My
Experience at GAC
It
was rather touching to hear from all of your experiences at the hands of Gospel
Assembly Church. My experience is almost a carbon copy of a chapter in what you
have to say about the mind control we, my wife and I, experienced until one day
I just said, “Enough of this and if God condemns me so be it.”
I
am from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in Africa and my Pastor was Alois Rutivi. I
understand that he now runs a separate church called Gospel of Peace Church.
When Bro. Owundo who used to pastor the church in Nairobi Kenya was killed, our
pastor was transferred to Nairobi whilst we got a local pastor called Gatsi.
I
was not married and fresh from school when the GAC started in Bulawayo 1985 and
I remained in the church for the next 13 years which to be some of the most
torturous times of my life. Being young and naïve, the appeal of being a member
of the only true church in the city had the best of me and was oblivious of the
mind control that was at play. I loved God then and still do, having been born
a Lutheran and attended Lutheran schools.
We
used to be told and almost coerced to attend church three times in a week, two
mid-week evening services and one Sunday morning service plus band practice and
church construction on Saturdays. My life was almost a set routine - work in
the morning, church in the evening, and sleep. I had no life outside the church
and each service was meant giving offering; and 10% of my gross salary every
month went to support the church with a promise of having a place in the first
resurrection.
I
had to seek permission to go and see my parents in the rural areas from the
pastor and if the pastor thought I had work to do in the church, it meant forgoing
it. We never celebrated Christmas because Christ was not born on that day,
instead we attended church on that day and we would be shown how this was not
the Day of the Lord.
I
could gladly have flowed along had it not been for the aberrant cruelty that
started being meted against my person in an almost systematic way over every
good deed I would have shown another member of the church. Some of the laws
that I saw on your website were not clearly enunciated to us but would be
pronounced from the pulpit; and one had to figure out what was being said.
Invariably I would receive a lambasting from the pulpit and at times will not
know how the pastor got to know what I had done, only to discover that the
brothers and sisters whom I would have helped are the ones who tipped the
pastor. One time I was labeled a son of inequity and was full of witchcraft.
Although it was not said in my face nor was I mentioned by name I knew the
message was referring to me. As the church was renting halls, church offices,
it was my duty to carry all the instruments to my place in my own car at my own
expense. Invariably it meant that I was forced to be at the church a good hour
before the church started. But all that was not noticed and was referred as the
appointed means to have the work of the man of God to prosper. I did not see
this abuse and tended to believe I was just a hand tool in the hand of the
Master and would testify to that effect and would receive a very loud amen from
the pastor.
Something
slowly started to die within me when my dear mother passed away in July of
1994. The church did not lift up a finger to help because she was not born
again and also not a member of the only true Church of God. I realized I was
all alone in the world and the relatives I had shunned and ignored visiting
because of too busy at church were the one who standing with me. The day she
died was a Sunday and I had rushed her to hospital early that morning. I left
her admitted and rushed to church with a promise that I would see her after
church. But when I came back from church, I found that she was now on oxygen,
her breath shallow and I realized I had missed an opportunity to hear her last
words. There I was all alone with my dying mother and hospital staff colleagues
for comfort. I just told myself I had to be strong and see to it that I gave my
mother a dignified send away the best way I could. When she finally passed
away, I realized how lonely the world could be. I had question only she could
answer and I had wasted the chance to hear her voice one last time because I
was busy blowing my lungs out on the trumpet to entertain a group of people who
never cared to stand with me at the time of my greatest need. I was single,
young, and grief stricken.
When
the church offered to help, the pastor assigned one unemployed brother in the
church to accompany me to my rural home to bury my mother and I just could not
accept another burden on my shoulders. The brother needed to have everything
from transport to accommodation and food to and from my rural home which is
about 300km away. Had they offered a driver to help me drive my car, a station
wagon, which I was using to transport the coffin, I would have understood and
not an extra passenger who had to squeeze in the small car. I had no option but
to drive my very dead mother to lay her to rest in her own native land. My
relatives stood afar off because they thought the church which I had been part
of and supported vehemently will do the rest.
When
I came from the funeral, the message was on me for having refused the shoddy
help the church had offered. There he was, the pastor using scripture to
lambaste me and not comforting me because of my loss. He was saying that the
church was not a burial club, an informal group of people, mostly poor town
workers, who make monthly financial contributions to a common fund and members
can receive disbursements when they are bereaved. And to think of it I had
never asked for help but would have appreciated a genuine offer from my church.
Although I was somewhat disillusioned by this, I still remained a fervent
follower and listener of Brother Goodwin’s taped message and wanted to preserve
my place in the first resurrection; even though I was “sure” I was not going to
meet my dearly departed mother when the trump of God will sound and the dead in
Christ will rise first and we would be translated in the twinkling of an eye,
as the pastor had predicted.
I
still paid my tithes and gave of my offerings as a band member but a big dent
had been made my heart and I was labeled the “back slidden” at heart. My
greatest sorrow came when it was time for me get married. I had everything in
place and had taken my leave days at work. The church had pledged to help with
the serving of food to be on guests, of which the majority was members of the
church and a few of my own relatives, since I had hired a catering expert to do
the food preparation. The wedding being on a Saturday; the church catering
supervisor approached after church on Thursday evening and told me that the pastor’s
wife had instructed her that the church was not going to have anything to do
with food issues at the wedding. No reasonable answer was given as to why
besides that I had made a mistake to hire an outsider to do the catering and
the “saints” not working together with the unsaved. I was distraught, confused
and very angry. I wanted the wedding very much and loved my bride so much and
would not have anything jeopardize the union. I realized I was not angry with
God but with them and I asked myself, was this possible in the only true
church.
But
what followed was the grace of God and we had the best wedding ever to be
conducted in the church. By African
standards, a wedding is judged by the amount of food fed to the people. The
success of our wedding day celebrations made me to start to think out of the
stereotype that I had been put in. It made me to realize that I could reach God
without necessarily the help of the “Man Of God”. I reasoned out that if the
wedding was a success and the whole church leadership was not supportive, God
can still do so with many other things. And I started experimenting with other
projects which the “man of God” had told me not embark on and I discovered that
I could do it with God but without the pastor. Before long I was independent of
him and when I finally left the church in 1999, I was a free man indeed ready
to serve God with a free conscience.
Greanious A. Mavondo