Accepting, Real, Relational.
That’s the tagline for this church. And it’s kinda true. We have folks coming here from all walks of life, and they aren’t judged. It’s a beautiful thing. Honestly, if you’re going to emulate the life of Jesus, you’re going to hang around with all kinds of interesting and sometimes odd and sometimes what the hell is up with them people. We become known as the church where anyone is accepted, arms wide open to the community at large. This place catered to those who were not okay with traditional church, and we were having a blast. Come on in, the water’s great!
All of this cool shit we are doing to reach out to the community is going spectacularly well. We feed the hungry in Tiny Town. We go to Nashville to work with a homeless ministry. We are actively involved in helping the community. We put on a Candy Carnival during Halloween in the middle of Tiny Town, and I build a life-size maze in which even the adults are getting lost, to my great pleasure. Pastor Almost buys a bike to give away at this event, the winning kid is absolutely over the moon. This is what Church 3 of Tiny Town was like. Real, gritty, awesome.
I had always wanted to be in a nondenominational church, free from the bonds of an overseeing organization, free to make our own decisions, free to focus on actually doing ministry as opposed to arguing about how to micromanage everyone. Liberated from the staggering amount of time, energy and resources wasted on making sure everyone’s following the rules. And we are presenting this church to the community as nondenominational.
Only………it’s not.
It’s almost nondenominational.
I love working with Pastor Almost, and his wife is very sweet, but they are most definitely not nondenominational.
Pastor Almost is licensed by the Assembly of God. This is an Assembly of God church in nondenominational clothing. Some of you will know what this means, and what their doctrine is, others of you are all what the hell is Assembly of God? Let’s see if I can make this explanation interesting for you.
Remember Pastor Strict and the United Pentecostal Church way back at the beginning of this book? The church where I couldn’t wear pants, makeup, jewelry, tank tops, or even trim my hair? (Haaa those of you who jumped into the pool late are now going to have to return to Chapter One to find out what in the name of holiness standards I’m talking about.) This church (UPC), and Assembly of God (AG), both have the same roots in the Azusa Street Revival circa 1906, in which a praying group of Californians was knocked to the ground and started speaking in tongues (unknown languages) as they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. *yawn* Yeah, I know.
People were healed, people were saved, (yadda yadda) this stuff all spread like wildfire and this is where Pentecostalism started, referring to the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts in which similar things happened. Okay, you’re totally falling asleep. This is most definitely NOT interesting. I’m absolutely losing your attention to that cobweb you just noticed up in the corner…does that mean there’s a spider in here? WAKE UP I’m almost done with the exposition bit, hang in there, this gets better. Well, around the 1940’s or so, half these people decided gee, maybe our wives would like a haircut and a pair of jeans and the Pentecostals split into two denominations, they are pretty similar except at an AG church, the women don’t have to look like they walked out of a Jane Austen novel.
Wait a minute, YES YOU DO know Assembly of God, because at least once in the 90’s you were channel surfing and screeched to a halt like a guy driving past a nudist colony at the sight of a lady with a massive pink bouffant hairstyle dressed in what I can only describe as late Marie Antoinette, a fashion designer’s night terror complete with heavy brocade puff sleeves embellished with satin bows and dripping with ribbons, seated in the most ostentatious palatial furniture, tufted velour with heavily scrolled gold trim. Google Jan Crouch if you think I am exaggerating for one split second, I am not. This was Trinity Broadcasting network, and they wanted you to believe and receive. Blab and grab. This entire network was owned by an AG family. A regular guest on TBN was Benny Hinn, the guy who would just wave his coat at a crowd and they’d all fall slap over. Jim and Tammy Bakker were AG, Tammy being the notorious running mascara lady. So was Jimmy Swaggart, though I don’t recall him having the running mascara bit.
We are back in a Charismatic church. Again.
Back to all of the craziness we thought we left behind in the camp in North Carolina…yep.
We have seen 50 shades of religion, only to come full circle, back to signs’n wonders once again.
But all of the positive things happening in this church are so great, what does it matter? Do I really care that Pastor Almost believes in anointing with oil or speaking in tongues?
So what?
I hate to start this next section, some of you aren’t going to like me very much. A large part of the community definitely didn’t.
There’s a reason why this being an AG church is going to be a problem.
I have a dirty little secret.
One I’ve been hiding for a very, VERY long time.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 