Kat's experiences in an abusive church - chapter 2
It's hard for me to explain why I left the church. People ask me how I finally saw the truth of what was going on, and I'm not entirely sure. I just knew that I never felt right. But I know how I got sucked in. Hindsight is 20/20, and although I can see it now, when I joined I was still a child.
In 1996, I would often visit my cousin, who lived about a half an hour's drive away. She was very into the Bible and preaching about the end of the world. I hated hearing about that, but what 16-year-old wouldn't? Fire and brimstone and horror and pain... no thank you.
Somewhere around this time, Meleya and Denee moved into my cousin's neighborhood. Meleya was a year older than me; Denee, 2 years younger than me. They would talk about church almost as much as my cousin, and told me how cool and awesome their church was. Finally, they convinced me to join them for one service. On Sunday, December 15th, 1996, I went to their church. I remember the date because it was my half-sister's birthday.
The church was in an old school building. The former gymnasium/auditorium had been converted into the church's sanctuary, and classrooms had been converted to a children's church, a nursery, a youth room, and offices. Another part of the old school had been converted into an apartment by taking out a few walls. The pastor and his wife and their 3 boys lived there, when I first began attending, and later they moved out and the youth pastor moved in.
That first day, we arrived for the early service at 8am. I remember the pastor being there, but first a teenage boy, who had recently been saved, we were told, was allowed to read from the Bible, and then another man, who said he'd been saved only 4 months. That man would turn out to be Larry, who, along with his wife Anita, would later become youth leader, and then worship leader. He told us of how he'd been a musician who played in bars "out in the world" and then been saved.
At 9 we went to the youth group's Bible study. Although I'd visited church as a child, I'd never attended, so Meleya & Denee had to teach me how to look up Bible verses. It was a simple Bible study - just teenagers sitting around a table in the youth room, with the youth pastors, Wanda and Brian, choosing the verses and teaching. I'd later find out that Wanda and Anita were sisters.
Ten o'clock came and we returned to the sanctuary for the main service. I'd never been to a charismatic Christian service before, so it was quite dumbfounding to me! My family's church was the sit-down-and-keep-quiet sort, where the congregation would maybe sing one or two songs from a hymnal, without instruments. Here though, there was an entire band! An electric guitar, a bass guitar, a full set of drums, a keyboard, and singers with microphones too! Definitely not your run-of-the-mill choir. Also, the Shepherd Sisters sang. There were five of them - Wanda, Anita, Rose, Annette, and Mona. Meleya & Denee explained to me that they were southern Baptist singers who attended the church and they had an album out.
They also had to explain a lot of other things that morning. There was speaking in tongues and being slain in the Spirit... things I'd never heard of or seen. The pastor would shout while he was preaching, and run around and jump up on pews. I was told at their old church building, he'd actually had a heart attack while preaching. No wonder! This man and his wife would leave a little over a year after I began attending the church, with the excuse that he was called to be an evangelist, not a preacher. But on that day, he was preaching quite normally for himself, as I would soon learn.
At the end of the service, Meleya and Denee got the pastor's wife, Heidi, to come and pray with me. They'd been asking if I wanted to go up front when the call for people to be prayed over had come, and I was too shy. She led me in a simple prayer that said something about loving Jesus and accepting Him, and resisting the devil so he would flee from me. A simple prayer - no fanfare , announcements, and hugs from the whole congregation, as I would later learn was the norm for people who "got saved" during a service. And Meleya and Denee said I got saved. Whatever that meant... at the time, I really didn't understand.
Meleya and Denee convinced me to return with them for the next service, and the next, much to my father's dismay - he wanted me to go to his church, and only his church; yet he'd never taken me to his church. While I really don't know if I truly did "get saved" that first day, there was something more than just being with my friends that compelled me to come back. And so it began.