Assembly of God

Reading Time: 11 minutes

“Who is going trick-or-treating today?”, Sister Wilma asked. She looked up over her round, wire-rimmed glasses, short hair done in a perm. 

My hand shot up on the fifth syllable. It was all I could think about. 

She didn’t turn to look at any of us in particular with our hands held high, waving our arms enthusiastically (granted, there were probably only four of us in that Sunday school lesson. It was a small church in a small town).

She proceeded to say rather calmly but emphatically, 

“Well, then you’re going to hell.” 

A special little hiss on the “hell”. 

Ooooooookay. 

Not what I was expecting. 

I was 8. 

We all slowly lowered our arms. It would have been a great SNL sketch. 

I was confused. Why would the community participate in…wait, why would my mom allow me to participate in an activity that would condemn my tiny soul to eternal hellfire? Drat. Duped again by the devil’s temptations. *Tiny fist hits table*

I was going as Jane Goodall that year and I sat there scratching my head, wondering what it was about my khaki shorts and pith helmet that were just so goddamned evil. Maybe it was because Jane never actually wore a pith helmet, the reigning symbol of imperialism. I had also opted to carry around a toy monkey instead of a great ape. But I didn’t have a toy chimpanzee. Oh, God, what had I done? 

I was crushed. I didn’t want to do something bad. I had no idea ringing doorbells and asking for candy ranked right up there with pre-meditated murder. Which by the way, number 6, in the ten commandments? Really? I would have maybe popped that puppy up into the top 3. Just me?

When night began to fall and it was time to put on my costume, I confided in my mom about the heavy burden that lay on my mind, the insightful, hurtful truth that sister Wilma had blessed/branded us with. And my mother, my dear, sweet mother, the saint, the deeply insightful, thoughtful, pious, the Mother-Theresa-Esque, well of wisdom, my mother responded, 

“Oh, I don’t believe that crap.”

And waved it off. 

What a relief! Everyone knows that mom’s word overrules that of Sister Perm because everyone knows that the 5th commandment is to honor your father and mother. She had given me a get-out-of-hell-free card. I practically skipped to my room and slapped on my Goodall-beige button-down, threw my hair in her signature ponytail, and grabbed my binoculars. 

This was my first real memory of finding out that even though I was expected to respect my elders, I didn’t have to believe them. My mother, the one that was taking me to that church, had opened my mind to skepticism. 

It kind of backfired. You see, my mom was saying, “Your Sunday school teacher is a nut.” But what I understood was, “You can cherry-pick Christianity. Grab the stuff that works for you and throw out all the stuff that cramps your style, baby.” What a message for a kid! Not what she was going for. 

I was too young to know how to separate the teacher and my experience with her from the church, the bible, Christianity, and religion. It was much easier to think, “That woman is crazy so the whole damn thing must be.”  

But it’s not my mom’s fault the message didn’t land.

Looking back on it now, her hilarious response wasn’t all that careless. In 1915, an executive presbyter wrote that racial segregation was “ordained of God”. This is just one example of 5,678,980 that obviously, the people in the church can get things very wrong. That is why, in my rebellious opinion, religious but morally-sound moms need to say, “I don’t believe that crap” every once in a while.

………

I’m Pentecostal?

I almost spit out my Shasta Cola. I am 33 years old and I had no idea that we used to attend a Pentecostal church. I found out while Googling ‘Assembly of God’ while writing this. My paternal grandparents attended a church called ‘New Life Fellowship Church of God of Prophecy’, just Googled it, also Pentecostal, no idea how this got by me.

Don’t ask me which team I thought my family was rooting for. When people have asked me about my religion, I have responded, “We went to an Assembly of God church.” And when that was met with a blank stare, I never knew what to tell them. Sometimes I half-said/half-asked with a crinkled nose and my shoulders shrugged, “Baptist?! Maybe?!”. Sometimes I said Evangelical. 

To be honest, I thought Assembly of God was some kind of sect that did a 180 Ollie off Evangelicalism after Evangelicalism did a kickflip off Protestantism. But I never looked into it and no one ever bothered to tell me at ANY SINGLE SERMON EVER. And I didn’t ask. I was too busy reading Tarzan novels. 

Nobody at our church rocked the hardcore Pentecostal vogue. So, how was I supposed to know we were Pentecostal if we all cut our hair, tipped at restaurants, and wore pants instead of long jean skirts? My dad has a deep love affair with whiskey and my mom openly contradicts the teachings of the church so that I can go trick-or-treating with the other demon children. You can understand my confusion. 

Goes to show you can’t stereotype anyone. Here I’ve been stereotyping Pentecostals my whole life without knowing I was one. I mean, I scowled when they walked into wherever I was waiting tables for seven years. Isn’t that some shit? I would not be more shocked if I just found out that my family is Greek. 

Fast Facts

The Assemblies of God were founded in 1914 in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Today, there are almost 13,000 Assemblies of God churches in the U.S. If you check out their official website they’ll tell you that there are more than 3 million members in the U.S. and over 69 million members worldwide as of 2011 (I see we’re not counting that often). 

This makes Assemblies of God the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. That might be the first time anything out of Arkansas took over the world. 

I love Arkansas so before you think I’m dogging it, do a quick search on ‘What is Arkansas known for’ and you’ll get diamond mines and the World’s Cheese Dip Championship. Although very cool, not world domination cool. 

“The U.S. Assemblies of God national office is located in Springfield, Missouri.” BOOM, another point for Missouri, too. Move over Budweiser and Jon Hamm. 

The Assemblies of God hold a conservative, evangelical (I wasn’t way off), and Arminian theology—not to be confused with Armenian as in Armenia, which borders Azerbaijan and former member of the Ottoman empire—but Arminian as in a branch of Protestantism thought up by some celibate Dutch dude in the 16th century. 

Core Pentecostal doctrines include

• The Second Coming of Jesus Christ (All caps because it’s an event. Répondez s’il vous plait) 
• Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Duh)
• Speaking in Tongues (Just you wait)
• Divine Healing (Oh I got something for you here, too)
• And making little kids feel like evil pieces of shit for dressing up as an English Icon and loving candy

If you find that last one on the Wiki page I keep quoting, it’s because I added it. 

………

The Creature from the Church Lagoon

My humble little Pentecostal church in Scott City, MO., First Assembly of God, was formed in 1921, seven years after the Assemblies of God were founded in Hot Springs, AR.

Pastor Ricky has been at the helm for over 25 years, a quarter of this church’s existence. He always wore a thick mustache that covered his top lip—The Chevron. The Tom Selleck. 

I remember when he would come to leave fruit baskets at my grandma’s house. My cousin Matty who was small at the time, unable to or unaware of how to pronounce ‘preacher’ would announce, “The creature’s here!”. 

Pastor Ricky has been in and out of my life for moments at a time the way I suppose anyone’s Pastor is in a small town. It’s like the doctor in Forrest Gump. Doesn’t matter where I live or how many years have gone by, when I fly home for a funeral, there he is, not lookin’ much older. 

Ricky gave the sermon at my grandfather’s funeral, my step-dad’s, my uncle’s, some of my grandma’s sisters’, a high school classmate, a second cousin’s, and countless other funerals for folks from around town. 

For me, it’s bizarre to go to a funeral and Pastor Ricky isn’t the one giving the sermon. I once went to a funeral service in Costa Rica and I half expected Pastor Ricky to approach the podium. If I were to keel over at this laptop, right now. You bet damn well Ricky’s phone would be ringing. 

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

I’m not sure what the sermons are like nowadays because I’m not about to stroll down there and pop in or sit through a Facebook live. 

But back when my mom finally let me stay with her for the regular sermon instead of going back to Sunday school with the loser babies watching Veggie Tales, I remember a lot of loudly spoken fire and brimstone. A lot of…revelations, the return of Christ, and the apocalypse. A lot of hell sucks and it’s comin’ up quick so you better repent and tithe, tithe, mother fucker tithe. My words. Not Ricky’s. 

I remember Ricky running down the aisle, full sprint, microphone cable trailing behind him. He would whip it around to make sure he had enough slack to do another shouty lap without tripping over it. 

The transition from Sunday school to the regular service gave me whiplash.

Some people dropped their kids off at Sunday school and didn’t attend the sermon. They opened the car door, booted their kids out, and left. Poor people with vices know all the tricks, man. They know where they can leave their kids *for free* for a couple of hours. 

I remember one girl, Becky. The Sunday school teacher was trying to give the lesson and Becky, only one year younger than me, was walking around on all fours acting like a dog. She was barking and panting with her tongue out. As the Sunday school teacher was mid-sentence on some speech about ‘thou shalt not love candy’, Becky crawled over to her and hiked up her leg as if she were a dog peeing. 

I would have forgotten all about this if it weren’t for my mother constantly reminding me. Mom would always ask, “How did Sunday school go?”. I was not a kid that shrugged off my parents with an “It was alright”. I’ve always loved to tell stories. And I couldn’t wait to tell mom that Becky the dog had fake peed all over the Sunday school teacher. 

My mom has a great sense of humor and even though that was all those years ago, to this day, she only needs to catch a glimpse of a bible or hear someone whisper ‘Jehovah’ to bust out a laugh and say, “You remember when….?”  

Anyway, those kids were wild and the Sunday school teacher was trying to make us memorize a song that lists off every book in the bible, in order. It was bad enough that I had to memorize the Preamble at school. I was over it and ready to sit up front for the regular sermon with mom and grandma. Ma had mints and pretzels in her purse and that made the second coming of Christ a little less stressful. 

Baptism in the Holy Spirit

When I got saved I did so out of sheer fear. 

One sermon, Ricky was up there listing the sins that I committed on the reg and how God saw it all. The fires of hell felt especially hot that Sunday. When he asked if anyone wanted to get saved from the toaster oven, I raised my hand because duh, what an easy out. Everyone’s eyes were closed in prayer so I thought it would just be my closed-eyes little secret, between the preacher and me. But then, to my horror, he called everyone that had raised their hands to the front of the congregation. Horrified, I ‘took it back’ mentally and pretended that nothing had ever happened. But that traitor called me out anyway. Shit. he had seen me raise my hand.

I got a little wild with it there for a while. I didn’t really understand the concept. I probably got saved three times before someone explained to me, “You know, one will do you. It’s like a baptism, not confession.”

I was never baptized. My mom said she didn’t have us baptized as children because she thought that baptism should be an individual’s decision. 

Pretty cool, right? I thought so, too until in one church sermon it was explained to us that all the unbaptized go to hell. “And that is why you kind folks need to donate to our missionaries so they can save the foreign non-believer, non-baptized babies from hell.” 

My first thought was, “Oh shit, I’m not baptized. Mom, you’ve played it pretty fast and loose with my soul. What if I had gotten typhoid fever at 6 years old?!”

My next thought was, “babies?” I remember tugging on mom’s dress and essentially whisper-asking, “God sends babies to hell because they were born somewhere where Christianity isn’t the dominant religion?” 

And of course, she put my mind at ease by reassuring me that she didn’t believe that crap, either.

Speaking in Tongues 

During one core memory, I was in the pews with the adults, listening to the very metal adult sermons. Ricky was running up and down the aisles, shouting Pantera lyrics, whipping the microphone cable around, turning red. He wipes the sweat off his forehead, and in that pause, there it is for the first time in my life. I hear a woman passionately wailing in a sad voice,

“Skilabalesh galesh, galesh, hoola bala balee balloo. Skoomama jimbo curtain. Halah galesh boo.” 

And I’ll cut it short but it went on like that for a while.

I opened my eyes and raised my eyebrows in confusion. She had my attention. Nobody had ever taken the time to explain to me what speaking in tongues was. 

I wished they had. Turns out, the weirdness doesn’t end with that outburst. Everything fell silent. I didn’t know that we were all waiting on a translation. The minutes of silence drug painfully on, as I began to wonder if anyone would call an ambulance for the woman that had just had a stroke when finally, the translation came. Either the holy spirit woke up from its nap and decided to jump into the translator’s body or this woman just finally got tired of the awkward silence and decided to whip something up real quick. 

The translation was also wail-y and sad. The message was supposedly coming from Mary and her sorrow after seeing her son executed on the cross. Not only did I not know what speaking in tongues was but I hadn’t expected it to be this ghostly, time travel, voice-from-beyond-the-grave thing. I felt like I was in a séance instead of church. The creepy turned to silly once the translation started rolling in because how does, “galesh galesh galesh” translate to two complete sentences?

But you get used to it and you roll your eyes when it’s coming from the same three holier-than-thou ladies.

Is it a coincidence that the holy spirit favored the front pew?

Divine Healing 

There was never anyone in my church that threw their crutches to the ground and walked without them. No one stood up from a wheelchair. 

I believe that speaking in tongues and translating gibberish may have been the height of our pageantry, or at least the pageantry we would have witnessed on a typical Sunday. 

My family and I steered clear of tent revivals with visiting snake-handling pastors from Appalachia. In hindsight, that’s a shame. Would have been excellent for the blog. 

Pastor Ricky often laid his hands on people to pray for them but I don’t recall anyone making any claims of any miracles. 

I do, however, remember Pastor Ricky lining people up at the front of the congregation and with the touch of his hand upon their forehead, they fell over. I cannot remember what this practice was all about. I don’t remember why he called these people forward and lined them up at the pulpit. I don’t remember why his touch knocked them over as if he were the conductor of God’s electricity. I truly cannot recall. 

I just remember that I refused to participate. I was terrified that I would be the only one that was NOT knocked on her ass by the power of God. And then I would have to fake fall and be a big fat phony.

Lying to everyone about God’s body slam in his own house would be bad enough. But I was even more afraid that maybe everyone else actually felt something and only I didn’t. Or WORSE what if I found out they were all faking it? I wanted to believe that God was in that little church every Sunday surging through the Pastor’s fingertips and making himself known through a Dragon Ball ‘kame hame haaaa’. 

Not so many years later, when I was in middle school, one of my classmates told me a story in which he confirmed that I was right to sit silently in the back. Not being from a very religious family, he was once the ignorant buddy that was visiting a church for the first time with a friend. Somehow, he got drug on stage for one of these knock-down rituals. He didn’t know how the thing worked. When the pastor touched his forehead, he stood there, eyes closed and head bowed in prayer. The pastor then whispered in his ear, “You’re supposed to fall”. So he did his best southern-belle-suddenly-taken-over-by-the-heat, delayed type of faint. When I picture that moment I like to think that the back of his right hand went limply up to his forehead. 

*All names have been changed even though if we’re from the same town you know damn well who I’m talking about