In July 1983, I started a new Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church in Somerset, Ohio. I would remain the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church until March 1994. Somerset was a community of 1,400 people located in Perry County — one of the northernmost counties in the Appalachian region. It was here that I learned what it meant to be a pastor; to truly involve yourself in the lives of others.
The membership of Somerset Baptist was primarily made up of poor working-class people. Most church families received some form of government assistance — mostly food stamps and Medicaid. In many ways, these were my kind of people. Having grown up poor myself, I knew a good bit about their struggles. I deeply loved them, and they, in return, bestowed their love on me.
I grew up in a religious monoculture. The only churches I attended were Evangelical/Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregations. I attended a Methodist church one time, but that was only because I was chasing a girl who went to that church. I was twenty-six years old before I attended the services of any other church besides a Bible-preaching Evangelical church.
One of my responsibilities as an IFB pastor was to preach against false pastors and their teachings. On Sundays, I would preach against Catholics, Southern Baptists, Charismatics, mainline churches, and any other sect I deemed heterodox or heretical. As a fully certified, circumcised, and lobotomized IFB preacher, I had a long list of things I was against. The goal, of course, was to make sure that congregants didn’t stray. They were members of the “best” church in town. Why go elsewhere, right? I saw myself as a gatekeeper, a divinely called man given the responsibility to protect people from false teaching. And protect them I did — from every false, harmful teaching but my own.
One Sunday afternoon, I decided to attend a Charismatic faith healing service at the Somerset Elementary School gymnasium. I thought, “if I am going to preach that Charismatic movement is from the pit of Hell, I’d better at least experience one of their services.”
I arrived at the service about fifteen minutes early. I brought one of the “mature” men of the church with me, a man who wouldn’t be swayed by the false teachings we were going to hear. There were 50 or so people in attendance. Songs were sung, a sermon was preached, and an offering was collected. Pretty standard Baptist stuff. But then it came time for people to have the pastor lay hands on them and deliver them from sickness and demonic possession. People started speaking in tongues as the preacher walked down the front row “healing” people. According to the preacher, numerous people were being healed, though I saw no outward evidence of this. This so-called man of God would stand in front of people, ask them their needs, lay his hand on their heads, and pray for them. And just like that, they were “healed.”
Near me was sitting a dirty, scraggly woman. Her black hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. It had a sheen that said, “last washed with used motor oil.” When it came time for the preacher to lay his hand on top of the woman’s head, he refused to touch her greasy, dirty head. Instead, he held his “healing” hand just above her head, prayed for her, and quickly moved on to the next mark. I thought, “What a fraud. Why not put your hand on this woman’s head? What’s a little grease on your hands?”
I attended other Charismatic services during my eleven years as pastor of Somerset Baptist, but there’s nothing like your first one, right?
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I, too, have attended Charismatic healing services. They are spaces in which you really have to suspend disbelief in order to believe.
Hubby dined out on this story for years. He was converted when a science undergrad at Cambridge University fifty years ago. He and a group of other new x-tians deciced to go to a pentecostal healing/revival service in a town ten miles away so that they could have their first exerience of one. The preacher was full-on penty, trying and failing to whip up a chorus of amens, hallelujahs and tongues. Exasperatedly he stopped and said, ‘What is the matter with you folks? It’s not like you’re all brainy science students from that place down the road in Cambridge.’ Which hubby’s group was. Several became pastors, missionaries etc and this was a valuable lesson in not demeaning or making false assumptions about your hearers but to treat them with dignity and respect!
I have never been to a charismatic service, but my friend and I enjoyed watching them on TV when we were kids – the part where the pastor would get animated and demand that the person be healed, whereupon the person would fall over. We didn’t believe in it, but we thought it was funny as hell. Ernest Angeley (sp?) was our favorite.
A relative of mine attended a charismatic church for a few years — Assemblies of God, if I recall correctly. They got on well with the pastor, but said they weren’t accepted for membership because they refused to do the speaking in tongues thing. Apparently without that “sign” they couldn’t demonstrate baptism by the Holy Spirit or something, which was a requirement. They later returned to a more conventional evangelical church.
Changing gears ala the reference to good ol’ Bible-preaching evangelical churches, I get a kick out of fundamentalists advising seekers to “go find yourself a good Bible-believing church”. What other kind of church is there? Don’t all Christian churches think they believe the Bible? (Yes, I know what they really mean by that.)
Sounds interesting. Looks like people can use the bible to sell anything they want. I think different christian groups should develop a level of respect between them, so that one group is not demeaning the other.