Recounting history

Since there have been many debates on whether the TPM approved or disapproved of married pastors, I thought I’d post this history of the TPM as told to me by a current TPM member:

Ceylon Pentecostal Mission (now TPM) Founder Pastor Paul or Ramankutty had accepted several married people into full-time TPM ministry and even had children.
Pastor Paul ordained Pastor K.E. Abraham, who was married, as the founder of Indian Pentecostal Church (IPC). This event has also been mentioned in Pastor Paul’s biography.
Though Pastor Paul advocated pastors to take the vow of celibacy like the Apostle Paul, he never demanded celibacy from anyone or rejected anyone for priesthood on the grounds that they were married.
If Pastor Paul had rejected anyone from ministry for being married, then it would violating the principles of 1 Timothy 4:1-3 (Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.)

Chief Pastor Alwin de Alwis introduced some controversial doctrines in the latter part of 1950’s and early part of 1960’s. Pastor Alwin supposedly taught that the only reason for marriage is lack of self-control and that an essential requirement for being a pastor was celibacy. These were not the teachings of Pastor Paul, so Pastor Freddy and the council of senior ministers rejected these.

Pastor M. Daniel formally excommunicated the sitting Chief Pastor Alwin of CPM on charges of sexual impropriety while both of them were in France. After Pastor Paul’s son Freddy Paul became the Chief Pastor, the first announcement he wanted to make was that it would be perfectly acceptable for pastors and sisters to marry and remain in the ministry. With that in mind, he called a meeting of the senior ministers. However, the majority of the senior pastors suggested that if they make such an announcement, majority of the young male workers and female workers might pair up and request to be married.
Remember, they were/are living in a communal environment (faith homes). That would have caused irreparable reputational damage to the then CPM in the eyes of the world. In addition, their argument was that CPM has a tradition of celibate ministers and if many ministers got married, it would completely change that tradition.

Therefore, the decision was that they would not make such an announcement and would just remain silent on the issue of celibacy. That is why, I think, we are not able to find any official statement on this issue from TPM. They also decided that if anyone wanted to get married and wanted to continue in the ministry, he/she would be heavily discouraged or encouraged to leave the ministry and then marry. However, if any one insisted that he wanted to marry and continue in the ministry then he will be allowed to do so.

After the Pastor Alwin crisis, several pastors left the ministry to get married. Some of the pastors in India got married and continued in the ministry. The TPM church in USA has married ministers.

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TPM – The Pentecostal Mission

*Comments have been re-opened but will be moderated

Have you guys heard of The Pentecostal Mission (TPM)? I’m sure you must have heard some half-baked guys singing loudly, off-tune and with reverberations of “Hallelluiah” and “Praise the Lord” every five minutes late into the night in your neighbourhood. Well these guys are part of the “Halleluiah goshti” or Pentecostals.

The strong, fanatical and only true followers of Christ are the TPM members.

The TPM members feel that they are unlike the lilies of the valley, which neither spin nor toil and let their heavenly father take care of them. Either these guys live in morbid fear of hell or an intense longing for heaven: Otherwise I find it hard to interpret their fanatical devotion to misinterpreting the Bible.Some of the things that are likely to get the goat of non-believers (in their language this word includes the poor, deluded Christians who are not part of their denomination as well):

*The women do not preach in church or elsewhere. You see Paul said women were to be silent in church, so the decree: No woman pastors needed. For was not Eve, the first sinner who enticed Adam to sin, a woman? Anyway these worthy disciples of Apostle Paul (who did not get married) and Apostle Peter (who found the ministry more interesting than the cares of domestic life) do not let women preach or talk in church. A woman’s duty is to listen to the men in the church, for are not men the heads of the family like Christ is the head of the church? I wonder how they always manage to come up with verses that suit their convenience. When I quote the Bible that “men and women are equal in the eyes of God,” I’m the “devil quoting the scriptures.”

*The brothers and sisters in the church lead a life more austere and Augustine than the Trappisian monks. Yup! No coloured uniforms. Plain white robes and even plainer food is the order of the day for the full-time workers of this church. I wonder how they can forgive God for creating the bright-yellow of the daffodils, the azure of the violets or the dark reds of the geraniums? Or do they feel he was wasting his time by creating dye-producing plants like the Indigo? Even the lay people in the church come every Sunday to church dressed in white. If they associate white with purity is black the colour of the devil and the BMWs, which some of their chief pastors own, the machinations of the devil? >:)

*No medicines. Medicines are taboo, according to them for is not Christ the supreme healer? This is quite a horrific misinterpretation of the Bible. My first clash with ultra-Christianity came at the age of 8, when I was vacationing in Rameswaram. A worker at the Mission hospital told us a story of how their neighbour’s child died of typhoid, because the child Christian parents wanted divine healing. The little girl, had been extremely sick, but the parents refused to take the girl to a doctor. The worker told us how all the neighbours were planning to forcibly take the child to the hospital, when the child died. He told me, the worst blow, the parents had was when the pastor, told them that the child had died because they had doubted that God would heal the child. Later, on I heard more stories of how people had to have their legs amputated, their skins peppered with diseases, because they believed God would someday heal them. Even, when I was a god-fearing Christian, I viewed all this extreme distaste. Now that I’m out of the Christian fold, I can find similarities between this fanaticism and the fanaticism that leads people from other faiths to kill their own children as sacrifices at the altar of another God.*This church doesn’t believe in letting its members see the TV, hear ungodly music on the radio or read anything ungodly. Anything apart from the Bible and their monthly text of piety called The Pentecost is termed ungodly by these people, who are the self-proclaimed true-Christians.

*Another ridiculous thing is that they don’t believe in letting women wear jewels. Apparently men wearing Rolex watches and flaunting their Fords will not in anyway increase their vanity. But women, the avaricious creatures that they are, will go haywire at the sight of gold. I think all this idiocy stems from Paul’s saying that it is better that a woman adorns herself with good works, than with jewellery or braiding their hair. Well Paul said: Its better you do this than that, but The TPM interpretation: Women must not wear jewels. So if you see most Pentecostal woman in India have to forgo gold – a security and investment, as it increases their vanity. In foreign countries I’m sure this Pentecostal teaching is no hardship, but in India, with every other housewife being decked like a jewellery showroom, it must be a pretty hard cross for these women to b(w)ear. After years of staying in the TPM church, my grandma moved away. Now, she sees the pastors’ wives in more liberal Pentecostal churches wearing jewels and badly wants to wear jewels again, but doesn’t do so because she feels it will look ridiculous to resume wearing jewels at her age. Why all this deprivation? Why all the fuss? Wear jewels if you feel like it, since its normal in Indian society for women to wear jewels. Anyway if they are going to misread Paul’s statement like that, they must also wear their hair loose and never use hair clips, hair pins, barrettes, ribbons or braid their hair. For did not Paul say it is better for a woman to adorn herself with good works than wear JEWELS or BRAID her HAIR?

Error Regreted, Clarification: I had earlier made some references to the TPM’s history, it now appears that:

“Chief Pastor Alwin de Alwis was excommunicated by Pastor M. Daniel in France faith home on charges of sexual misbehavior.  Pastor Alwin was subsequently forced out of CPM by Freddy Paul and other senior ministers.  This took place in 1962/63.

Pastor Philip Chandapillai, Associate Chief Pastor, was assaulted by TPM believers at the Kottarakara, Kerala center faith home for changing the name from CPM to TPM.  This took place in 1983/84.”

Author’s note: This post was written more than a year ago. There are some things in the post like “half-baked guys” & “Halleluiah goshti” that I wish I had not written now. Those words sound hasty & immature. I want to apologise if I have hurt the sentiments of TPM members. But I still stand by my doctrinal criticism of the church. I have also posted another article – in which I have recounted the history of the TPM as told to me by a current TPM member.

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