Featured Article

Setting Boundaries
By Lutherius

If there is one thing that all Ex-Pentecostals have experienced, it is intimidation. Pentecostal preachers and leaders continually violate people's personal space and their social boundaries. When the new convert comes in, and talks in tongues at the altar, it begins there. When all these strange people are around the new convert praying, and chanting, and with the music blaring, they are violating his personal space and his social space. It is impossible to make new friends on the spot. Friendship takes years to build. So, why let strangers hold up your hands, shout in your ears, and help you to “get the Holy Ghost” This begins the process of Boundary Violation. When these violations are a part of one’s life changing experience, it becomes, implicitly, justified, and sometimes implicitly mandatory. So, when the preacher shows up at the person’s house uninvited to discuss “standards” or the “rules” little by little, one becomes comfortable with these boundary violations. When the preacher calls you when you miss service and asks for an explanation, you meekly explain or apologize. When the preacher tells you to pay “tithes” with 10% of your income, you have accepted another violation. Eventually, all these violations become normal, and you think nothing of this. You do not see that you are being abused. You do not see that you are being played for a sucker by a wicked system. You think that these violations are “submission to the Lord.”

All Ex-Pentecostals need to rebuild within themselves their personal boundaries. We must not allow anyone to intimidate us. When people ask us questions that are none of their business, we should ask, “Why do you want to know?” When we are asked to give money when we really do not want to, we should ask,   “Do I owe you something?”

When people get in our face in intimidation manners, we should ask, “Did you mother teach you any manners?” When people ask us personal questions when it is none of their business, we should ask, “What business is this of yours?”

We are free from these emotional bullies. We do not cower in fear like a smaller dog to a bigger one. We do not accept intimidation any longer. We take a stand against abuse. We let people know when they are violating our boundaries, we call them on it, and we make it explicit that we will not let it happen again. Ever. Respectable people respect each other. Those who do not respect boundaries, we shall treat them like children until they learn how to act like an adult and this includes just about any Pentecostal.

Lutherius

contact: Luth@expentecostals.org