Holy Rollers

I'm a Pentecostal.* I'm not saying it like, "I'm an alcoholic." It's not like I need to profess it in a church rental hall with someone handing out poker chips with how many days I last spoke in tongues.

The irony, is getting pickled and speaking in tongues were linked on the first day of Pentecost when the inhabitants of the upper room went out on the streets and the passer byes thought they were on a Manischewitz bender. 

We have always been the country bumpkin brother of the "Proper Church."

I wasn't always proud to claim the title of Pentecostal. 

When I was a boy I was taken to independent Pentecostal churches in East Los Angeles by my Mexican aunts. The services by the end of the night always turned out the same, a racket of overlapping speaking in tongues, jumping and jerking, and the occasional rolling on the floor like human dropped water bottles. All this to blaring music from an electric guitar, tambourines, and Spanish shouting over the loud speakers from the Pastor. What WAS something to edify the Church with someone speaking in an unknown language followed by a clear interpretation from another as mandated by the Apostle Paul, turned into a floor show, a spectacle of blaring and blasting that shook the cottage cheese/glitter specked roof. 

The events on those warm nights made this boy terrified, I couldn't wait to get out of there and away from it. If this was what the Holy Spirit was about? I wanted nothing to do with Him, I didn't even want Him near me. 

When I was in my teens, I cooled it with any kind of Church until I started to go to an Assembly of God Church. The speaking of tongues and interpretation was done right, but that would be eclipsed by church members who caused all kinds of problems for the poor Pastor because he wouldn't listen to church members who told him to kick me out, a quite gay boy who just wanted to love Jesus. 

It took me years to understand the experiences in my youth had nothing to do with the gentle third person of the Trinity, it was flesh manifesting in those Mexican church services.

One thing I needed before I completed my journey of accepting my homosexuality was validation from the Holy Spirit in a homosexual with outward manifestations to show me I wasn't wrong. Was it necessary? No, was it necessary for ME? Absolutely. 

I needed validation and I found that validation in two places. 

One was a gay-affirming church in West Virginia were I witnessed people being Slain in the Spirit and the mighty fruits it was showing with it being such a tiny church with doing so much. 

The second was a gay-affirming church in Arizona whose gay Pastor came from the Assemblies of God body who baptized others in the Spirit with the laying on of hands with the evidence of speaking in tongues (I instantly recognized the heavenly language from my years in the AoG church). My discernment in listening to their sermons told me in the Spirit it was from God, and I was happily and joyfully sent off in my renewed walk with Christ, not as a gay sinner, but as a child of God with no condemnation with wanting my own sex.

I pray, in some small way, my writings here help you on your own journey.


Frank.






*Mainstream Pentecostalism doesn't condone the handling of snakes or drinking of poison in a church service (it's a twisting of Mark 16:17-18 and flies in the face of; "Tempting the Lord your God") practiced almost exclusively in the hills of Tennessee.