Re: Struthers Memorial Independent Pentecostal Church
Date: March 27, 2024 05:37AM
Interesting to see all these new comments: hello, and thank you. Thanks are also due to Petitor and Rensil for always chivvying things along.
I am not trying to be contrarian, and I acknowledge all the hurt that has been expressed by contributors old and new, but I want to defend Miss Taylor, to some extent. She was, I think, prophetically gifted and to an extraordinary degree. In fact, I know, because I had first-hand experience of it, which helped me - when I was very mixed up - immensely. I will be forever grateful to her.
She was, indeed, a 'nobody' in the world, in the sense that, being a 9-5 secretary, she was not in a high-status profession. However, I think that that is also to her credit. 'God chooses the lowly things of this world...' Many of the spiritual giants of history came from obscure and humble backgrounds: Billy Bray, William Booth, Charles Spurgeon, Willam J. Seymour, etc. It is to my mind impressive that Miss Taylor, as a woman and without the privilege of higher education, accomplished what she did, especially at the time she did it, the sexist, classist 1950s.
However, she had 'the vices of her virtues', and this is the problem with the Struther leadership generally: they think that because they have the Holy Spirit among them they must be pretty much infallible, and are therefore justified in very closely controlling the private lives of their flock. They secede from the healthy environment of the wider church, shunning accountability and seeking to preserve an inevitably fragile and actually unsustainable ideal community. This is why they have not only not grown since the founders died, but contracted and fragmented. It is impossible to maintain an enclosed community for long, unless you shut up shop in a convent or campus somewhere. It is also not God's will, which, to the contrary, is to be 'the salt of the earth', 'in the world, but not of it'.
So, in short, Struthers Memorial Church is a mixture of good and bad, truth and error. I am glad I was led out so clearly. My natural loyalty kept me inside, as no doubt with many of you, until I was driven away. I am amused that Alison Spiers has now stropped out, since it was challenging her and her made-up vision for a new school, which incidentally shifted from a planned special needs school to a cheap private school, proving the shakiness of her claimed divine mandate, that sealed my fate.