments. We decided to walk away.

We walked away, knowing that we were walking away from death disguised as life, from hell dressed up as a cheap imitation of heaven, from sadists dressed as doctors, from worthless liars dressed up as the genuine article. We walked away, and were walking into – who knows what? Some of us tried to do our homework in order to prepare for the journey. We read books like “Churches that Abuse” by Ron Enroth, “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, and “Soul Survivor” by Philip Yancey. Some of us talked to counselors, psychotherapists and pastors. Over and over we kept hearing that we needed to find a “healthy church” where we could heal.

In my next installment, I will tell what I discovered while walking out and while walking into the outside world...

What my old church was like, Part 2

Here I will tell you about our leader and his lieutenants. Our leader claimed to be a seminary graduate with over 125 post-bachelor degree units in philosophy. He said that he used to be a pastor of a denominational church until "the Lord spole to him and showed him through the reading of the Scriptures that denominationalism was wrong." He said that the Lord also showed him the “errors” of many churches, such as having a paid clergy, making financial needs known publicly, instrumental music during worship services, and having printed programs for worship services. He said that because the Bible taught the priesthood of all believers, there should be a plurality of elders and of preaching instead of having a pastor as both head of a church and its sole preacher. He said that because of these things, the Lord led him to “start a new work, in order to recover the New Testament pattern for the Church.”

Accordingly, in each church he founded, there were a number of men who were recognized as “elders” or “leading brothers.” Also, all the men in each church were strongly pressured to come to each meeting “ready and exercised with a word to share with God’s people.” Those who were active in preaching and teaching and who aspired to increased leadership roles were commended as “being serious for the Lord,” and were looked on favorably as candidates for positions as “elders” and “leading brothers.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Bible study is a good thing, and being able to intelligently teach the Bible is good. But the way these things were worked out in our group was actually pernicious. For not only was it taught that we should all be “serious for the Lord,” but it was also taught by word and by attitudes that those who didn’t put themselves forward, who weren’t ambitious, who weren’t always trying to start or lead or initiate or preach were somehow less spiritual than those who were. This resulted in tremendous pressure to perform, with the further result that many of us became intensely competitive, constantly trying to best each other in order to gain some coveted position of leadership.

The man who founded these churches also founded “training homes” where “serious” young men and women could be “trained for the work of the Lord.” These homes were usually run by a married couple who assigned chores to the young unmarried men and/or women who lived in the homes, and who assigned “consequences” to those who did not perform their chores to the standard set by the married couple. They also charged money for “living expenses”. Several of these married couples were also leaders in the various churches started by the head honcho, and they acted as his lieutenants. These training homes were billed as a way to “grow in stature and maturity”, but they actually kept many people in an infantile state, since the married couples who ran the homes got to decide how much free time you had, what you did with your free time, whether or not you could date, whom you could date, what you could eat, etc. As I said before, this group was very active in recruiting college students. When these students were persuaded to move into the "training homes", that was frequently the end of their college careers, since they no longer had adequate time to devote to their studies. As time progressed, however, the leaders of the group became more accommodating to college students, realizing that people with degrees would earn more, and would hence be able to give more money to the group.

The head honcho taught that elders and leading brothers should be selected according to the requirements of 1 Timothy 3 concerning elders and deacons. In actuality, while he asked sometimes for input regarding candidates for leadership positions, he always made the final decision. And he made his decision, not on the basis of the character of the candidate, but on the basis of the candidate’s loyalty or usefulness to him. Thus, for instance, there were many who were selected because their families had a lot of money! There was also a lot of nepotism practiced in selecting leaders and people for favored positions, both with the head honcho and with his lieutenants. Through his lieutenants, the founder exercised great control over every church he founded. Thus it was that the head honcho selected his sons to be “elders”, even though one of them turned out to be a wife-beater.

Regarding finances, as I said before, financial accountability was frowned upon in this group. We were encouraged every week to put our money into “the box at the back of the room”, but no one of the rank and file was ever told exactly where the money went from week to week. Instead, we would occasionally be presented with video shows where a piece of land or a new SUV was bought “for the Lord’s servants” in a Third World country. The leaders boasted that they did not make their needs known publicly like so many other ministries, but that they “trusted the Lord to take care of all their needs.” In reality, there was plenty of subtle pressure exerted behind the scenes to get money from people. If it was discovered that a man or woman had money, they were zealously courted as a “key asset to the Work” and were promised a leadership position of some sort.

My purpose in telling these things has been to show why I called this group aberrant. There are many other things I could write about this group. And I haven’t even begun to tell about my experiences while in the group. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t fun. But I will move on to what it was like to leave the group and to come out into the larger world of Christendom. More on that in my next post…

What my old church was like, Part 1

I told you in my last post that the church I found in college was abusive and aberrant. Let me tell a bit more about this church. I shall not name names, because of potential legal liabilities which I will explain in more detail further on. For now, let's just call them “Group X.”

Group X boasted that they obeyed the Bible exactly. They prided themselves on doing everything “according to the New Testament pattern.” When I first met them, they were constantly repeating to me Acts 2:42, “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer, ”speaking of the practices of the early church. Group X harshly criticized other churches, saying that the other churches did not faithfully devote themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, etc., but that Group X did. The leaders of Group X accused other churches of being “worldly” and “carnal”, referring to Christians from other churches as “mere believers with a bare salvation” while referring to all who belonged to Group X as “saints.”

Their meetings were deliberately simple. Their Sunday worship consisted of a bunch of men and women in a plain room (why plain? because stained glass and elaborate decorations were “carnal”). The chairs were all arranged in a semicircle. In the center was a table on which was a loaf of bread and a pitcher of wine. The women all wore pieces of cloth on their heads, in order to obey the command in 1 Corinthians 11 concerning women covering their heads in church. There was a time, usually lasting around an hour, in which men and women said prayers aloud, one at a time, with others offering up hymns and other songs from time to time. All the hymns were sung without musical instruments, because according to the leaders of Group X, “musical instruments are never mentioned as being used by the church in the Book of Acts, brother!” After that, two or three men of the group would stand up and preach on a passage of Scripture, with one of the leaders giving the final message.

As far as taking a collection of money, they did not pass a plate, but rather, there was a wooden box in the back of the room where people put their offerings. We were assured every week that the money “is used for the work of the Lord, both here and abroad,” but we never were given any kind of information about how exactly the money was spent. The Group X leaders justified not telling us where the money went by quoting 2 Kings 12:15 “Moreover they didn’t demand an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to give to those who did the work; for they dealt faithfully.” They criticized other churches for issuing financial statements or making agreements to be financially accountable, saying that these other churches “refused to trust the Lord.”

I only mentioned their Sunday morning meetings. As a matter of fact, they had lots of meetings, especially in their early days (I joined them at the tail end of their early days). At one time, a typical week might consist of the following: Sunday morning worship, Sunday lunch outreach (this meant going out two by two in suits and dresses into neighborhoods, knocking on doors and trying to get people to join the group), Sunday afternoon “ministry” (usually an extended sermon from the head honcho of the group or one of his deputies), Sunday evening “brothers' or sisters' meetings”, Wednesday “chapter summary”, Thursday prayer meeting, Friday “all night of prayer”, Saturday “tape ministry” (consisting of listening to tape recordings of sermons delivered by the head honcho of the group), and, three times a year, “seminar weekends” spent listening to the head honcho or his deputies giving a series of lectures in a stuffy, crowded room.

I mentioned the head honcho a number of times. In my next installment, I'll tell you something about the leaders of Group X and how they were chosen.

A little more information...

I told you it would take a long time to say what I need to say... Anyway, here's a bit more personal information.

I was born into a somewhat more than nominally Catholic family, although my mother comes from a more Pentecostal/signs & wonders background. I was a precocious kid and read a lot of science books which made me despair of finding God or heaven, since they all taught that we were the products of blind evolution. I grew up as a black member of a black family during the tail end of the more severe part of the civil rights struggle. I became a Christian while in junior high school.

My parents, unfortunately, split up during that time, and, being fatherless and somewhat directionless, I drifted away from the faith during high school. In fact, I drifted through high school and into the Army, where I came face to face with the fact that I could die at any time. Believe me, that will get a man thinking about the serious questions of life! As a result of that experience I turned back to Christ at the end of my enlistment and said goodbye to the Army.

Facing adulthood after the childhood I had lived through left a number of dents, dings and broken places in my soul, and I looked for a place of healing. I was going to a Lutheran church at the time and it wasn't a bad place, but I longed for something more. I always thought that the church was supposed to be a place of healing (after all, so many churches advertise themselves as such).

In my searching I found a church group which met on college campuses and seemed to be full of life and joy. They were headed by a dynamic leader who really seemed to have his act together. But what I didn't know was that they were actually an abusive group. During the two decades I met with them, I saw many of the abuses and aberrations they practiced, but I was taught to swallow it and accept it all as "God's will". Finally, about three and a half years ago I and a number of others left the group.

We who left read many books on recovering from spiritual abuse and on the need to find a "healthy church." In future posts, I will describe what it's been like looking for such a church, and how my experiences have caused me to look at the contemporary evangelical subculture in the United States.

By the way, I am still a Christian. I can recite the Apostle's Creed without crossing my fingers behind my back. But it's been a rather wild ride.

Welcome to my personal pulpit.

In the days to come, I will post certain observations and opinions which I have long held. I am doing this to find out, first, if I am the only one who has these opinions (I don't think so), and second, to connect with those who share a similar view. Some of what I say will, no doubt, be controversial, but not more so than the things being said each day by the 10+ billion human tongues now wagging on Earth. Since it takes a long time and much thought in order to say anything meaningful, I warn you that I'll probably take a while to say all that I have to say.