r/ExPentecostal

Maybe it was just an ALJC thing, but did anyone else notice the extreme lack of support for young adults?

Once you turn 18, there’s nothing really for you. And once you hit your 20s there’s DEFINITELY nothing for you. Everything is geared toward 12-16 year olds.

They do have “adult-ish” in the ALJC (much like hyphen in UPCI) but it is extremely underdeveloped and might as well just not exist.

There’s most definitely a reason for this, but I can’t put my finger on it.

So I left this apostolic pentecostal chruch after attending it for a year and half. Got invited by a ex coworker. Was able to get out. Cut ties with everyone and blocked them After finding a new job. Never been happier. Pentecostalism is very oppressive and legalistisc. The organization i was in was a cult going off the BITE model definition.

I'm now LCMS Lutheran. I much prefer the structured liturgical service and solid theology over the hours long pentecostal services that never end. The over reliance on emotionalism to make up for weak theology and the church leaders preying (not praying) on weak minded emotionally vulnerable people was horrible. Whiping people up into an emotional frenzy and preying on their insecurities just to grift them and gulit trip them was wrong.

For those of you raised in those churches i'm so sorry you had to endure that spiritual Abuse. And for those still debating to leave or wanting to leave. RUN dont walk away. You will have to take drastics measures.

Curious if all district camps were similar?? Growing up ours was broken up into junior, youth and family camp. Pretty much all the same schedule even for the little kids which is so sad. All we did was go to church and change outfits in terrible heat. It seems now they’ve added more fun things to do which is good I guess but ya I get super sad when I hear about other kids church camps growing up. They barely had any actual church services and did like horseback riding and swimming in lakes which now as an adult makes so much more sense then preaching about hell to 8 year olds. I mean even if it’s preached with puppets it’s scary af!! Also, now noticing as an adult how clicky all the conferences are. It’s almost like mean girl vibes and looking back it was definitely a clicky amongst kids who had money, kids who were attractive, kids who were super spiritual and I think pks too. Even amongst the adults and the pastors there were def a “cool pastors” click which is absolutely ridiculous but for sure categorized like that. So weird. Anyway, anyone else have a better camp experience? Are they all setup the same throughout dif districts? Or did they all suck and just consist of services and wardrobe changes??

I left the pentecostal church to become orthodox, how do you guys deal with people trying to force you into reverting back to the pentecostal church, it’s just getting annoying when my moms pastor is over at the house and starts trying to convert me or when my family members start reading verses to me that talk about idolatry, I just sit there silently and nod at everything they say and just wait for them to shut up, my sister who left as well to become Catholic suggested that I raise my voice at them saying NO IM NOT INTERESTED, how do you guys deal with pushy pentecostals

I am making a full documentary on the Joseph Kade Abbott situation, and the more I find out, the more disgusted I am. One thing that is bothering me a lot is that he is a lead singer on several songs on IBC’s 2019 album, and that album and those songs are still up.
It absolutely disgusts me that I used to listen to this album, and others might still be worshiping God, going to “warfare” in the spirit, trying to find some healing through their praise, kneeling in prayer to find some solace, all while this pedophile’s voice rings through their room.
So I had this stupid idea. This is a parody of IBC’s “King of Glory.”

I (35M) was working out at the gym that coincidentally my pastor's son works out at, the son is also a pastor(31M).....let's call him T. I don't have a close relationship with him. I maybe talked to him for a few seconds one or two times.

While I was at the gym, Ty was also working out with his head of security from the church (55M) and two women (approx 50s), one of them was the head of the security's wife.

I noticed in the gym mirror that they kept staring at me, I just minded my own business and kept working out. As I was leaving the gym the two women walked up to me and said they could see my package, in an attempt to shame me and they said the head security was going to talk to me.

Am I overreacting for being mad that the pastor and his security encouraged women to come up to me and talk about my package. I lost my respect for the church. Eventually left church all together. FYI the security never said anything to me, I kind of feel like he is a coward for having women come up to me.

I am curious how many were part of the production or attended the production and how it impacted you?

I was in it many times and I had so much anxiety. I didn’t have any choice in the matter. My parents were heavily involved in the church, eventually teaching children’s church, followed by youth pastor, eventually becoming an evangelist, then pastor.

I was so traumatized when I was home alone I would get scared I missed the rapture and would call the most “saved” people I could think of. Once someone answered, I’d calm down and make up some reason for the call. I haven’t actually told anyone that. Am I the only one?

Seems he's still at it.... I think everyone sucks, but honestly, that is a level of stupid.

So I want to preface this by saying that I'm probably going to delete this after a day or so of it being up because I really don't want to coming back to me or people I know for obvious reasons.

I'm wondering if there are people who used to be in the UPCI that had family that left because of sexual abuse where the victim was punished and lost status within the organisation? For those that did, how do you cope with it?

I was raised in the UPCI. The main teaching of the church is that speaking in tongues is the sign of receiving the Holy Spirit. They didn't seem to care about anything else except speaking in tongues. It was talked about nonstop. I always felt uneasy when someone would wave their arms and jump up and down and yell a bunch of unintelligible words. The pressure to speak in tongues was always high. It made me feel unworthy that I could not do it.

My grandparents took me to church every Sunday. They always pressured me to speak in tongues. They even pressured me to get baptized when I was not ready. It was an everyday thing. Every day I was told that I need the Holy Spirit. It damaged me mentally because I was in a constant state of guilt. They also believed in being "slain in the Spirit" which freaked me out then and still does.

I remember my grandparents wanting to go up for an altar call to pray and forcing me to go with them. As people were praying, I got too close to the front and all of a sudden the pastor lays his hand on my head and starts saying things. Meanwhile, a member of the church grabs my arms and lifts them up urging me to just let the words flow. I wanted to leave. Being forced to speak in tongues was a nightmare. I never went up to the altar again.

Fast forward some years and I was not doing well mentally. My grandparents were still pressuring me to speak in tongues daily, as if all my problems would be solved if I did. So, one day I got super emotional, hysterical even. I wanted God to give me the gift of tongues so that I could finally feel worthy to the church and to my family. I prayed and began to speak in tongues...or so I thought. I was shocked and thought in that moment that God chose me specifically for that gift.

So, I would pray more and nothing would happen. I was then emotional simply because I was not able to do it again. Then when I was filled with emotion, it happened. I realized that when I got extremely emotional, then "tongues" would magically come out. It felt powerful. It showed me that I was the one controlling it. I began to crave that power. It was an exploit that I found and was abusing it. Anytime I got hysterical, it worked every single time. It actually felt evil.

I told my family and thought they would be delighted since they pestered me about it for years. Well, I told them what happened. They said that it was great and then immediately began to name who else in the family needed to speak in tongues. Their supposed joy lasted maybe two minutes before they moved on from the news I had just given. Years of guilt and shame for two minutes of acknowledgement was a bad trade.

Since I was brought up that speaking in tongues equals receiving the Holy Spirit which then equals salvation, I thought my life would get better. Not only did it not get better, I ended up with severe depression, anxiety, and OCD (all professionally diagnosed) after I noticed that it changed nothing in my life. I was also diagnosed with a trauma disorder which lines up with CPTSD. That is what led me to start fully questioning things for myself. I began to notice how contradictory my own family was, and especially the church itself. Members of my family as well as the members of the church I attended brag about speaking in tongues yet they are the most miserable people I know. The teachings of the church started to fill me with anger and resentment.

My life started to make a lot more sense once I stopped viewing it through the Pentecostal lense. Shame and guilt for believing those teachings for so long eats at me every day. I had doubts about it all even when I was young and was still lured in. I feel so ashamed how I acted. I feel ashamed that I had a gut feeling about it all and ignored it. My whole life feels like a lie and I am having to cope with reality now. The Pentecostal church took away years of my life that I can never get back. It sucks.

TL;DR: I was raised in the UPCI where speaking in tongues was constantly preached. I always had doubts about the teachings but eventually gave in to peer pressure. Convinced myself I had spoke in tongues but had to accept that I faked it all along. This left me with trauma due to my upbringing in the church.

This is why I stopped going to church period! The trauma my mom and dad put me thru in the name of their church and their god still haunts me to this day and I’m 66 years old.

Anybody find themselves going back and looking at your churches YouTube and Facebook pages? I was browsing through old YouTube videos of me and I could tell I look so sad. The fact that they can just gone on and continue, as if they didn’t black mail and run people out of the church. Bully and say a lot of horrible things. There’s some people I’m not seeing anymore, that were apart of the core of the church. Some of the people that stayed and I’m not surprised. I always felt uneasy around them and didn’t like their energy.

how much do you guys believe in pastors that come and prophecy over you? i’ve had some good experiences and some bad, some of them have been right and others were hit or miss. some of them say things that are so spot on that im like oh okay wow maybe god does exist, and then others say things that even have me confused how they could’ve come to that conclusion. but they all say it’s the spirit of god showing them these things. how much do you guys believe these things?

Looks like there is or was a law suit filed against First Apostolic Church of Maryville TN beyond Kade Abbotts criminal conviction and sentencing I am having a difficult time finding more information about the civil suit was wondering if anyone knew anything

22. Living at home. Trying to get out. Vent-

I work a job that’s very public facing. Today everyone is wearing jeans in support of an event. I was going to wear my jeans but then decided it’s too much of a risk.

It sucks. I tried on the pair of jeans with my work shirt and it looked so much better than a stupid skirt.

I hate how it looks and the preconceived notions people have about me because of it. I don’t want to look different than everyone else for a religion I don’t believe in and doesn’t define me.

Not to mention it’s physically uncomfortable and actually a lot less modest than the pants.

That’s all.

After over a year of starting to deconstruct, me and my husband haven’t been back to our UPCI church since Mother’s Day. I went that the Wednesday after that without him but also haven’t been back since. A family member texted us concerned in early June once again and my husband just let them know we probably would not be back and we would be visiting other churches. That went about like you’d expect. I told another family member and they also were not happy insisting we only visit other churches that preach Acts 2:38, Jesus name baptism, and standards.

The pastor’s also texted us and my husband texted one of them and let him know we probably wouldn’t be back and he asked why and he just said that we’ve been praying about it and felt like it’s what we needed to do and he then stated “I heard you got your feelings hurt”… so that’s fun🫪 He did state he loved us and was there if we needed anything which I appreciated. Of course it’s nothing against the church as a whole, just the beliefs I’ve started the see differently in the past year.

Still, I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me now that everyone at least knows somewhat where we stand.