Faith After UPCI: Anita on Grace, Fear, and Freedom

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brown Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins the author and founder of William Brown Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my very special guest Anita Wade, former United Pinnock Ostle Church member. Anita, it's good to have you back. I don't know if you paid attention to the last podcast we did but it got a lot of traction. There are a lot of people really interested to hear your story and during the course of talking to you I got so excited about the things that you know that were puzzle pieces that would fit into my research both from a

person who is in the United Pinnock Ostle Church and their emotional standpoint to just simply some of the names that you rattled off because of who you are and who you know. So I think I might have talked more than you and I wanted to have you back so that you could talk to. So thank you for coming back for those who don't remember Anita. Maybe you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself again. Well it's good to be back. I am a third-generation UPC member I was born into it raised at a Bible school in Minnesota and three years ago because of tragedy,

a traumatic incident we left and it's been quite a roller coaster of three years. Yes it has, based off of what you described in the last podcast and I recommend anybody who's interested to go back and hear that. It's a roller coaster for many people whenever they go through the things that you have, the shunning, the emotional, anguish, etc. and it's traumatic. There are people who escape and they're buried in trauma. I was whenever I left my group and every Friday I share stories of people who have gone through similar traumas but one of the things that you said that I really want to talk

about is something that other people face and there's different ways to interpret it and this may I may hijack your podcast again so I'm warning you there may be a third one. This may be one of the most important topics that I've covered on one of the podcasts on Fridays. There is this thing that happens whenever you leave a high control group that is very much like if you were a kid in a sheltered home where your parents are sheltering you and you are basically you're this coiled spring that suddenly whenever that spring gets released you bounce and in the support groups what we called

it was going wild but the interesting part about this is depending on where you are in your journey and depending on what you believed in your background, going wild to one person, maybe Tuesday for another person.

It may just be a normal day. And so there's different ways to interpret what going wild means. I wanted to first understand what you were talking about whenever you got into that subject, but it could explode into a series of podcasts because in fact, I have thought about doing this with my wife, I'll warn everybody ahead of time.

I've thought about having a going wild with Jen podcast where we just simply go do something that was forbidden in the cult and film it and share it with the world so they can see that God's not going to strike you down with lightning because you visited, I don't know, a movie theater or something like this.

Anyway, let's talk about going wild. Well, when I moved to Fort Smith and went into the Christian school that just first and background, I was raised in the Twin Cities. I went through the 10th grade in a suburb of the Twin Cities and then my parents moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas where I was put into an NCAA Christian school.

And one of the things that I noticed when I was there was that a lot of the kids that had been born and raised in that church, had been raised in that school and they were told you you can't smoke, you can't do drugs, you can't drink, you can't cut your hair, you can't have sex, blah, blah, blah.

And a lot of times what would happen is because of the mystery and they had never seen it and didn't know what that was and it was such a taboo and it was talked about so much, they had to go try it.

And so, in fact, my, the class ahead of mine, I was a junior when this happened, a lot of those kids got bounced, they got kicked out. And then some of them came back and so my class was double, a double number of six because of that.

But yeah, they would go, they got caught skinny dipping and you know, just all kinds of crazy stuff. I didn't go that route because I had been in a public school where we had kids that smoked and I had seen girls doing drugs in the bathroom and I had seen girls that had gotten pregnant and had to go home and just, I didn't want that.

I didn't want, I wanted my life to be, you know, UPC, Pentecostal, whatever. I really wanted it to go a certain way. I'm very particular about that. I'm very future-minded. So I didn't do that quite as much where I, going wild for me, was when I moved to Lutter Rock and went to college, I started hanging out with some people that I met at my job that also hung out at a local bar and it was called slickwillies.

It became popular when Clinton was running for president. We would, you know, say the guys that ran it were my friends and so we'd say they're when it closed and sometimes they'd try and, you know, slip alcohol in my drink.

So I was 19, 20. I was getting in without an ID because I knew and I always caught them and, you know, I wouldn't drink it or whatever. And so one night they decided we were going to go over to somebody's house and watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show and what I didn't know was they were videotaping my reaction because they thought it was fun to, you know, introduce to me certain things that I had never been around.

I was so sheltered and then they would videotape it. about it. And so even to this day we laugh when we get together about you know all the craziness that we did concerning that for me. Yeah I never had anybody film it but I grew up in a world where everybody in the religion we came out of was sheltered. It was a very high control group and the children who could escape that sheltering often did it and I can remember months at a time I would spend the weekends at a friend's house and they would be doing things. I was I just was a

good little cult boy. I didn't engage in many of the things that were we considered wrong in the cult and any of them actually except for movies and television because my family had this weird scenario where my family watched it and it was okay for us because we knew the central figure the prophet and we knew that he watched television and movies while he condemned it. So I had this false understanding but for the most part I did not do this. However in the support groups there are children who one lady told her story and it was so heartbreaking to think of it. In fact

two ladies shared the same type of story. They weren't even allowed to read books that were not the Bible as they were being raised as a child and one lady used to take books home and she would with a flashlight in her closet at night sneak into the closet and she's reading a book with a flashlight and got caught and you can imagine what happened with the parents. In that case it wasn't as destructive as the other lady who shared her story and they actually brought the children into a hall brought the entire community together and physically punished them. I won't go into

details. It was horrific what they did to the children with everybody watching and with their rear-end exposed. So they're they're being shamed, they're being punished, they're actually being tortured. It's horrific what they were doing. That's the type of control that was in the movement that I escaped. What was odd to me I thought this can't exist in other religions. Nobody is going to be that horrific and what I've learned is it depends on how far the church goes outside of the norm as to whether the church does it. I've had people from the UPC share stories. I just

can't believe happened in the UPC and it really comes down to this. It all comes down to accountability. If you're in a church where the members are holding the leaders responsible it doesn't spend as far out of control as those that the leaders are just unbounded. I was encouraged to read.

My dad was an avid reader. That's part of the reason that when I went into television without a college degree I was always good at English. I was always good at creative writing. I could write a script in no time and it was I would get compliments on how good it was. I had a very good imagination because without a TV you had to entertain yourself. Thankfully my parents were so busy.

My mom was running a business and my dad was working and he had like a hour drive to and from so when he came home he ate dinner and pretty much went to bed. He was also Pulio Survivor so I knew when he was getting out of his chair because I could hear his braces and his questions coming down the hall So a lot of times if it was something I thought it would get in trouble I would just stop it under my mattress, but they knew I was reading and that to them that that was very much encouraged

So I didn't really have that the TV in the movies was a little more strict But then when we would like I said last time we go on vacation my grandparents right sneak to the neighbors We would watch TV that way, but the movie theater. I didn't go. I don't think I think it was 19 first time I went The first movie I saw which was stupid was the abyss with Sigourney Weaver which scared the Tahr out of me and so I mean I still Like to this day. I if there's a bum or a drunk person on the other side of the street

I'm crossing the street to get away from him. I don't like panhandlers I don't like being in a situation where I feel unsafe my husband He's ready to take him on you know take him out, but not me. I just I want away from it and They tried to help me with my friends when when they were you know introducing me to stuff They tried to help me get used to it And I did have a friend that he would get really drunk and crashes motorcycle and then come to my house and sleep on the floor of the couch or whatever

If my parents had known that they had thrown a fit. It was funny My sister was there one day when he when it happened she came I was the guy banging on the door of the guy banging on the door It's just Mike you let him in she's like what? I was like just it's Mikey. Let him in So, you know, I did I did get to experience more of that I think once I was in college and got married and you know started working a secular job in television But yeah, I can yeah, I saw so many kids that would just go wild just absolutely go wild get pregnant get do drugs

You know and stuff like that and Some of them come back and they're and they're cleaned up and they're good and so it just ruined their lives I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast and I'm in one of those weird moods where I'm probably gonna Just open up to you I went when I ran my business I was having a bad day my wife was calling me just we were both having a really bad day and I was walking into a restaurant to meet my contractors who were working as consultants and this panhandler was sitting there with no shirt on and he grabbed

My pants leg and almost tripped me as I'm walking in the building holding my laptop and I'm like no man Don't do this while walked in I ate well she called me again, and it was an emergency I had to leave so left my my feet my meal left the consultants and I'm walking out He does it again on the way out, and I looked at him. I said what are you doing?

And he says look man I'm just trying to get down to the interstate I'm trying to get home to my family I have a wife and kids and I have no money and I was beside myself from the emergency I didn't think about it and I said sure hop in the truck Which was the stupidest thing I ever have done right?

So he gets in the truck and as I'm opening the door I suddenly came to my senses and thought that's the stupidest thing I've ever done and I get in I sit down and I'm like how do I handle this? What do I do?

Well, I carry a 45 so I just pulled my 45 out and I set it on my left leg and he looked at me said, Mr, you've got a gun and I said, yeah, and he said, you're not going to kill me are you? And I said, I sure hope not, buddy. And he said, let me out, let me out. I lied.

I just live across the street. And so I let him out. And he went to his home and nothing came of it. But that story, it's, it's a funny story. But whenever you think about how people experience life in general, you're going to see panhandlers. If you go into the city, you're going to see people go into the movies. If you've been a sheltered life, they're going into the sin house, we would call it. I learned after leaving that there were a lot of things that I thought were sins that you really can't find in the Bible. Movies,

for example, can't even be in the Bible. There weren't even invented back then, right? So I started looking at the different things that they called sin and I realized that we had a whole lot of sins that they just told us were sins for whatever reason was their opinion.

I wanted to talk to you that a bit. What in your experience after leaving the United Pentecostal Church, what were ordinary decisions that everybody else would just not even think about that you felt were reasons that the UPC would say you had abandoned God?

Yeah. So it was mainly the standards I had worn makeup in high school and pretty much worn a minimal amount, you know, up till even before I left. My hair, I'd always kept it long, but I had trimmed it most of my adult life anyway. So those things, you know, they would say, oh, my word, you know, you're going to go to hell or whatever. And I just, it was hard for me to learn how to wear pants that felt weird and I still this day don't wear them that much.

But when I started going to this church that I'm going to, there was a girl there that she sent me a, it was, she sent me a thing from a meme that was a Halloween costume of Jesus and said, a UPC Halloween costume. So she saw me in jeans for the first time. That was a big deal.

And then at one point she wanted, she had tattoos and she'd asked me if I had a tattoo and I said, no, a UPC, I would have never been allowed to get a tattoo. And she said, well, we need to go and get one. I'm like, no, I don't want to hurt myself. That hurts. I don't want to do it. She's like, have you had a, have you had a baby? And I said, yeah, without an epidural, she goes, oh, girl, that's nothing. You can get a tattoo. But what was funny is we left and got in the car when

home until my husband, I said a year ago, I would have been appalled and gone, no way, I can't get a tattoo. That's, you know, that's against thrills and that's, well, and the fact that I even entertained the thought to me was freeing. And even though I probably will never get one, because I just don't want one, it was freeing to me to be able to have that conversation. And it was a wild that I had even had it without getting, you know, wound up and all of that. So yeah, that's, that's kind of been some interesting stuff for me to kind of figure out. And it does. It feels so

different. It feels freeing. And I think that's one of the things I told somebody the other day was I'm free to be myself now. I don't feel like I'm faking it. I don't feel like a hypocrite as much.

So that helps. And I recently heard a podcast from my pastor that married me. And one of the things that I have been really on my heart lately is I think we focus in the UPCs so much on the outward, the standards. We don't value the soul, we don't value the person. And sometimes I think, and I felt that way when we went through leaving and how we were treated, they didn't care about how hurt we were or what it happened to my daughter or any of that. They just cared about saving their skin and making things look a certain way. And because we didn't abide by

whatever they wanted us to do. And it didn't look just so. Then we were worthless to them. But at the same time, they'll walk a complete stranger off the street who's got a drug problem and say, God can save them and fix them. Okay, well then why can't you believe? If you believe that I was wayward and I backslid, why don't you believe that I can be, you know, brought back?

So that that's really kind of bugged me a little bit recently. Absolutely. I remember whenever I laughed and we left the same type of mindset. We weren't United Pinnock also church, but we had many similarities. I did a deep study on what it means to have pride because pride is one of the sins listed all throughout the New Testament. And also what did it mean when it said modesty? And it was a little bit surprising to me that modesty did not mean showing of skin. In the Pinnock Ossle world, showing of skin is what it's talking about. Well, I saw some pictures of the dress

for ladies and the dress for men back in the ancient world. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Pinnock Ossles would go nuts if somebody walked into church like this and say, you guys are nude, but that's the way it was if you think how the toga was made, et cetera. So I did those studies and I came to realize that exactly what you said, I found the passages of the Bible that said God looks at the heart and not the outward experience or the outward appearance, I should say.

So there were some false dichotomies that we had as in the Pinnock Ossle world. Now, I want to preface this and the next part of this podcast with this fact. It's not that I'm picking on the Pinnock Ossle church by no means. I really have nothing against UPCI at all. I have had a few guests who were a former UPCI. What I do have a problem with are when people are abused or hurt. And for me, I'll stand up for the hurt person. I don't care if you're Catholic, I don't care if you're Pinnock Ossle Baptist, what you are. If people are being victimized, you need to stop

this. And I would think that as an organization, I would think that they would want to help people who are experiencing shunning and abuse and spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, all of these things. But when somebody leaves, this struggle that you're talking about is real. It really is.

People end up developing in a lot of cases complex trauma. And it may take years for them to overcome What happens when they first leave now? They may have had a good life in the cult and then suddenly And I said cult because I'm referring to my experience not yours They may have had a good experience in the church that is being a little bit more controlling than usual But then when they leave because of the way that members come together in a Group think like mindset. I'm trying to be cautious with my words When they leave they went out from us because they were not obvious as the mindset and

Sometimes they'll even preach sermons like this. Well, what happens is the the people who are in the church They start to turn against those who left and they start to nitpick every decision they make This is a real thing this happens with many many people who are in the support groups that I used to manage and Sharing the stories on Fridays. I want to talk through that a bit What what does that struggle look like for you after you left and what might other people who are going through this or who have gone through this

What might they be Overlooking as far as Mending those relationships and helping to overcome well for me Yeah, you know, we told them we wanted to leave that church because of how a situation was handled at camp And I know we've teased that several times and we've never really gone through it and we need to at some point but You know, we we were told not to come back like we couldn't come on the premises We'd be arrested and some there's some people that are like what I want you to go and see if they'll actually do it

And I don't I don't want to cause a problem. I don't hate the UPC I had a really good childhood. I'd really good parents I've got some really good friends and family that are in it I think there's a lot of good people in the UPC But I think and this is one of the reasons that I want to talk out and I want to say things is that a lot of times We hurt our own people and we don't realize that they're going through something and we don't reach out And we don't make we don't help them through it like we would somebody who was a drug addict or

You know an abused wife or you know something along that line and that was what it was for me I was told never to come back to this church with the pastor by this family that I had been my whole life Looking up to and my my we love them my my parents just thought there nothing could you know They didn't they could do no wrong and so everything that I had ever known was ripped from me And then I was told we'll just forgive and move on just forgive and move on Well, yeah, that's great for them because they're you know in the UPC they're at headquarters

They're big time preachers. They don't want egg on their face. I don't want anybody saying anything mean So I think sometimes we can analyze our own and and we don't stop and think that you know This is a person who's going through something we moved here. We moved my dad here He was a polio survivor. He was in a wheelchair and I was his primary caregiver and he was living with us And I had a three-year-old and you know a few years into it my husband got cancer And so I had a business husband with cancer a nine-year-old daughter a dad who fell three times on his wheelchair and broke his leg

And was in out of the hospital for that and diabetes He's in pneumonia and flu. And I would go to church and people would say, how's your dad? And I'm like, he's fine. He's being waited on the hand and footed the hospital.

But I'm struggling to put food on the table and pay the bills and get some sleep and just take care of the dog. And so I think sometimes we just can't advise our own.

We focus on the wrong thing. And I think instead of just going after somebody, when you see them doing things that they say they don't believe or doing something that's off, to stop and say, hey, what is going on with them?

Is there something that we can do? Can we come alongside and help? Rather than saying, oh my Lord, they've backs lit and we've got to get rid of them because they're going to make the church look bad or they're full of the devil.

And it's just that part of it I don't understand. We say we love people, we say we love God, but we don't value his children. You know, it all goes back to the fact of the question, is it a high control group or is it not a high control group?

If it is a high control group, what happens is this? When you leave church, the people want to control you, even though you're no longer a member of that church. And that's really interesting when you think about it.

If you go to a non-high control church, say you go to the Baptist church, I've actually spent a year or two years in the Baptist church before we moved to a different church. When I left, there wasn't a single person who looked at me and started posting things about me and internally talking, look, he's not living the Baptist way.

And they knew that I had gone to this other church and they accepted the fact that I no longer believe like they did. I now have a new church, a new pastor, a new leader, new mentality.

And they just looked at it like, well, I still like John. And many of them still, like I went out to dinner multiple times recently with people who are members, who are still members of that church.

They don't care, they see me as John, they don't see me as the lost soul who left our fold. And that's really what it comes down to. You're in a high control group and you leave and suddenly they still want to control you but they start lashing out because they know, they're losing control of you.

They can no longer manipulate you. That's what it looks like from what you're describing and what other people told me. It's a surface relationship, I think, a lot of the time. And that's why I felt so lonely because I don't feel like anybody really got to know me.

One of the things my dad, when he passed away, I had pictures of him walking on crutches. And people were just blown away from this church that he walked on crutches because they never took the time to get to know him.

And the people that did were like, you need to write a book, he's just, he's got a lot of wisdom, he's really a neat guy. And I was like, yeah. So I think that's one of the things that I really struggled with was I don't feel like anybody really knew me.

They knew the outside me, they knew my pedigree, they knew my parents were maybe, they knew I was UPC, but they didn't really know me. And I think we need to get to know people because when you get to know people, you can tell when they're down, when they're hurting.

Wednesday night at church, had a lady combine my daughter struggling like crazy. And so we were both kind of had to kind of an issue the last couple of weeks or whatever. And she knew right off that we weren't right because she'd got taken a time to get to know us.

And she didn't have to judge us from what we looked like or any of that. It was just, you know, were you okay? And they cared about me, not what I looked like and not that I was, you know, and hearing to a bunch of rules to make the church look good.

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So let's talk about loneliness and getting help for a while. You described your situation and the loneliness that you felt. Think about this. When you value a person, whether you know them or not, whether they believe like you or not, and they need help, if you value them as a person, you will offer them help.

I can't tell you how many times I have walked into a room and noticed somebody who's really struggling in that room. And while everybody else is partying and having fun, I will navigate usually to the person who's down the most and try to lift them up.

That's just how my personality is. Because I value them as a person, some of these people I've never even seen before. They're just people that I can tell they're down on their luck. Well, let's lift them up.

That's the way people should be, especially in a church setting. When you value a person and you value them as an individual, you let this happen. When you're in a control group, you don't really so much value the individual as you do.

The individual's compliance with your rule set. That's a distinction that has to be made here. Because of this, it makes it very difficult for somebody who have left to even go back to the people that they were really connected to within the group because they no longer value them as an individual.

They see them as a person who is breaking off. What is that like for you? Is there anybody in your former life in that church that you could say I honestly can go to them and just open up my heart because I'm lonely?

No, no, my husband, There's a, not really. I've got some good friends outside of church, my best friend from elementary school. Some of my friends that I've made now, a former pastor's wife in Arkansas.

There's a few people that I have, but none of them live close to me that are in any sort of high control that would understand. Now, there's people in my church now that I can talk to, but when we were in the, especially in the last church, it was so lonely for me, because there were clicks, and we were never invited to go to anything.

We would, I would say, I asked somebody to go out to lunch, and they would say, oh, no, we can't. We've got plans. Then that afternoon, you'd see on Facebook where a bunch of them had gotten together at a restaurant.

And my thought was, well, why didn't you just include us? That was to me so odd. And then to go through what I was going through with my dad when he was sick, and you just, when you're a caregiver of an elderly parent that is in the situation that my dad was in, it's very difficult.

It's very lonely because people, I was what they call the sandwich generation. I was caring for my dad, but I also had a three or four-year-old at the time. And so it was just very lonely.

And people don't want to invite you to go anywhere because you got this person in a wheelchair, you got to drag along and take care of. And they didn't take the time to get to know him, and know that he was an amazing person.

They would have loved to have him. And so it was just, it got very, very lonely. And when we were in Arkansas, my husband and I both made quite a bit of money in television.

And so we would go with some friends or something we'd go out of town for the weekends and the holidays for the July, or we could people over, we'd go to their house. And I found that when we moved here, that didn't happen.

And I was getting to the point where I was, we were alone on holidays, and it's just the four of us. They're going to have a staring at each other. And thanksgiving Christmas, I'm making this huge meal for the people I cook for every night of the week.

And it's no different. And towards the end, there were times I got very suicidal. And when we left, and I realized just how alone I had been and how alone I currently was, it got really bad.

And about a lot a couple of years ago, my husband was in the shower, and I was taking my medication and I thought, I wonder if I just overtook my medication if I would just go to sleep and if anybody would care.

And I had to go and get into therapy. And thankfully, I didn't, I was able to pull myself out of that. But it's very scary to be in that situation. And there are people in our churches that are going through that.

We don't even take the time to get to know them and to say, hey, are you okay? Can we get together? Can we go have coffee? It's, you need to forgive and move on.

When I would bring stuff up to my pastor about things that had bothered me about the way we had been treated as a certain thing, he's like, well, you just need to forgive and move on.

Well, there's a certain point where forgiving and move on is no longer good for you, because you're just taking it on the chin all the time. And that's where I am with my daughter.

She's taken so much on the chin that I'm starting to ball up my fist and go, no, you're not getting near her. You're not, you got to go through me. Because she's. This has hurt so bad from it.

I'm one of the few people who had the opportunity to watch what happens when somebody leaves during my transition away. There was a period of time that I had come to the conclusion that I was in a high demand group.

I didn't really, I don't know if I would have called it a Colton, but I knew it was a high demand high control group and I knew something was wrong. And we made a conscious decision that this was about, I think it was Labor Day, is whenever I finally made the decision.

We decided we made a conscious decision to leave January 1st, 2012. We actually put it on the calendar because our children were involved in the homeschool that was part of the community of the high demand group we left.

And we wanted them to finish it out, have the Christmas program, and then we were gonna tell our families. And this would give us an opportunity so that we could have a normal, if you call it normal, Christmas and Thanksgiving with the family.

So we made a conscious decision, well, during this period of time, because I did this, I had the opportunity of watching somebody leave and watching what happened. And this was eye-opening for me because of this.

I watched the person leave. I wasn't that close to them, but I did know them enough to see what was happening. And they left the group and they became very distraught. They were very alone, very lonely, down on their luck.

Their head was hanging. This was a normally happy, jovial person. You could tell they're deep in depression. That's probably what was happening. And I watched the reaction from the group. Instead of saying, let's reach out to helping hand.

This person is down. Yes, they've left our group, but this is an individual we respect. Instead, what happens is they almost revel in the glory of the fact that he's suffering. He left and look what God is doing to him.

That kind of thing. You're being punished because everything you've ever heard, everything you've ever been preached. If you leave, your whole world's gonna fall apart. Absolutely. And I'm curious, is it the same in the United Pentecostal Church?

Did you experience any of this? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm still to this day of afraid to say anything about anything financial like with our store. It's a struggle. And I don't know how much longer I can keep it open, but I don't want to say anything to anybody that's in the UPC or anywhere else.

I'm like, well, it's because you're not paying your ties. It's because you left the church. You're not being faithful. No, it was going on when I was in the church. And you didn't bother to come and support my small business.

It doesn't matter that I came and supported your restaurant or whatever. And I'm really conscious of that. If somebody has a business and they're a friend of mine, I tend to try and support them because I know what it feels like.

I'm not going to go to Hobby Lobby and get a frame if my friend owns a frame store and that's what we do. So that's kind of the example that I can give. Yeah, it's one of those things where you just, and I've got friends that they're parents.

They can't have their parents around with it if they have any peace because they're just constantly nagging them about why aren't you getting back in trouble? Why don't you get back in church get back in church? My nephew is the same thing the same way He is so pushed away. He doesn't want to start dark in the door of any church because it's he's just been neged to death about it and you got it's You got to just let people figure it out and love people if you really want them to come back Love them back if it's if you really have the truth and you really have the love of God and

You're saved then love them and then the right thing will happen whether it's what you want to happen or not But you've got to love them And my my daughter is really really amazing because she came home from school one day and she's been like this her entire life Even when she was little in Sunday school There'd be a new person come into the classroom and she they come sit by me, you know my name's Savannah And this is my friend and you know come sit by me and I hear back from the parents You know just how friendly and how you know nice that was and one day she came home from school and she said mom

There was a girl sitting in the lunch room and she was sitting all by herself And so I went over there to talk to her and come to find out she's from Loderaq and you know they've got things in common and they were friends and It was amazing to me. I'm just blown away at how Loving she is because we never taught her to be anything else. We've always taught her to you know Value people and love your friends and she can have friends that aren't in church and she can love them and she can be around them one of her

One of her best friends through high school is as some mental Issues and she's of a different ethnicity and her mom was gonna put her in a different private school after middle school Because she was afraid she'd get picked on a high school and she wouldn't do it because Savannah was her biggest like cheerleader and She she knew that Savannah would watch her and I was so proud of that and I think that's the way we need to be in life We need to to watch out for the people that are going through things and don't have what we have or

Need something you know if I see somebody with a need I tend to go and get it and you know pay for it and just give it to them Drives my husband crazy, but I just don't I don't want people to suffer. I love people And along the same lines when you leave there's a series of Emotions that you go through and it's a flood of emotions, but you go through first the initial Problem that made you decide that it was time to leave and then you have to reconcile the fact that you're about to leave

And it gets really difficult because you actually anticipate the fallout that's going to happen before you even leave And then there's this period of time I want to talk through this with you and see if it was the same for you There's a period of time after you first leave That you are very anxious Because you already know some of the things that people will say to those who have left At least it was that way in the high control group that I went to and all things out in the open I was part of that high control group. I know the things that are said because I said them to people who left

So I'm guilty just like the rest But when you leave that anxiety that you know what's going to be said because there are people who are familiar with all of this, that anxiety goes through the roof and what was that like for you? Did you have the same anxiety? Did the UPC give that type of mentality to you when you left?

I didn't have anxiety coming up to leaving originally when we left the church and we're told never to come back because it just happened in a matter of a week. Like it was a couple of days just absolute trauma. So we took some time, we didn't go to any other churches, we just took some time to stay home and try and they find our way and that's when I found podcast and called people that I had been told not to talk to because they left and just repented and said, I'm so sorry, I would have never done this but I didn't want to get

in trouble and I didn't want to be talked about the way you were talked about. And I found that they were very gracious and understanding and really helped me. We ultimately found our way into another UPC church. We had to drive an hour form. We stayed there for about a year and a lot of it was, okay, we know you're hurting but forgive and move on. And my daughter was having trouble fitting in and she had lost all of her friends from the previous church and she just couldn't take it anymore. And so then we started thinking about leaving

and then the anxiety hit and it was like, okay, they're watching. You feel like you're under a microscope because you feel like they know, you know, they know something's coming up. But we went, we didn't want to leave. My cousin was coming to preach and I wanted to be there for him when he preached and then leave. And he got snowed out and I had to beg the ministry to just spend five minutes with him anyway. So he ended up not coming.

And that was it. We just never went back. We texted the pastor and said we've transitioned out. We had told them that we were thinking about it and they, of course, you know, God told us this and they were praying for us. And I don't think it was that. I think I told somebody and I think she went and ran and told them, I don't think God told them anything. So we then just, you know, started looking at other churches and we found this church that we're currently in and my daughter felt extremely loved and welcomed.

She doesn't anymore. So things have gotten a little rough. But we didn't, we had the anxiety a year after we had, so it was trauma, a year of trying to heal and go through it some other stuff and then the anxiety. But yeah, you do because you know, okay, that person there, you know, I've heard that they've, they've, they've, they've been deceived so they've left the truth and God's going to, you know, give him over to rep or rate mind and they're going to go to hell. I had one minister say, I don't even talk to anybody

who leaves because they're, you know, they're just full of the devil and that just, I can't do that. They're people and they were my friends and I love them. And I, I just was never able to do that. So let's talk a little bit about salvation in the United Pentecostal Church. Being a Pentecostal organization, I have some ideas to what this is like. But what did you believe that you had to do after leaving the United Pentecostal Church to remain saved? And how do you look at that same experience now? So when I left, I really didn't feel like I had to change anything for salvation. I did start realizing

realizing that the gospel for everybody else in Christianity was that Jesus died and went to the cross for our salvation, you know, grace through faith, not through works and performance and that thing, that sort of thing.

In the, in the UPC, the gospel is Acts 2.38. And so that's why I had a real problem like I, with my last podcast when I was talking to my daughter. I was really afraid that she hadn't been given that.

I had to really come to terms with that when we left that, that, you know, it was grace and it was what he did on the cross. The Acts 2.38 stuff, that was all good.

I had done that. I wasn't really worried about not being saved. I think since then, I've really learned about grace and my viewpoint on that is that your salvation is your relationship with God.

If you have a relationship with Him and you're reading the Bible and you're doing what He feels you need to do and you feel like you're, you know, you're having a relationship with Him and you're loving other people, then that's where your, your salvation is going to come from.

I'm not discounting baptism. I'm not discounting the Holy Ghost or any of that, but I, I do think that even with everything, the requirements that we have is what is your relationship with God?

It's not all this outward stuff because I've met so many people that focus on the outward, but the inward, there's no relationship there. I remember when I first left and I came in contact with the grace mentality, I was a little surprised that I had read the Bible as many times as I had while I was in the group and never really understood the concept.

I also realized at the same time that it was because of the way that they taught the Bible. I don't know if this is the same way for you. I'm actually just feeling you out a little bit here.

We were taught the Bible whenever we heard a sermon about the Bible. It was usually a sermon about a verse in the Bible. The verse wasn't really in the context of the passage. I read the Bible in a passage by passage man or not from start to finish from a book to the end of the book.

Whenever I did, I started to realize that a lot of the things that we were taught weren't taught in the context of Scripture. Instead of even being outside of the Bible, in some cases, I was finding things that we were taught that were just anti-biblical because they tried to make this verse say something it really didn't say.

Did you experience any of that? What was that like for you just after you came out of that mindset? What was it like reading the Bible for you? My dad had taught me back when I first came out of high school.

I would go to him and ask a question and he'd say, you've got to go figure that out for yourself. I'm not going to be alive the rest of your life to answer all your questions.

I did. I really feel like I had an understanding of what I believed. My daughter didn't have that and so I had to explain some of that to her. I really had to come to terms with grace and relearn that.

I remember as a teenager, anytime they preached about the cross or what he did on the cross, I would just... it would get to me. It was just because of what he did for us. I would cry and I just felt so horrible. But then you're in it so long and that people make fun of, you know, people that talk about grace, so it's sloppy a copy and it's grace. You just, they want a license to do whatever they want in the world and, you know, that's, that's grace to them. And for me, grace is not that.

It's, it's the love of God that he went to the cross and died for us. You know, Mercy, we did not deserve. We don't deserve what he's done for us. And I think if people focused on that less than you got it, you know, fill in the blanks on all these criteria and look a certain way and follow all these rules. And you know, in the UBC sometimes you feel like if you cut your hair like I would get gum in my hair and my mom would cut it out and I would just agree because I thought, Oh, that's it. I'm going to go to hell that I mean, they save

cut your area going to hell. It was just very difficult and very scary as a child and I don't like that. And my daughter was taught that and we've been spending a lot of time trying to reverse that. She is amazing. She's really very smart and she's come to terms with it and she's doing really well. In fact, the other day she led the first CU at the pole at her school ever in the history of the school. God had five in the morning and let it. I was blown away. She wants those kids in her school to hear the gospel, not X 238, but how much God loves them. And her school is mainly,

you know, Muslim Hindu and atheists, just because of the makeup of the area that we live in, but she's got a heart for them. She was teaching Bible, you know, little kid Bible studies just some of her first creators, friends at lunch. And I'm I'm really proud of that because it's not we're getting away from the rules based. You got to do X, Y and Z or you're going to hell to you got to love people and tell them about Jesus and what he did for them. Yeah, we grew up with the mentality that there was hell and hot iron in the back of our minds at all times. In fact,

what you said is something that I want to go back to a little bit. We were taught the same way even if you accidentally cut your hair as a female, you might accidentally find yourself in hell.

I remember one of the girls, I can't remember, she was in her teens. She had an accident with a curling iron. And I remember the conversations about her. Can she even go to heaven because an accident burned off some of her hair in the curling iron? And that to a child or a teenager, it's devastating. But take that a step further, we had some of the churches that were so destructive that they would actually bring the child in front of all of the people and have a session where they cut their hair. After telling them that if they cut their hair, they were doomed to hell,

they would burn in hell fires. Well, then they brought the child before the people and they did this essentially telling all of the world that they're not going to be in heaven with your parents.

That's really what they're saying. That's how bad and destructive this gets. And at the same time, we were taught that these leaders, though they were vicious wolves in this case, these leaders, you couldn't do anything to stop them because of the touch not God's anointed passage and they'll be your leader's passage.

They're so far taken out of context, I actually have a podcast, I think it might come up before this one, maybe slightly after, where I'm going into that scripture about the submit to your leaders and you must obey.

It's not really to be interpreted in the way that they do it. Did they have the same kind of touch not God's anointed mentality in the UPC? Yes, they did. No, maybe to have the bringing forward and shaming like that, that never, I don't, that I know of never quite happened, but yes, you have to, you have to honor what your pastor says and you better not ask a question because if you start questioning it, well then you're questioning their authority and they say a lot of times that we're going to have to give account to God in heaven for your soul.

I wouldn't want to be a pastor if that was the case because people are people and they're going to do things that you wouldn't approve of and you wouldn't want. On top of that, my daughter had an incident happen in this new church where a minister got very aggressive with her and because she had been taught that scripture and couldn't say anything and couldn't defend herself when they were coming at her and it wasn't her fault, she's very traumatized and so she doesn't, she doesn't look at ministry with any sort of honor or reverence outside of the fact that they're a person.

In fact, she looks at them like they're going to hurt her and I'm very thankful for the pastor that we have now because he looked her in the face and he said, I know I didn't do this to you but let me just say I'm sorry that you feel that way and I will never do that.

She doesn't believe them, she still doesn't believe them but I know it's sincere and I know his heart and he's doing the right thing and I just hope that eventually she can see that but she does like once a minister comes at her aggressively, she's done, she's going to meet with him, she doesn't want to talk to him and whatever they say is discredited.

So you've got to be so careful as a pastor, as a minister and how you handle people because if you're trying to love them and get them to have them or you know, lead them into the Bible in a new way and you cut off your authority or you cut off your voice by doing something wrong, that person's ever going to listen to you again.

Absolutely and I look at it like this, if you want to actually lead souls to Christ, you can't treat them in a way that they want to be led. That was something that was really hard for me to grasp after I left.

We didn't care about the loss. We really didn't. In fact, I can tell you sermon after sermon after sermon where they're being so condemning of anybody who doesn't have the same mindset that if an outsider were to have actually been asked to come to church, then get up and walk out like why am I going to say?

that didn't be ridiculed the whole time. It was a sermon of ridiculing as what we had. Let's talk about, so after the podcast came out, you probably saw it that it got very good reviews by the people who were watching and you can read through the comment feed.

There were a lot of people helped. What changed after that podcast came out? Did you see any new faces? Did you meet new people? What changed after the podcast? Well, I had some people that I was acquainted with that I didn't know that they were struggling with the same thing, and so that was very, so many, I was helped by people that had been through it, and so that's why I did the podcast, and it was, there were people that I were acquaintances or whatever, that it really helped them.

If for me, it was I tore down the facade of the Goodie Goodie 2 shoes, and the facade that I have always lived, that I was living the right way and doing the right thing.

I just became myself and it's open people up to be able to talk to me and feel vindicated and what they're going through, and so that's been really, really good. I really am very happy about that.

And what would you say after all of this journey that you've gone through? What would you say are things that you're still working through? Well, the biggest one is just, is feeling included, feeling part of a community.

I think churches have to, one of the things you have to do, you're doctrine, you gotta have it. Your service is a certain way, you gotta have it. There's certain things that you'd have to do as a church, but you also need to foster community.

And one of the things that I have really kind of pushed since this happened because of the loneliness and the way that we were treated was, you've gotta love people. You have to love them first and foremost.

And if people are going to your church and they don't feel like they belong there and they don't feel like they're part of your group, they're not going to stay. They don't care what you believe.

They don't care what you think of them. They want to know that they're loved and they're included. Like ask them to lunch, ask them to your house. It's not the new person's job to become friends with you.

It's your job to welcome them in, love them and be friends with them. So that's really been my heart in the community part of it. And my daughter is really struggling with that. She went to the youth group and some of the people just really loved her.

And now she feels left out, she feels ignored. I don't know what's going on. I've talked to everybody in ministry telling them blue in the face and I just can't do it anymore. She wants to maybe look at another church and that hurts my heart because I do think this is a good church and I'm doing really well in it.

So I think that's what we have to do. We have to teach our kids when there's somebody that comes into the church that's a stranger, you have to love them and include them. You can't leave them sitting on the back row by themselves.

That's so antithetical, antithetical, of anything that Jesus ever taught. You know, he said, let the little children come into me, their kids, he wants to hear from them. We need to be that way and have a sense of community.

And that's my biggest thing that in why I'm speaking out and why I want the UPC to understand. You are not going to get people to abide by your rules and your doctrine and come to your church and do all of that and feel like they're getting kicked in the teeth every time.

I would walk, I can't tell you how many times I would walk into that church. Nobody would say a word to me, I would sit down and go through service, leave never having been spoken to.

And when I would say something to the leadership, they were like, well, you need to look in turn later, something wrong with you, with you. No, no, I'm going through hell with sickness and everything going on.

If you really love somebody, you don't let them sit there and not be spoken to. It's hard and I'll go a step further. When you leave, if you're in one of these high control groups like I was, not a single person actually reach out to me after I left, not one.

And when you're leaving and you're already lonely, you're already suffering with the anxiety of leaving, that just complicates it all the further because these are people that I have known my entire life, these are friends that I had my entire life.

Why did not a single friend reach out to me, not one? That was really, really hard to deal with. And the sad truth of it is this, your story is not unique. You can listen to our stories on Friday and you'll find other people who share similar stories that you have.

But here's the thing, I've only had I think two or maybe three people from the UPCI, but I've had many, many more contact me. There are only a few who are brave enough to step out and say something.

And so the story that you're sharing is likely the story that many listeners are experiencing themselves. And like you, if there's a problem like this, people in the organization really need to step up and take some action.

What advice would you give to people who are listening who are going through this, knowing that the organization is not going to help them? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out.

I will say I did get contacted by people that normally would just never speak to me and want it for nosy, wanted to know why, what had happened, you know, they wanted to know the story.

I did get some of that. I did get some people that did care, that reached out. But I also, we had one gentleman who I, okay, he would call my husband because he would see something on Facebook.

It was, you know, not a standard or whatever. There was a man in sorts or something like that, you know, you know better, you know better. Why are you doing this? You know better.

I'm dying on the inside. I'm hurting. I'm traumatized. My daughter's traumatized. And you, all you care about is that she's wearing shorts to a, to a playground to a birthday party. That stuff has got to stop. That is you, you, you are never going to judge somebody into loving God and being part of your church.

It's just not going to happen. You, you, I have a friend. She contacted me. She's having trouble with her daughter and she said, you know, how do you, Your daughter did to be so good in school and not skip out and do this that nether.

And I said, she said, my daughter leaves and she won't live the standards. And I said, your daughter is from a broken home. She's got bigger problems than whether she wears a skirt. She's got to feel love.

You've got to take care of her emotionally and physically first. And we've got that soap backwards in the UPC. It's like you wear a skirt and everything's good and fine and dandy. But if you don't, then it's there's something wrong.

Now, there's something wrong, period. And we've got to help people through that. And I told her, I said, stop it. Stop focusing on that and get her the help that she needs. Let her do things like play basketball and be part of the school and use those resources.

Don't be afraid to. I've found how many people have said, you don't go to a counselor that's outside of the church. They'll counsel you, smooth out of the church. I'm sorry. Nobody in the church cared to talk to me and make sure I was OK and not going to kill myself one day.

It was the people in the world that did that. It was friends that I had outside of the church. Well, I'm sorry to hear it's still a struggle. And like I said, there are the people who share the same struggle.

So maybe something that you've said in the podcast can help them. Thank you so much for coming back and doing this. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. And I have heard from people, you know, thank you for the courage and the bravery.

And I just had to come to the realization that people need help in me being silent and not saying anything. Yeah, it makes my life easier. My sister said, I hope you know you're never going back to a UPC church.

And I don't care. I don't think that's the case. I think there are some good people. And if I needed to go back and for some reason that I could, but it's been very encouraging for me to know that people needed to hear it and that they didn't have the courage to say it.

And so somebody saying it has helped them. So I appreciate you allowing us to come on and share our story. Absolutely. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Brandom.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.