UPC Driving the Women Away?

[Falla39]

Originally Posted by Stephen Hoover

Oh... something less than scientific evidence.

It just seems it's often the females in the church that embrace the more conservative dress standards with gusto. They tend to be the ones who show up with the kids if one adult is staying home.

Bro. Hoover,

They were not UPC at the time, but Apostolic Jesus Name Pentecostals,
after my late paternal grandmother, the first of our family, obeyed
the apostolic plan of salvation. This was in 1933, approximately 1900
yrs. after Jesus was crucified in 33 A.D.

They had been long time devout Methodists. She went against the tradi-
tions of her mother and father. Her husband asked her after she was bap-
tized in Jesus Name, "What will your brothers and sisters in the Methodist
church think?" She replied that she couldn't help what they thought. She
had paid her dues (which Dad said usually consisted of a few turkeys and/
or chickens), she raised both.) and that what she now owed was to the
Lord Jesus Christ who died for her sins.

Grandma followed on to know the Lord with her young 14 yr. old son, my
late father, following her. Together they studied the Word of God with a
passion.

In the beginning, after my parents founded the church that we still attend
50 yrs later, it was mostly women that came and brought their children. It
was not the men/fathers that led their families to the church. It was the
same way for decades in the (indepentant apostolic church, we attended,
until I was 11 yrs. old and we moved to our present city in 1950.

My late grandmother and her older sister, in their later years, prayed and
fasted for God to send men to help their church. Today that church is filled
with great men of God. It once was that little church (literally) across the
tracks, but it now the largest church (UPC) in that small town. The high
school seniors have their Baccularuate there every May/June.

Neither was it my maternal grandfather who took his wife and children
to church. It was his little wife, the mother of 12 (living) children, who
took her children to this little apostolic church. In fact her husband fought
her as she took them to church, where she had received the Holy Ghost.

He was such a tyrant because of hating the Pentecostal church, they
divorced later in life. As a young child I could not understand why.

When my mother was a young lady, about 17 yrs old, he whipped her and
brought blood because a young man came and sat down beside her at the
Pentecostal church. She told him she didn't sit down by him but that he
came and sat down beside her. He replied he whipped her because she didn't
move.

He drank quite a lot as did some of his sons. Thankfully God saved my mother
out of that ungodly mess. She met the son of another mother that received
the Holy Ghost in that same revival and church. From those two mothers that
God brought out of darkness into His marvelous light, God brought together a
young couple who married and followed on to know the Lord in a goodly way.
This couple was my late wonderful godly parents.

My mother told me that about three days before they married, she and Dad
made plans and discussed their future. About how they would raise the family
God would give them. She said they agreed together that they would en-
endeavor, by His help and grace, to trust HIM in everything, including child-
birth. Mom told me that God just put faith in her heart. They did trust Him
and He never failed them. Our family has been SO blessed. The blessings of
the LORD maketh rich.

It was my two little "five foot, take or add a inch or so" grandmothers
that led the way to the church. It wasn't their husbands that led the
way. This is in no way putting those men who have led their families, but
this was the way it happened in our family, in the beginning.

After our late parents married and began their family, it was Dad who led
the way for his family, in the home and in the church. Mom was his "God-
given" helpmate. She was helpful in many ways in the church, even having
several small children. But there was order in our home and in the church.
We were taught to behave in the home and in church. They were a team
together (laborers together with God).

Today in the church our late father founded and pastored until just before
his homegoing, there is an abundance of good men AND ladies.

Dad used to say, "Yes, we've come a long way, Baby". and we have.

Blessings,

Falla39